pondering possibilities about YA popularity

[marycatelli]

I've heard a number of theories about why YA is so popular nowadays.  Mostly revolving about content.  But maybe there's the matter of form, too.

'cause a fair number of the people reading YA fiction are not YA.  They're just plain adults.

And once upon a time, you could get a 60,000-word novel published for adults.  The how-to-write book actually cited it as the length to shoot for.  100,000 was ridiculous, then.  Nowadays, it's normal for an adult work.  And I have actually seen a panel at an SF convention with the title You Must Have Clout, Your Novel is Short.  You can't get the shorter lengths published now without clout.

You can get a 60,000-word YA novel published.

All right, you can also get doorstops published, like the latter Harry Potter books.  The thing is that they do not push out all the shorter lengths.

Maybe people just want to read shorter lengths.

Could wish so, with my metier being short.  But I doubt anyone's going shorter.  There's reasons for the length.  You can jack up the price.  Very little of your cost is actually related to length -- paper, ink, copyeditor time, yes, but your rent doesn't depend on how long the books are, etc.  So if the book is longer, you can justify the price increase in the readers' eyes -- except perhaps those that just don't want to read a book that long.

Comments

[delabarre.livejournal.com]

The shorter version: the publishing industry (both genre and mainstream) isn't looking for quality writing per se, they're looking for stuff that looks like other stuff that has already sold well. Which is why so much of what gets printed these days is crap.

We were better off in the days when SF/F was published by specialty houses like Del Rey because the big imprints wouldn't touch it.

[marycatelli]

Then why did it creep up in the first place? The older length was what was selling.

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

Doorstops became all the rage in the '80s and '90s. I must confess I like longer form fantasy, but I miss the old 75k word SF novel.

[marycatelli]

There's some of it in the YA. Like the Hunger Games trilogy -- where it's in smaller chunks.

2.17 sesquipedalian words:

[notr.livejournal.com]

Stephen R. Donaldson. I think the success of The Second Chronicles upped the ante.

Re: 2.17 sesquipedalian words:

[marycatelli]

Didn't help.

Then, are short books by Big Names also inspiring more short works nowadays?