About why YA is so big right now is that there’s been a demographic bubble—a mini baby boom—and that it was all those kids who made Harry Potter huge and are now making YA huge. Suzanne mentions this theory in the comments to this post.
I have no idea if it’s true or not. As I mentioned, I’m feeling really research lazy this week.
But let’s imagine it is true for a moment. What happens when these mini-baby boomers grow up? Is that the end of YA? They move on to adult fiction and the field contracts just as the picture book and middle grade fields have contracted. And a whole bunch of us start trying to crack into other genres. Just as a whole bunch of writers are now busily switching to YA.
On the other hand, the current YA boom seems to have brought in many adult readers and quite a few of the teen readers seem to keep reading YA even as they hit their 20s. So maybe the good times will roll for a little while longer. If not the forty years I’m hoping for.
I’m an adult and I find the YA stuff to be easy-to-read faster-paced stories. Growing up with those types of stories, a steady diet of heavyweight “adult” titles gets to be too much after a while and a YA makes a refreshing change.
Not sure what will happen in the years to come, I think that todays youth have a shorter attention span and increasingly hop from thing to thing. My 22 year old doesn’t even listen to a whole song any more (takes too long) but picks out fragments that he likes then jumps to the next song, so a 90k tome with slowly developing plots and characters may have a difficult time.
I’ve stayed with ‘YA’for the past 30+ years, after that Tolkein and Lewis and Alexander and Norton and Garner pulled me in, so odds are good that you have another 30+ to come from the Rowling readers, if they continue to read.
I still scan the YA section faithfully every time I go to the bookstore, and I’m in my mid-twenties. The great thing about YA might be targeted to teens, but its audience is made of teens and above. A good book is a good book.
Um, and apparently I’m grammar challenged. Changed phrasing in mid-thought, and I’m fussy enough to tsk about it in a second post.
There appears to be another baby boom going on in the US right now, so there might be a slump for a few years before this boom hits the YA range.
Count me as an adult reading YA. Great stuff on those shelves.
More likely, the hugeness of Harry Potter and other notables makes YA more successful, across the board, by expanding the market and by driving the search for the next HP and co. Whether the YA market needs another HP to stay big is another question.
Personally, I don’t remember reading much YA as a teenager, though I must have done so. I read and loved HP (starting at age 23), and have read other popular YA since. But I don’t check the YA section in bookshops. It probably has to ‘break out’ to reach people like me.
What do publishers’ marketing departments have to say? I assume they have some ideas. Do they ever tell?
What about YA Librarians? They obviously enjoy the stuff too, and must have enjoyed it for a while.
I just finished my freshman year of college and when I returned home one of the first things I did was hit up the YA shelves of the library, because I found that I missed reading YA. When I was there I found both Magic Lessons and Magic’s Child, both of which I’d been dying to read ever since I first got Magic or Madness a couple of years ago. I devoured them in a few days, and really, really enjoyed them. (Thank you! I also really want to visit Australia now.) So, I suppose as a reader who loves great stories, as long as authors like you are writing YA, I am going to continue to read it. Also, I find it easier just to browse in YA, because I feel like there’s a higher concentration of quality.
also, there’s lots of teens now modelling excellent reading habits to their impressionable younger siblings/nephews/nieces etc. so hopefully that’ll stick.
As I mentioned in your Introvert/Extrovert post, I am not a big fan of labeling. I know we need to quantify and qualify the world to some extent so we can make our way through it. But for me a good book is a good book.
gah. this scares me a tiny bit. it makes me wonder if breaking into ya will only get harder.
but then i remember that i am decidedly NOT THINKING ABOUT THE DAMN MARKET right now, or anytime in the near future. nooooo, bad rebecca, baaaad.
i hope it’s not just demographics. i hope it’s that more people have discovered how fantastic ya is. pretty please, oh ye gods of half-crazed writers.
I try to instill my love of YA in my sister. Usually I don’t let anyone touch my books, but I will lend them to her if she doesn’t ruin them (AKA, she can’t take them to school in her backpack). Hopefully it will catch on soon.
gah. I hope it doesn’t disappear (or shrink to an unbearably small market). I’m not trying to be unrealistic. But YA is what I’ve always wanted to write! (and read!) *crosses fingers*