Why are YA novels immediately recognizable as YA novels?

[Quoth]

YA is a meaningless category invented by publishers to help sell books.
There is nothing inherently distinctive. Yes, some books are aimed at younger readers and the author may use simpler language or younger protagonists.

What AGE range is a "Young Adult"? Logically 18 to 24 approximately, yet many books MARKETED as "YA" are read by 10 to 12 year olds, kids technically not even teenagers. Also "reading age" is a bit meaningless as it is very dependant on background, culture, nationality, education etc. Some homes have no books and parents that don't read. Their kids often score a low reading age. Other homes may have 8 to 11 year olds reading books marketed to teens and to adults.

I've read many books with "teen" or even younger protagonists. Often more enjoyable than so called "adult" books. Actually many 17 to late 20s people may not read "YA" at all till in their 40s when they stop caring about trying to prove they are "grown up".

Some books are obviously aimed at younger than teens, or teens. Some of those are good reading for adults, some may have aspects older teens or adults understand that "go over the head" of younger reading.

The modern division of novels and stories by genre and age is largely marketing driven by the publishing industry since the 19th Century. Previously you read (if you could afford the book and had learned to read) because you wanted to read it either for education or fun. Or listened in a mixed age group to the storyteller. Even in the mid-19th C. it was cheaper to attend a theatre play than buy a book. People of ALL ages went to see dramatised books, not just traditional plays.

There are good, medium and bad books. Read outside your favourite authors and genres, use the library or charity/thrift shops and experiment. Give up watching Youtube, TV, Videos, computer games and read WIDELY.

Ignore the marketing labels and the Bookshop sorting. Check out the "Children's" books in your library. There might not be much sex and extreme violence, but no shortage of that on the Internet and real life. Why would we want it in a book?

Get encouraged and uplifted by great stories. See also gutenberg.org, fadedpages (canada) etc. There are ebooks here too, though I've not looked yet.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

So in short: YA is a message from Publishers to Retailers to shelve these books where they can be noticed by readers who may or may not be the right age to read them, and would probably notice them had they been shelved in the standard genre stacks they were already used to perusing for new material anyway (what with being "readers" and all). That about the gist?

100%.

Meanwhile, actual labels that have meaning and would help move the books like "cozy mystery" "paranormal romance", "tough guy action" get ignored and subsumed into the broader categories. Even "technothrillers" is getting deprecated these days.

Par for the business.
Time to "move alobg, move along", right?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Time to "move alobg, move along", right?

Until the next time it's brought up, sure.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by hildea

haertig, I'm curious: You said you can identify YA books within the first paragraph. Did you get my samples right?

I only made a comment that I have been able to quickly detect YA novels that I have read. I wasn't really wanting to take some kind of test to prove that I am a high-end competitor in YA detection in every possible case. I readily admit I would probably fail your test, but I was never throwing down the gauntlet in the first place, I was just making a comment.

[DiapDealer]

The problem I think some people seem to be having is that there seems to be two different things being talked about here. One is many people's personal notions about what "YA" encapsulates, and the other is the YA that's being explicitly billed as such by publishers.

It's only the latter that I'm addressing. I have no problem with people creating their own notions about what constitutes "YA" and what doesn't. But even if you don't want to share the results, I think @hildea's sample "test" on the previous page can be a rather eye-opening (and worth-while) exercise in the wide-ranging levels of "adultness" that exists in what's being billed as YA by publishers.

[Quoth]

The Publisher notion of it is nuts. Partially bogus. Some purely "adult" stuff is billed as YA purely because it's Fantasy.

I don't mean "adult" in terms sex shops etc, just books obviously not written for teenagers. I think YA to publishers means 9 to 17 yo. School kids.

There is nothing anyone can do about this madness. Nor about Publishers wanting to pigeon hole everything. That's why the BIG 6 are seeing dropping sales on eBooks and indie ebooks have about 20% + growth.
The majority of sales in physical paper are either mass market established authors or illustrated / picture / graphic.
Look what is in Supermarkets.

