YA Book Deals Stats

AmyJay

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Kate, thank you for putting this together! It's exciting to see that contemporary makes up a large chunk of the deals (and that they're getting more six-figure deals)!

Out of curiosity, how many books total do these figures come from?
 

~*Kate*~

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Kate, thank you for putting this together! It's exciting to see that contemporary makes up a large chunk of the deals (and that they're getting more six-figure deals)!

Out of curiosity, how many books total do these figures come from?

450, more or less. For some of the charts, I left out any unspecified genres.

more later today!
 

Niiicola

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Bumped because I just read this post on the Apocalypsies deals that I thought y'all would find interesting.
Thanks for posting! I was just looking at the Submission Time to Publisher one, and there are several books that never went on sub. Does anybody know how that works?
 

maybegenius

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Thanks for posting! I was just looking at the Submission Time to Publisher one, and there are several books that never went on sub. Does anybody know how that works?

Possibly an editor had requested the work for an exclusive or the agent knew just the right editor for the book and got a hole in one? Or maybe it's referring to the folks who submitted without agents. Not sure.
 

Cyia

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Thanks for posting! I was just looking at the Submission Time to Publisher one, and there are several books that never went on sub. Does anybody know how that works?


Most likely an editor either made a request from a pitch session at a conference, or they saw the project in the wild (like on the writer's blog) and requested it. It's rare, but it happens.
 

missesdash

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I'm surprised at how many people were only on sub with editors for 1-2 months.

*jumps off of a building*
 

BlossomQueen

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Wow. Paranormal is still killin' it. I thought that genre was winding down?

Dystopians still selling well, I see. I was surprised to see those contemporary figures (as I thought contemporary was a hard sell these days). And for some reason I thought sci-fi would be larger?

Ah, well, surprising and pleasing set of information. *Bookmarks for later*
 

MysteryRiter

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I'm surprised that contemporary gets so many big deals. I expected a few, but not so many. Thanks for this, Kate!
 

PhoebeNorth

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Most likely an editor either made a request from a pitch session at a conference, or they saw the project in the wild (like on the writer's blog) and requested it. It's rare, but it happens.

Or these were packaged titles in one way or another, where the publisher or packaging company had the idea in hand and sought out the writer to write it.
 

Windcutter

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I'm surprised at how many people were only on sub with editors for 1-2 months.

*jumps off of a building*
I also loved the amount of 0-6 months for agent sub. It seems things are moving a bit faster these days. Less than a year for the whole bang, yay.

Good luck with yours. ^__^
 

Stiger05

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I'm surprised at how many people were only on sub with editors for 1-2 months.

*jumps off of a building*

Yeah, that surprised me too. But there were a handful who were a year or longer! Your ms is fantastic though, so don't stress!

*tosses a trampoline underneath you*
 

AlwaysJuly

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Ooh, interesting, thanks.

I'd better get my stuff together and send out my contemporary YA. It's been almost ready to go for a while now, but I was more focused on other projects since I didn't think contemp looked very promising.

The 17% debut authors almost makes me nervous -- it makes me think that maybe they're taking more debut authors looking for the big sellers, making it less likely to sell future books if you're a midlist type. Obviously it'd be great to be a big seller, but that's not going to happen to everyone. I don't know how that'll all shake out, but it was just a thought I had.
 

Cyia

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The 17% debut authors almost makes me nervous -- it makes me think that maybe they're taking more debut authors looking for the big sellers, making it less likely to sell future books if you're a midlist type.

This is one reason I want as many books sold ASAP, before book #1 hits shelves.

Also consider that you can publish future books under a new name. Pseudonyms don't just have to be reserved for "clean slate" publishing so that there's no sales attached to the name. My agent's asked me about subbing my steampunk under a different name to avoid a book release bottle-neck of so many titles so close together by a new author. That kind of thing can make book stores antsy about buying/stocking all of the titles at once.
 

Belle_91

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The retelling margin is rather slim :(

How is everyone else's genre margin?
 

dmickey

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Very interesting, thanks for posting!
 

Melissa_Marr

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I was just looking at the Submission Time to Publisher one, and there are several books that never went on sub. Does anybody know how that works?

Another possibility is an established relationship. I haven't gone on sub for my YA or adult. With the YA, they come to me & say "we would like to buy books." With the adult, the adult branch of my YA publisher sat me down & said, "We would like to buy. Do you have a book?" I didn't, but when the time came that I did, my agent said, "She has a book. Would you like it?"

If I were to be unhappy with the offer, I would then go on sub, but as I have a healthy relationship with my YA & adult publishers so far, the books don't go out.

Great infographics, btw. (I just tweeted links to them.)