The Awkward Times of New Adult

The Awkward Times of New Adult

Note: Sorry about the unplanned month-long hiatus. There's a lot of blog burnout going around and I think I'm in with them. I'm in that awkward place where I've been around long enough and had enough experiences that I'm no longer a "beginner" but I haven't actually got my own agent or book deal yet, so I've just sorta run out of things to talk about...

But I asked for blog topics on Twitter (LOVE TWITTER!) and Juliana Haygert wanted me to talk about the 'New Adult' genre.

So, New Adult.

New Adult as a genre was started by St Martin's a couple of years ago. It never really took off for the other publishers though, so no one really knew what to do with these queries that kept saying their books were "new adult."

There have been a fair few new adult-ish books published in the past, mostly around the time that chick-lit died off and YA started to boom.  Lots of chick lit writers jumped ship and started making their characters younger to appeal to the YA market, and so there were a fair few college-aged books out there like Diana Peterfreund's Secret Society Girl series (Which also had ties to two Skull and Bones boys vying for the presidency and secret society news scandals which no doubt helped it along.)

As YA boomed even more and sales of chick lit took even deeper nose dives, that grey area of books sorta fell by the wayside. St Martins was no doubt trying to give new adult books a healthy kick in the right direction, but it sadly didn't happen. Authors who wrote college-aged books were asked by their publishers to lower their ages and make them high schoolers, or raise their ages and be adult books. Lots of hearts were broken. Some college-aged books did get through though, as great books are great books no matter the trends.

So now it's been a few years, those kids that started reading YA when they were teens themselves are now getting into college and want something to read that mirrors their lives now. Adults that started to read YA back when it boomed are wanting to move past "first kiss" stories. Going paranormal and adding in weird hybrid creatures was just the beginning. I think this is why there's been a recent surge in dystopian and fantasy books. YA will never die, but readers want MORE. (And don't worry, things come in cycles. Contemporary may be on the slow side at the moment, but it'll come around again when people want to get "back to basics")

We all know how long it took for YA to become its own targeted category.  Back in the 50's, men got a grown up job after high school and women got married. If you didn't, you were ostracized and considered weird or abnormal. You became the crazy spinster aunt or the good-for-nothing college dropout uncle that couldn't hold down a job. But in the 80's, teens finally got a voice, got a say in the matter, after they coughed up enough cash that businesses took notice. There was a delay in "growing up" when more and more people had chances to go to college and didn't jump right from high school pep rallies to mortgages and baby carriages.

I think there's an even longer delay nowadays. MRS degrees are less common, but if they are sought after, it's quite common to put off childbearing until after age 25, and even after age 30. There was a Daily Mail article recently that said in the 50's only one in ten women remained childless, but about 20% end their reproductive years without children these days. 10% might not seem like a lot, but that's quite significant for only twenty-some-odd years time, I think. The study only tracked women who came of age in the 70's and are now hitting menopause, but I think this current generation will have an even higher number of childless adults. Adults will have more personal time, and at least a few of them are going to want to fill that time with books.

On a downer note, after high school, the number of people that read for pleasure drops significantly. College, one or two or three part time (or full time!) jobs, relationships, kids, travel, all those things that new adults are experiencing take up time too. Most will go on to pick reading back up when they're older, either through book clubs, movie-books, or bestseller lists (Oprah, anyone?)

And not everyone goes to college. Some join the military, others take years off to travel and see the world, some still have kids right off. There are so many niche groups that don't have anything in common with one another. Sure there's the "finding yourself" theme, but finding yourself as a twenty-two year old army girl in Iraq and finding yourself as a new single mother holding down two jobs won't have much crossover appeal.

It's sad, as every experience is a valid one and we should all seek to understand others, but them's just the hard facts. The lack of readers and the variety of niche groups during the college years has publishers doubting that new adult can really take off. There will have to be a huge crossover potential and significant sales for them to even consider it. There has to be a new adult book that goes huge like Harry Potter.

YA series books have protags that are getting up there in years, heading off to college, and instead of cutting books off after high school graduation, they want to continue. And as long as people keep buying books, I think publishers should let them. Who doesn't want to see Rowling write a "Harry at university" series. Come on, drunken wizard sexy parties? HECK YES! I bet Ron and Hermione have epic morning-after walks of shame. (Someone who writes fan fiction needs to get on that, stat.)

But publishing is a business, and publishers are already taking huge risks. If publishers don't pick up the ball on this one, I think it's a great opportunity for self-publishers to step up to the plate. College aged kids may be eating ramen and sleeping on skeevy mattresses in closet-sized apartments/dorms, but most of them have gadgets like iPhones and iPads, and unlike the last time new adult had a pretty good chance, now most people have personal computers or at least easy access to computers.

Who cares if new adult is a made up genre? Know what else is a made up genre? Romantic suspense novels. There is no romantic suspense section in a bookstore or a library. But that doesn't stop people from writing books that have both romantic and suspenseful plots. They leave it to the agents and publishers and booksellers to decide which section to put their book in. But you know what happens when you self publish? You don't have any "bookstore sections" to worry about. It's no longer about the genre. It's about getting your name out there and getting meaningful clicks and people with moohlah that want to spend it on a great book. I said it earlier and I'll say it again, great books are great books no matter the trends.

So I say go ahead, write whatever story you want to write and give it your best shot. If traditional publishing doesn't pan out, it's much less scary to self-publish these days. And it's fairly easy to get print books made too. Sure you won't have the same distribution as the big guys, but a LOT can be done via social media that almost makes that point moot. Even middle schoolers are using ereaders these days and they'll grow up eventually. And even happier news, I hear chick lit (called modern women's fiction) is undergoing a small uptick in sales. Find a way to bridge the two and you might just break down some walls.