The Big 6 include audiobooks (which are doing well for them) in their "electronic" sales, so their share of ebooks is worse than figures suggest, because there are almost no official ebook figures other than Smashwords sales. Amazon has maybe 90% and they won't say.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by meeera

I'm guessing you've had little or nothing to do with kidlit, then? Middle Grade is a standard publishing industry term across the USA, UK, Australia.

https://www.writerscentre.com.au/blo...grade-fiction/

Perhaps it's an insider jargon then. Nope, I'm not involved in publishing kids books nor am I a children's librarian.

[Quoth]

Middle grade is largely a USA term. Don't know about Australia. Perhaps UK publishers are drinking US Kool Aid. It's Publisher Jargon.
I've spoken to Librarians and Bookshop owners, being involved with Publishing and Writing. They seem to think Publishers are pretty clueless. Look at how many paper books make advance and the TINY proportion that are successful. They might as well put a list of submissions up and throw darts. They make the Pop industry look expert.

The big ones won't take new authors in the the most popular genres (Romance, Thriller, Detective in broad terms) because they can get all they want from the established names, some of which are actually "factories" of ghost writers (the Patterson brand titles) like the Stratemeyer syndicate of old.

I was shocked to read that Penguin's Puffin Imprint for many years only reprinted known winners as paperback. Stig of the Dump was practically their first "original" title. They were so "proud" of that. Yet he was an existing author.

Really the Publishing industry is sick and has been for decades. No wonder Amazon is taking them to the cleaners and aims to cut them out entirely by being a publisher, retailer and library. Paper, etext and audio.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

The big ones won't take new authors in the the most popular genres (Romance, Thriller, Detective in broad terms) because they can get all they want from the established names, some of which are actually "factories" of ghost writers (the Patterson brand titles)...

I've never read Patterson. I know he has tons of books that are 'co-authored'. But does anyone know if any of the books published with only his name on the cover been ghost written? That's where things get sleazy to me.

The plight of ghost authors make me respect Stephen King even more. Love him or hate him, he's actually written his books. And his collaborations with Peter Straub aren't the 'popular author hands less popular author an outline' books you usually see. How many times has he said he was going to retire? I don't think he could stop writing if he wanted to.

[DiapDealer]

He writes like Thomas Kinkade paints.

[arjaybe]

It turns out my novels are YA. I didn't realize that when I wrote them, but that's what people tell me. From the tenor of this conversation, maybe I shouldn't mention it in the description or keywords.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I've never read Patterson. I know he has tons of books that are 'co-authored'. But does anyone know if any of the books published with only his name on the cover been ghost written?

Unlikely.
He is a decent enough writer and his early books are pretty good. He has a very accessible style that suits his target audience that he turned into a formula. The result is he can turn out bestsellers on command. More than he can actually write so he set up what amounts to a "book mill". He lays out the plot and characters and his co-writers fill in the story that he then edits.

They are fully credited so they aren't ghosts. Most have books published under their own names.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwriter

There is a noticeable difference between the books under his name and the co-written books so it's not as if he forces the co-writers to imitate his narrative voice. Plus he makes a ton of money even off the co-written books so it is unlikely he uses ghosts too; why would he bother to hide behind a ghost?

His early Alex Cross books are pretty good mysteries. If you like mystery/suspense you might find a few in the library. ALONG CAME A SPIDER is a good one to start with.

https://www.jamespatterson.com/title...9780759520301/

The movie version with Morgan Freeman is pretty good, too.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

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.

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.

Whatever meaning the label might have once had is now lost in the rush for YA market dollars.

Totally agree. For a reader the label is essentially useless. Whilst some of the books targeted at the younger range of the market may be written in a quite simplistic style, most is indeed just good mainstream commercial writing, largely indistinguishable from non-YA labelled works. Also, you're probably going to find very few pretentious works of literary fiction classified as YA. A plus for YA in my book!

