A Golden Age for Young-Adult Books
Newsweek recently published an article “Generation R (R is for Reader)” about the current boom in book sales for readers age 12-18 in the U.S. In it Jamie Remo writes that sales are “up more than 25 percent in the past few years, according to a Children’s Book Council sales survey. Virtually every major publishing house now has a teen imprint, many bookstores and libraries have created teen reading groups and an infusion of talented new authors has energized the genre.” This echoes what I have been hearing at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conferences for the past few years. In North America and other English-language countries, the young-adult (YA) market has taken off; we are now in a golden age.
If you are interested in reading some of the North American award-winning books, Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association has “Best Book” lists going back to 1997 and a number of book awards. For a list of links to U.S. and Canadian awards for children’s and YA literature, go to Author Cynthia Leitich Smith’s website and visit her Children’s and YA Literature Resources section. And the Database of Award-Winning Children’s Literature (DAWCL) allows you to search books via a set of particular criteria such as genre, ethnicity or historical period; the instructions section has a list of the many awards included in the database, and there is an Explanation of the Awards section with links to award sites in various countries.
More than half of my reading is now YA or middle-grade fiction because I, too, am jumping on the bandwagon and trying to write for teens—a middle-grade novel and a YA novel-in-verse. Without doubt, the best way to learn how to break into a particular market is to read contemporary books published in that genre or age group. In writers’ circles it is often suggested that you read 100 recently published books in the age-group and genre you aim to write for. My lament is that I can’t read fast enough—there are so many phenomenal books for teens coming out each year.
I would love to know more about the YA book scene in Japan and whether there is any such parallel sales boom occurring in Japan. Or does manga always prevail?
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