Is New Adult still a valid genre choice?

uhstevedude

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I've been looking into this genre and its success among Agents and readers (especially after the Magicians became such a fantastic show). Do you guys think a market still exists for this genre, or is it better for readers to just characterize the YA work they naturally come across within this genre largely distinctive by character age group?
 

MaeZe

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There's always a market for a good book. Better to write 19 and 20 yr olds than to slap a fake age on characters that are actually older and call it YA.

My characters are 17-19 but they are past high school and moving on to college where they want to change the world. :)
 

Curlz

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In a bookstore a NA book will be shelved either with YA either with adult books of the same genre, so it's not so much of a distinctive category anymore. Bookshops have shrunk significantly. Amazon still has NA as a category but it's questionable if a person who is 19 or 21 will actually search for that specific category at all. So being NA doesn't really help much with sales.
 

cornflake

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It's a category, not a genre, and no, NA is pretty much dead. It never gained much traction outside of romance to begin with, in terms of genres, and all I've seen about it recently is how it wasn't going to.
 

Harlequin

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NA as a category (was never a genre) completely flopped, which is a shame. Probably too niche.

however, adult books withcharacters in their very early twenties (like, 19-21) have "crossover" appeal so perhaps query it like that (eg Adult contemporary fiction with crossover appeal)
 

uhstevedude

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That's such a shame! Lev Grossman's the Magicians placement in NA really inspired me. It definitely help me find something that was in that age range and dealt with that transition into adulthood a bit better (I think it even allowed the author to shirk a lot of gross habits I notice in YA lit). I hope it resurfaces.
 

Brightdreamer

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That's such a shame! Lev Grossman's the Magicians placement in NA really inspired me. It definitely help me find something that was in that age range and dealt with that transition into adulthood a bit better (I think it even allowed the author to shirk a lot of gross habits I notice in YA lit). I hope it resurfaces.

Out of curiosity, what "gross habits" are you referring to that are specific to YA lit and not other categories?

As for NA resurfacing... as an armchair observer, I'm not sure how that would happen if it didn't gain sufficient traction the first time, though I could see why it would be a useful subcategory for some genres, such as romance. (Dealing with one's first "grown-up" romance outside high school, IOW.)
 

uhstevedude

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Out of curiosity, what "gross habits" are you referring to that are specific to YA lit and not other categories?

As for NA resurfacing... as an armchair observer, I'm not sure how that would happen if it didn't gain sufficient traction the first time, though I could see why it would be a useful subcategory for some genres, such as romance. (Dealing with one's first "grown-up" romance outside high school, IOW.)


The Gross Habits I refer to are kind of the marketing of YA lit, not really the writing or technique behind it (any issues I find with that, I hold up to all genres in-general, not as a reflection of it being a "YA" thing). It seems that if a story isn't marketed as YA category(which is something that happens on a different level), their core subject matter kinda ignored and the book itself isn't put in the places that might interest/apply to YA audiences. It was only the introduction of the NA category that kind of put these stories about college, adult romance, professional lives, and the reality of things like post-grad and poverty in new adulthood into my forefront and helped me apply my transition with some sort of perspective.

This is highly biased, because I'm basing it off of my experiences in Columbus, OH and how they set up the libraries out there. It's not really the responsibility of the author, but I thought the introduction of the category definitely helped YA readers who were approaching the age horizon to turn around and grab something that applies to the chaos that transition has.

Then again, one could say an avid reader of YA could just search the general Adult sections for things like that. After all, Kindles and ebook readers are more readily available now than they were when I was in high school some five years ago.
 

Polenth

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I have a self-published novella that would be new adult in a very different world. We don't live in that world, so I marketed it as adult. Though it's technically an age category, new adult also has a lot of genre-style expectations. There's always been talk that it'd be nice if it included a broader range of books, but it never happened. Anything that would broaden the range will be criticised by core new adult readers for not meeting expectations and ignored by those outside who'll assume it'll meet expectations. It's the worst of both worlds.

In fantasy and science fiction, I've seen people who initially marketed as new adult and ended up back at adult. There just wasn't room in new adult for those books.

It doesn't mean books about older teens/early twenties stopped existing, but it does mean you're more likely to find them in the adult section.
 

brightspark

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I know NA existed at some point but it never even crossed my mind to search for it. I've read books with the protagonist being 19 years old e.t.c. - it's sort of just marketed as upper YA (I'm very specifically thinking of Sarah J Mass' book series).