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

So in short: YA is a message from Publishers to Retailers to shelve these books where they can be noticed by readers who may or may not be the right age to read them, and would probably notice them had they been shelved in the standard genre stacks they were already used to perusing for new material anyway (what with being "readers" and all). That about the gist?

Absolutely agreed!

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I've never read Patterson.

I didn't mind some of his earlier stuff but have managed to steer largely clear of him for years. His writing style is actually on the simplistic side, which is not at all meant to demean him or imply that it is sub-standard. His sales figures say otherwise. But I think most of his work that I have read would be quite at home with a YA label, except for the themes.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by darryl

Totally agree. For a reader the label is essentially useless. Whilst some of the books targeted at the younger range of the market may be written in a quite simplistic style, most is indeed just good mainstream commercial writing, largely indistinguishable from non-YA labelled works. Also, you're probably going to find very few pretentious works of literary fiction classified as YA. A plus for YA in my book!

To be perfectly fair, I find the label "literary fiction" to be equally useless. One person's pretentiousness is another's insightfulness or cutting commentary. Pretension is just as subjective as the notion of Mainstream Writing or Young Adult.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by darryl

I didn't mind some of his earlier stuff but have managed to steer largely clear of him for years. His writing style is actually on the simplistic side, which is not at all meant to demean him or imply that it is sub-standard. His sales figures say otherwise. But I think most of his work that I have read would be quite at home with a YA label, except for the themes.

His MAXIMUM RIDE series is labeled YA. It is a fantasy series focused on young protagonists on the run from evil adults.

He is a firm believer in short chapters, fast plots, and clear, accessible prose.
So a lot of what gets tagged YA is following in his footsteps, especially the adult stuff.

To understand his style and the success it's earned him all you need to know is he started out as a Madison Avenue ad man.

Highly recommended:

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2...hor?verso=true

The first 25 years of Patterson’s career were spent in advertising, culminating with his tenure as C.E.O. of the North American branch of J. Walter Thompson, the giant international agency, where he was also creative director and led the “Aren’t You Hungry?” campaign for Burger King, while writing fiction on the side. His first novel, The Thomas Berryman Number, about a Nashville newspaperman on a murderer’s trail, was rejected by 31 publishers before Little, Brown published it, in 1976. It won the Edgar Award for best first novel from the Mystery Writers of America, but sold only about 10,000 copies. Since then—and especially since 1996, when he quit advertising to write full-time—Patterson has proved that his readers have insatiable appetites. He has produced a slew of books—detective series, stand-alone romances, illustrated novels for young adults and for middle-school readers—across a sea of genres, accounting, by his own estimate, for about 30 percent of Little, Brown’s total revenues. He is intimately involved in designing his books and devising their marketing and advertising campaigns, with the help of a special in-house unit of half a dozen staffers at Little, Brown dedicated solely to serving the Patterson empire.

He is an unabashed writer of commercial books whose books easily adapt to movies and TV. How he got into (actual) YA:

When Patterson’s only son, Jack, now 16 and a student at Hotchkiss, was in grade school and proving to be a reluctant reader, Patterson decided to take aim at a new demographic. As he put it when we spoke, “I can write for these little creeps.” Patterson launched a multi-series line of young-adult and children’s novels—“Maximum Ride,” “Witch & Wizard,” “Treasure Hunters,” and “I Funny”—that fill not only the shelves of every Barnes & Noble but those of your local grocery store too. Now Patterson produces a dozen titles a year, and there seems to be no upward limit to his overall sales.

He teaches (paid, of course) online writing classes.

https://www.masterclass.com/classes/...eaches-writing

He's probably best described as an entrepreneurial writer rather than a literary writer. He produces entertainment, not literature. Much like ERB, people will be reading his stories long after the literary icons of today are forgotten.

I'm not his target audience but I can respect a guy that knows what he's doing and does it very well.