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Around ten years ago, publishers realised that there is massive amounts of coin to be made selling books aimed at this demographic. At the same time, it's very easy to make a check-list of things you're looking for in an author that will hopefully guarantee a return on your investment. In this vein, we've had a phase where every YA book was about wizards and the supernatural; then we moved on to vampires... .
It's most profitable if the author has an idea that can easily be turned into a (ideally interminable) series. If you want to guarantee big bucks, make the book a certain length, have easy-to-spot themes and cover National Curriculum objectives, and you've got a captive audience in schools. Sets of these books will need replacing every couple of years, too.
YA fiction suffers less from piracy, and parents will buy anything that has a nice cover in the hopes of getting their kids to read something.
On a more positive note, during this period there have also been some fantastic authors emerge which have not followed the cookie-cutter model and have offered young adults more stimulating content than before: Philip Pullman, Philip Reeve, Meg Rosoff, Marcus Sedgwick, et al.
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