What Else is New?

The L.A. Times notes today that adults are reading Y.A. books; Young adult lit comes of age.

One telling, but unsourced stat:

Where adult hardcover sales were down 17.8% for the first half of 2009 versus the same period in 2008, children’s/young adult hardcovers were up 30.7%

Actually, the latest figures from the AAP show Adult Hardcover sales up 6.9 percent, year-end ’09 over the previous year and Children’s/YA Hardcover category down by 5.0 percent for the same period. However, that masks the fact that children’s and YA has been the bright spot in publishing for most of the decade.

Books and authors cited are:

  • Stephenie Meyer, Twilight saga
  • Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games trilogy
  • Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson and the Olympians series
  • Markus Zusak, The Book Thief and I Am the Messenger
  • J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter series
  • Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied
  • Maggie Stiefvater,  Shiver
  • Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
  • Anne Brashares, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series
  • Adult authors who also write for YA — James Patterson, Carl Hiaasen, Francine Prose and Terry Pratchett
  • Garth Nix, Sabriel
  • Cecil Castellucci, Boy Proof and Beige

2 Responses to “What Else is New?”

  1. richard Says:

    It’s an interesting stat in the sense that it seems counterintuitive for the most digital demographic to have an increasing consumption of traditional print media while so much buzz is going on about ereaders and mobile devices. Will they continue to read in print once they get a disposable income of their own?

  2. Ben Rubinstein Says:

    Hah, this reminds me of the Onion video, which was truly hilarious.

    “Why are the books so popular? Most readers feel they “fill a void left in contemporary literature which tends to favor stodgy tomes with hundreds of pages and almost no pictures.”

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/10/the-onion-adults-go-wild_n_387199.html