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The New Adult Factor

St. Martins Press coined the term New Adult in 2009 as a way to target the older Young Adult
audience.1

The first question is if its even necessary to bracket off the age group of 18-26.

Lets go back to before the 1920s, when it was easy to separate childhood from adulthood. After
child labor laws were put in place, the average number of years spent in school for young
Americans was also on the rise. Parents were waiting longer to goad their youngsters into
marriage rather than pairing them off at the tender age of sixteen or seventeen. Yet something
even bigger changed the stakes. The single greatest factor that led to the emergence of the
independent teenager was the automobile. Teens enjoyed a freedom from parental supervision
unknown to previous generations.2

When we look at the rise of the Millennials today, we see that this is a generation deeply
affected by technology.

The culture shift goes even further. In Psychology Today, Abby Ellin writes in her article The
Beat (Up) Generation: In decades past, children were considered mature by the time they
reached their teens. But today, young people prolong adolescence well into their 20s, which has
created a demographic Arnett [research professor at Clark University and author of When Will
My Grown-Up Kid Grow Up?] calls emerging adults.3

These emerging, or new, adults are a hybrid between teenagers and adults. Ellin goes on to say:
In part the economic environment has changedunemployment has forced Millennials to live
with their parents well past their expiration date. And, too, their brains are still developing. The
prefrontal cortex, home to judgment, impulse control, and decision-making, doesnt mature
until the mid-20s.

1 Jae-Jones, S.. "St. Martin's New Adult Contest." Uncreated Conscience. St. Martin's Press. Web.
<http://sjaejones.com/blog/2009/st-martins-new-adult-contest/>.
2 "The Invention of the Teenager." ushistory.org. Independence Hall Association. Web.

<http://www.ushistory.org/us/46c.asp>.
3 Ellin, Abby. "The Beat (Up) Generation." Psychology Today, Mar. 2014: 61. Print.
We need New Adult fiction to tell the stories that resonate with this age group, who may or
may not experience college but who are all dealing with the gray area of not-teen-not-adult
asking themselves: Now what?

The second question is what would it take for New Adult to be fully integrated into library
systems and bookstores. If you pitched a story with a college-aged protagonist to an agent or
editor prior to mid-2012, one of two things usually happened:

1. You got the New Adult isn't a thing lecture.


2. You were asked to age said character up or down to fit the mold.4

The books fall into an undefined territory between adult and childrens literature, and there is
no obvious place for them in bookstores. Even within publishing houses, new-adult authors are
being split between childrens and adult divisions.5

It was only in the 1950s that the Young Adult classification gained traction with adolescents
enjoying The Catcher in the Rye (1951) and Lord of the Flies (1954), both written with adult
audiences in mind.6

The trend now is in reverse, with more adults reading books meant for adolescents. Bowker
Market Research, in its attempt to understand the changing nature of publishing for kids, did a
study on the Young Adult market in 2012. The results were startling: More than half the
consumers of books classified for young adults arent all that young. According to a new study,
fully 55% of buyers of works that publishers designate for kids aged 12 to 17 -- known as YA
books -- are 18 or older, with the largest segment aged 30 to 44, a group that alone accounted for
28% of YA sales.7

4
"About Us: NAAlley." NA Alley. Web. <http://www.naalley.com/p/about-us.html>.
5 Kaufman, Leslie. "Beyond Wizards and Vampires, to Sex." The New York Times, 21 Dec. 2012. Web.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/22/books/young-adult-authors-add-steaminess-to-their-tales.html>.
6 FitzGerald, Frances. "The influence of anxiety: what's the problem with young adult novels?(Criticism)."

Harper's Magazine Sept. 2004: 62. Print.


7 This study also pointed at the Hunger Games skew: 30% of respondents reported they were reading

works in the Hunger Games series. But the remaining 70% of readers reported a vast variety of titles (over
220). "New Study: 55% of YA Books Bought by Adults." PublishersWeekly.com. 12 Sept. 2012. Web.
<http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/53937-new-
study-55-of-ya-books-bought-by-adults.html>
Publishers have taken this information to heart. Providing more mature material, publishers
reason, is a good way to maintain devotion to books among the teenagers who are scooping up
young-adult... with a crossover readership that is also attracting millions of adults. All while
creating a new source of revenue.5

In the meantime, New Adult is catching on with Romance writers due to the freedom to make
their Young Adult content more sexy, such as Jamie McGuire's Walking Disaster, which has
sold over 500,000 copies.8 This has resulted in retailers setting New Adult as a sub-category of
Romance. On Amazon, for example, the only way to find New Adult is to search
Romance>New Adult & College.

The dominance of Romance may not be a bad thing in the long run. Simba Information
estimated revenue generated by Adult genres in 2012:9

Romance fiction: $1.438 billion


Mystery: $728.2 million
Science fiction/fantasy: $590.2 million
Classic literary fiction: $470.5 million

Romance is historically a dominating genre, and it means that there will soon be demand for
more genres within New Adult. That is an opportunity publishers havent jumped on yet.

8 Donahue, Deirdre. "New Adult fiction is the hot new category in books." USA Today, 15 Apr. 2013. Web.
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2013/04/15/new-adult-genre-is-the-hottest-category-in-book-
publishing/2022707/>.
9 "Romance Industry Statistics." Romance Writers of America. Web. <http://www.rwa.org/p/cm/ld/fid=580>.

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