Why I read YA

Being a little too nice to my friends, I made a deal with one that if he read The Book Thief by Markus Zusack – which is a fantastic book that everyone should read whether or not they like YA – I would read Crime and Punishmentby Fyodor Dostoevsky. I most definitely got the short end of that stick.

As I am reading my tome I realized something. A lot of people ask me what is so different between YA and normal adult books. Usually, I have a hard time coming up with a concrete and convincing answer, but no more! After reading an 8 1/2 page monologue from a drunk guy in a bar, telling the whole bar the story of his life, I had my epiphany. It was reasonably interesting because it was all about the guy’s life, but it was something that could have been done in 3 maybe 4 pages at the most. That kind of running on would never fly in YA. Teens would skip it, or only read it if forced to write a paper on it. It just isn’t interesting to have a guy spill his guts for 8 1/2 pages. Especially when it is not about the main character or about anyone that has any significance to the plot. It is just annoying. Sure, it shows the plight of the every day Russian of that time, but that could be shown in little snippets of narrative scattered throughout the text. I am only on page 37. We will see how far I get.

I was an English Major. Can you tell?

What use is the publisher site?

As far as I can tell a publisher’s website exists because people expect it to exist. Consumers don’t go to it, but book buyers, book sellers, and people in the industry will go to them. It also depends on the publisher. Publishers like Dark Horse, or Timber Press have a devoted following because they have done a really good job of branding themselves. If Ooligan were to get to the point where we were the main publisher for Northwest literature, we would probably get a lot of traffic to the website. As it is, probably the only people coming to our site are students, prospective students, faculty, authors, potential authors, and deer hunters (apparently one of our best hits from Google are people who want information on hunting deer. Go figure.).

From the YA perspective, most kids wouldn’t even think to go to the publisher’s website. Because they don’t think about it, and because they don’t care. The sites that they flock to are the book websites. Take Harry Potter for example. The site on Scholastic’s normal website is terrible, almost nonexistent, because that is not where kids would think to go. But, Scholastic also created another Harry Potter site in their “Stacks” section. This has everything – games, wallpaper, contests, quizzes. And JK Rowling has her own fantastic website.

That is the obvious example, but there are also books like the recent Newbery Medal winner Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. The HarperCollins site is minimal, but the books website has all the bells and whistles. Well worth some time.

In the end I don’t think it matters if there are sells being generated from the publisher’s website. The end users aren’t looking there, but the publisher’s customers (booksellers, book buyers, etc.) might check the site for ordering information or to print off supplementary materials that the publisher has created.

Is there hope?

Every day I read that more publishing companies are shutting down, laying off personnel, not taking manuscripts – sometimes I read it three or four times a day depending on how depressed I want to get.

My big plan once I finish with Ooligan, is to move to get a job at one of the big houses in New York working in the Children’s or Young Adult department. I am hoping that this plan is still viable considering the state of the book publishing profession right now. Frankly, I am very doubtful.

Then I get a burst of hope. We as Ooligonians have a unique status going in to the industry. We aren’t just editors, designers, or marketers. We can do it all. Isn’t that what houses should be looking for in this economy? People they can hire that can do everything instead of just specialize in one thing? Maybe this is my never-ending pool of misguided hope, but it seems possible. Although this might not help at the really big companies, maybe, some little YA publisher, preferably in New York, would give me a job. Any job at all. I am not the best designer, but I will figure it out!

Then there is always the option of starting my own company. Anyone interested?

Everyone’s a writer

The monster that is Amazon, is finally having the lasting consequences anticipated by everyone in the book industry. Although, I am sure that no one knew how much of an influence they would have – considering they started out as a bookseller and have now morphed into an everything seller, book publisher, virtual mall operator, etc. Their takeover of the book industry bodes very well for the author, not so good for the reader, and even worse for the publisher.

Thanks to Amazon, anyone who fancies him or herself an author can write a book and make it into an ebook. It is easier than a vanity press because you have to put out hardly any capital in order to get your books to the public. Then if e-books are not for you, you don’t even have to go searching for a different company to create your POD book. Say you’ve been dreaming about writing a book about vampires in Scotland who only eat haggis. Amazon has made that whim possible. You don’t even have to worry about an editor who might want to change your vision, or a publisher who doesn’t think your book will sell. It is all in your own hands. And with the way vampire books are flying off the shelves lately, your haggis eating Scottish vampires might do very well. Might as well try!

