YA Market is HOT
Here's an article on the YA market--it's hot--they say.
from the following link:
http://www.oregonlive.com
In a bit of magic, young adult literature becomes a hot market
Sunday, September 24, 2006
MARY RECHNER
Everybody -- first time author and established scribe -- is doing it: writing for young adults. "YA," a hard-to-define market that encompasses readers between 9 and 19, is attracting writers for a variety of reasons.
Karen Karbo, author of five books for adults, wrote "Minerva Clark Gets a Clue" and the forthcoming "Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs" "as a way to give girls between 9 and 11 or 12 something to read that didn't involve teen issues they might not be ready for."
First-time novelist Christine Fletcher of Portland thought she was writing for adults until her agent found that editors didn't think adults would respond to the 17-year-old protagonist in her book "Tallulah Falls." When Fletcher agreed to pitch her novel to the YA market, her agent quickly sold it.
Altering "Tallulah Falls," published this spring, into a YA book "did not entail a tremendous about of work," says Fletcher. "I streamlined the plot, removing any navel-gazing. It's all about the story, not about the writer."
The unprecedented success of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series deserves much of the credit for transforming YA from an underappreciated niche into a hot market.
Will Peters, the manager of Annie Bloom's Books, attributes much of the burgeoning young adult market to the popularity of Harry Potter.
"People buy new hardcover books much more than they used to," he said. "There are more quality series available."
Charlotte Perry, youth materials selector for Multnomah County Library, concurs. "It's hard to find a book that stands alone, that's not a series."
Perry says another change is that "it's difficult to tell the boundaries between teen and adult books."
Some books, like Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," become successful crossover books by appealing to readers of all ages. Haddon's novel won the Whitbread Novel Award, the Book Trust teenage fiction award, and the Guardian's children's fiction prize.
Roland Smith, the Oregon author of more than 20 books for young adults, notes that before Harry Potter, some of the most successful books for kids were short, like the spooky "Goosebumps" series by R.L. Stine.
"What Harry Potter did for people like me is get kids comfortable reading thick books. Now kids are not intimidated by size if the story is good," Smith said.
California author Kerry Madden's first book, "Offsides," was published in 1996 as adult literary fiction, though it featured a young protagonist. "Offsides" got good reviews but didn't sell well. Madden had asked her agent about the young adult market, but in 1996 was assured that publishing a YA novel would be the "death knell" of her career. By 2005 the book market had changed.
"Writing for young people was taken more seriously as an art form," said Madden. That year she published the first book in what has become her "Maggie Valley" series. "Gentle's Holler" is soon to be followed by "Louise's Palette" and "Jesse's Mountain."
In his job as a middle school teacher, Portland writer Bart King observes that "the reason something flies or not [with kids] is not the content, it's how the content is presented." In his nonfiction books, "The Big Book of Boy Stuff" and the forthcoming "The Big Book of Girl Stuff," King uses cartoons, graphics and a delightfully wacky tone to hook his young readers. He believes gender may play a part in what young readers prefer.
"Girls tend to read more literary fiction, while boys generally read more sports- or hobby-related books, in addition to fantasy and sci-fi," King said.
David Brooks, in a recent column in The New York Times, is concerned about the growing gender gap in academic performance; boys are losing ground. Teaching more boy-friendly writers (Brooks suggests Hemingway, Tolstoy, Homer and Twain) might turn more boys onto reading, but perhaps the TV should be turned off first.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the average child watches three hours of TV daily. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, children who watch too much TV "have lower grades in school, read fewer books and have problems with attention." The National Association of State Boards of Education, in its October 2005 report, found "that approximately 70 percent of adolescents struggle to read," with "one quarter unable to read at the most basic level."
Despite all the magic in the young adult market, an alarming number of young Muggles have yet to be transformed into readers.
from the following link:
http://www.oregonlive.com
In a bit of magic, young adult literature becomes a hot market
Sunday, September 24, 2006
MARY RECHNER
Everybody -- first time author and established scribe -- is doing it: writing for young adults. "YA," a hard-to-define market that encompasses readers between 9 and 19, is attracting writers for a variety of reasons.
Karen Karbo, author of five books for adults, wrote "Minerva Clark Gets a Clue" and the forthcoming "Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs" "as a way to give girls between 9 and 11 or 12 something to read that didn't involve teen issues they might not be ready for."
First-time novelist Christine Fletcher of Portland thought she was writing for adults until her agent found that editors didn't think adults would respond to the 17-year-old protagonist in her book "Tallulah Falls." When Fletcher agreed to pitch her novel to the YA market, her agent quickly sold it.
Altering "Tallulah Falls," published this spring, into a YA book "did not entail a tremendous about of work," says Fletcher. "I streamlined the plot, removing any navel-gazing. It's all about the story, not about the writer."
The unprecedented success of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series deserves much of the credit for transforming YA from an underappreciated niche into a hot market.
Will Peters, the manager of Annie Bloom's Books, attributes much of the burgeoning young adult market to the popularity of Harry Potter.
"People buy new hardcover books much more than they used to," he said. "There are more quality series available."
Charlotte Perry, youth materials selector for Multnomah County Library, concurs. "It's hard to find a book that stands alone, that's not a series."
Perry says another change is that "it's difficult to tell the boundaries between teen and adult books."
Some books, like Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," become successful crossover books by appealing to readers of all ages. Haddon's novel won the Whitbread Novel Award, the Book Trust teenage fiction award, and the Guardian's children's fiction prize.
Roland Smith, the Oregon author of more than 20 books for young adults, notes that before Harry Potter, some of the most successful books for kids were short, like the spooky "Goosebumps" series by R.L. Stine.
"What Harry Potter did for people like me is get kids comfortable reading thick books. Now kids are not intimidated by size if the story is good," Smith said.
California author Kerry Madden's first book, "Offsides," was published in 1996 as adult literary fiction, though it featured a young protagonist. "Offsides" got good reviews but didn't sell well. Madden had asked her agent about the young adult market, but in 1996 was assured that publishing a YA novel would be the "death knell" of her career. By 2005 the book market had changed.
"Writing for young people was taken more seriously as an art form," said Madden. That year she published the first book in what has become her "Maggie Valley" series. "Gentle's Holler" is soon to be followed by "Louise's Palette" and "Jesse's Mountain."
In his job as a middle school teacher, Portland writer Bart King observes that "the reason something flies or not [with kids] is not the content, it's how the content is presented." In his nonfiction books, "The Big Book of Boy Stuff" and the forthcoming "The Big Book of Girl Stuff," King uses cartoons, graphics and a delightfully wacky tone to hook his young readers. He believes gender may play a part in what young readers prefer.
"Girls tend to read more literary fiction, while boys generally read more sports- or hobby-related books, in addition to fantasy and sci-fi," King said.
David Brooks, in a recent column in The New York Times, is concerned about the growing gender gap in academic performance; boys are losing ground. Teaching more boy-friendly writers (Brooks suggests Hemingway, Tolstoy, Homer and Twain) might turn more boys onto reading, but perhaps the TV should be turned off first.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the average child watches three hours of TV daily. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, children who watch too much TV "have lower grades in school, read fewer books and have problems with attention." The National Association of State Boards of Education, in its October 2005 report, found "that approximately 70 percent of adolescents struggle to read," with "one quarter unable to read at the most basic level."
Despite all the magic in the young adult market, an alarming number of young Muggles have yet to be transformed into readers.
posted by YACWW @ 12:21 PM
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