Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
I never understood why the word "Adult" was used in YA in first place. They're clearly targeting adolescents not adults (though many adults--myself included sometimes--enjoy the stories as well). Why abuse the word "adult" when the perfectly apt "adolescent" is available (and is a perfect description of the intended primary target audience)?
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It's all about marketing.
It's hard to define because it has no clear definition. Young adult is whatever the marketing department wants to flag as YA.
Because several books and series aimed at younger readers were successful earlier this century a lot of books that really belong in romance or SF&F are being flagged as YA to get them shelved in a different part of the bookstore.
In earlier times some of those books were labeled as "juveniles" or young reader books. Even then the category was amorphous: Heinlein explained his approach as "make the protagonist a teen and write him like an adult".
What made the category a big seller initially was accessibility: where litfit is supposed to feature elaborate, "challenging" prose and themes, YA is supposed to be more straightforward and young reader friendly, more focused on plot and character than on wordsmithing. Which is to say, good mainstream commercial writing. Which is why despite the "young" part of the tag, the bulk of the readership is adults rather than teens.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertai...rature/547334/
The end result of the marketing strategy is that the category includes all sorts of books, many that weren't really aimed at teens at all. So tagging it as "adolescent" or teen or juveniles would run counter to the marketing intent, which is really meant to signal: not litfic. "Something you'll actually finish." ; )
Bottom line is that YA is whatever book the publisher chooses to market as YA, regardless of content, style, or subject. It can be SF, Fantasy, romance, mystery, or thriller. As long as it is commercial fiction rather than litfic, and it doesn't get too gory or sexual it qualifies.
Whatever meaning the label might have once had is now lost in the rush for YA market dollars.
That said, the YA gold rush has peaked.
A lot of authors and some publishers are starting to avoid the tag. (They're not changing the stories, just changing the marketing.)
The category is starting to get saturated. And then there's this:
https://www.vulture.com/2017/08/the-...a-twitter.html