For the reader this will lead to total overload. If you don’t have someone doing quality control (which, at the most fundamental level, is what the book buyers at the bookstores are) all you have are a hoard of random books floating around on the database. You may or may not find the book you want. If you don’t know the author or the title, you are sadly out of luck. I am in no way sad that the big box stores are failing, but I am sad that Amazons tentacles reach into the small independents as well. One of my favorite bookstores in town is A Children’s Place, and because of Amazon, the big box stores, and the snow this Christmas, they are having trouble making ends meet. The one advantage that they have over Amazon is the staff knowledge of the books. You could walk in and ask for a YA adventure book about fairies, and their extremely knowledgeable staff could give you four or five recommendations. Amazon does have the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” section, which, I admit, is very helpful. But it still does not equal the experience of going to a well-stocked bookstore with expert staff.

For the publisher, Amazon’s expansion into POD, distribution, and e-books is almost a death knell. What could persuade an author to publish with a  publishing house where they will get only a meager percentage of the profits if they could publish it themselves through Amazon and keep a much larger percentage. I can’t seem to find how much it costs to publish something on their Digital Text Platform, but if it less that 93% of gross sales, it is better than most authors will get at a publishing house. Publishers still have the advantage of their marketing and sales teams. Few authors know how to handle that aspect o

In the end, I think between Google and Amazon, our lives will be completely different and digital within the next ten to twenty years. The one kind of book that may survive this digitization is the children’s picture book. Kids like things that are tangible and colorful. As of yet, it is not financially economical to do a four-color picture book POD and the Kindle can’t do color. Until that day comes, picture books will remain safely in the offset printing category. 

Clarification and Defense of YA literature (yes, literature)

Nancy, thank you so much for the article you sent me. It was the most encouraging and uplifting piece of book reporting I have read in a very long time (http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2009/01/guest-blogger-adrienne-kress-on-why-she.html). Please take a moment and read this article. It will help you understand a little more about YA and the passion behind it. 

For so many of us, young adult literature is comprised of Sweet Valley High, Boxcar Children, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Babysitter’s Club. So in our heads YA books are trite, formulaic, and poorly written. I have to confess (I seem to be doing that a lot lately), I read almost all of The Babysitter’s Club books. But, I always knew that I could skip the second chapter because it was practically identical in every book. 

Then, we had a revolution. I know you might groan, but the thing that really changed the face of young adult and middle grade novels was Harry Potter. Harry Potter made reading cool again, as well as attracting many very talented writers to young adult instead of them going directly for adult. It even brought adult readers to YA and middle grade novels. 

Today, young adult fiction is a completely different animal. There are still a few formulaic series (Gossip Girl and all of its spinoffs), but the larger portion of YA literature is single title trade books. They are starting to resemble adult books more and more as well. This brings up Brian’s question of what defines a YA book. The most general explanation is any book with a hero or heroine  between the ages of 12 and 18. Although, even this rule can be broken. The Book Thief, one of the best young adult books out there starts with an 9-year-old heroine. By the end she is 14, but the author, Markus Zusak took a big risk starting a book with such a young main character. It is a risk because young adults always read up. If they are 15, they will read a book about a 17-year-old, if they are 11, they want to read about a 13-year-old. But they almost never read down. They are looking for someone who is just slightly ahead of them in the whole growing up process, so they can learn what is coming. Young adults also have a much shorter attention span. If they don’t like the book in the beginning, they are very quick to put it down and move on to something that is more pertinent to their lives. These are all huge generalizations, but it is a way to get a better idea of who we are trying to get to. 

Other than the age of the main character, the field is wide open. A fact that is frightening for a lot of parents and teachers. When you look at the age range for YA there is potential for many a 12-year-old to pick up a book written for a 17-year-old, and reading about things that might make them grow up a little faster than Mommy and Daddy would like. 

