Just a curiosity of sorts, but what makes a YA book a YA book. Is it just the age of the protagonists and their outlook on life, or is it deeper, or is there a blurred separation these days?
I did notice that YA books tend to take far more risks marketing-wise.
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Jul 21, 2008 - 13 38
I'm not a literary agent or anything, but here are some things I've noticed. 99% of the time, YA books are about 12- to 18-year-old protagonists. The other 1% have college students as protagonists. 21 by Jeremy Iverson is the most recent example I can find, and it was published 3 years ago.
Also, non-fantasy YA books tend to be short (50K-75K words) and fast-paced, owing to teens' typical attention spans. They employ a straightforward, conversational style of writing. The vocabulary and sentence complexity is reduced somewhat from an adult novel. Teenagers should be able to relate to the narrator or protagonist on both an emotional and an intellectual level. Many YA novels are written in first person nowadays.
The classic YA "issue" novels seem to be waning in popularity somewhat. Issues like homosexuality, teen pregnancy, date rape, and drug/alcohol abuse are still relevant, but they're often just interspersed organically with other plot elements rather than dominating the whole novel.
YA sci-fi/fantasy is freaking huge right now. As someone who won't read either, I long for the days of "soap opera" series like Sweet Valley High. Series tend to be 3-7 books long instead of 20-100.
Again, I'm not a YA lit professional, but I hope I helped a little.
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Jul 22, 2008 - 07 21
Aye, I think amandalynn125 is right on the money. I'm no expert, either,but there are a few things that I have noticed and have been told. For example, there is a funny line between MG (mid-grade) and YA. Children, youth, and young adults like to read "older" than themselves. For example, an 8 year old will read 10+ books (10+ is age, not the number of books they read).
However, Harry Potter kinda blew that out of the water as it appealed to every age group (there were 5 year olds reading the series and 85 year olds). So (my GUESS) is that it depends on what you're writing and what your "goal" is for the book.
I went to our local bookstore and I did a quick look at novels written for boys (my area of verbal barfage) and there was a lot of fantasy/sci fi.
There seemed to be more books for girls/young women than boys/young men. And WOW, most of the protagonists were white.
Anyway, I recommend visiting the websites of some of the larger agents to YA. Andrea Brown is a great one (she is a huge fan of the YA market) and Sandra Dijkstra. They usually have information about what they are looking for, etc., which might help.
Best of luck.
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Jul 24, 2008 - 23 51
In general, it seems that the YA label is applied to books that are about teens or young adults and deal with issues that that age group often faces, while being written in a manner geared towards young adults. I think both factors are important. You can have a novel with a young protagonist or POV character that isn't strictly geared towards teens or that is even geared towards an older audience. It depends largely on how the story is written and what sort of reader the book is geared towards.