In the end the books that you find in the YA section now are well written, well thought-out, and exciting.  Even some adult writers are moving to the young adult genre because it is where the money is. The most entertaining part for me is seeing the varying levels of success these converts have. Few of them realize that YA is much harder than adult literature, because the audience is the most critical group of people out there – teens.

Push over Hyperion

I know I will get annoying to some of you, constantly harping on YA marketing, but, as you saw in class on Monday, I am very passionate about it. With that said, I went through my bookshelf of YA books to find as many different YA publishers as I could. I looked at all of those publisher’s websites, and it became clear that those publisher’s really aren’t going after the YA market. This might be because of the fact that most YA books have sites of their own, or because the YA market is not lucrative enough to the publishers to make them put a spot on their homepage just for young adults. After poking around I made my final judgement. The loser: Hyperion Books for Children (http://www.hyperionbooksforchildren.com/). The winner: Push (http://www.thisispush.com/). 

I looked at both of these from a young adults perspective saying to myself, I want to go look at the publisher’s website to find out more about this book (which felt strange because I doubt most teens would be curious enough to go to a publisher’s website. But there are those out there that would, because the sites do exist). When I got to Hyperion’s site, I gagged a little (not just my YA persona). First of all it looks like a six-year-old’s bedroom, and in order to get away from this page and to the YA page, you have to hunt through the tiny type to find the link. Once you do find the link, that page is not much better. It has the same basic setup, but there are no stars, and the alphabet at the top is in only one color instead of rainbow crayon. The worst offense is that at the top of the teen page it still says “Hyperion Books for Children.” You may not know much about young adults, but we all know that they don’t want to be called children. They don’t even want to be associated with children (many of the other big house children’s sites use the word “kid” instead of “children.” I don’t know if they did a ton of research to see which label teens found less offensive, but considering the bent toward “kids,” I would guess that it is the better of the two.) 

The educators or parents looking for books would be fine with all of this, but the books that they have on the page aren’t the ones that parents or educators would be looking for. They have one in a series of vampire books (not Twilight), and another is about a girl who is in the CIA. Not exactly classroom material. 

Then if you make the mistake of hitting “Show me more teen books,” you get a list of book links. There are no images, no attempts at making it interesting, just a list. If anything, kids like overstimulation. 

Now to the good site. Push is the super edgy young adult imprint of Scholastic. They publish books like Cut a story about a girl who cuts herself for stress relief. From the second you get to their homepage, you know that they are an edgy YA publisher. Every title they have is on their homepage. You can click on the cover and get a excerpt from the book, the option to email the author or a friend, and author bio. Also, at the top of the page you can read what other young adults have to say about Push’s books, you can review them yourself, you can contact Push’s employees, you can tell them what you want from them, and you can submit your own work for publication. 

This is the kind of stuff that young adults really appreciate. They can feel like it is partially their website and their press. Edgy YAs don’t want all the little games that middle readers go crazy for. They want involvement. That is what Push promises them.

Young Adult stuff

I have been reading YA books obsessively since I took Michelle’s YA publishing class. The stories are great but the websites are amazing! Of course there is the Harry Potter site (http://www.scholastic.com/harrypotter/) where you can play games based on Harry’s adventures, learn about the books, write a seven word review, or take a daily poll (one that is actually updated daily). Also, the Twilight series site (http://www.thetwilightsaga.com/) where there are more polls, a detailed about the author, and TONS of information on the movie. It is decent but not that exciting.

One site that I love to go to just because it is AWESOME is for Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go (http://www.wherethebadkidsgo.com/). It has a lot of the same things that the other sites do, but it is so much more exciting, because the web designer spent a lot of time making the site feel like something out of the book. It is a complete experience. Someone even wrote a song about the book to play on the site. 

I know Ooligan doesn’t have the funds to do anything like the Heck website, but I think we could get something close (at least in content). I am not very familiar with what it takes to build a website, but I would be willing to do the research if that resulted in a site that young adults would find interesting. 

Ooligan’s focus on young adult historical fiction would make a site as strange as Heck‘s possible, but if we looked at the website for The Luxe (http://www.theluxebooks.com/), a young adult historical fiction novel, we could find some good stuff to try out on our own site.