# Adult writers moving into YA



## Steerpike (Sep 4, 2012)

With the success of Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games, to mention a few, have you noticed how many writers who used to write only for adults have moved into YA? In some cases, previous works have even been edited and re-published for a YA audience. 

Right now, that's where the bucks are. What do you guys think of it - good for the industry overall, or a quick attempt to make money on YA popularity? Or both?


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## Chime85 (Sep 4, 2012)

Well it's hard to say really. I think, if I had to put my money on it (haha!), I'd say there is at least an element of pandering to the big bucks. Of course, there are writers who perhaps thought their stories were out of touch, until now. The door swings both ways, some alter their story to fit the market, others have a story for a market that once was not there.


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## yachtcaptcolby (Sep 4, 2012)

Is it a quick money grab? Sure. But anything that gets young people reading is ok in my book.


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## T.Allen.Smith (Sep 4, 2012)

A couple thoughts...

I think it's good for the market overall for a number of reasons. Whatever attracts readers at a young age is a good thing for the entire industry. As those teens mature, their tastes will change and broaden. They will delve into differing subject matters & genres. Just the fact that this age group is reading & ravenously devouring books in any genre is a wonderful thing.

Another point to consider, a lot of the YA sales are actually sold to adults. I know a lot of people who read every twilight, every hunger games, & every shades. A lot of this group doesn't read all the time. They read when some story catches fire and takes off. Most of the time, I have seen the subject matter being in the vein of YA (50 shades the sole exception). I tend to think that an occasional reader may be more attracted to the easy going prose of YA books. They are easy reads. There's nothing wrong with that either. Plenty of astute readers enjoyed these stories as well. My point is that the YA market also offers a non-threatening & entertaining entry point for adult readers who are either coming back into reading or consider themselves occasional readers. Either way, reading is good & anything that positively influences reading is fabulous in my opinion.

Some authors may be entering this market to make a quick buck by sending out hordes of paranormal romances & bow wielding heroines. If they can, more power to them. The story will still have to entertain to be successful. Teenagers are far from stupid regardless of what adults think or say. They won't continue reading some garbage tale simply because the cover art depicts some brooding, demonic heartthrob. 

Now, I'm a firm believer in writing stories that I'd want to read. I don't think I'd be capable of tailoring what I write to a YA market just due to language, and graphic portrayals of adult themes, but I can't fault others for doing so. If they can make a living reworking stories for YA or sell more copies than they ever have before then great for them.

EDIT: Look at Charlaine Harris (sp?). She's the author of the books behind the HBO series True Blood. I never heard of it until the show but I'd have to believe that the decision to produce the show was based on the previous decade's vampire mania. Those teen girls who latched onto twilight with such passion are now adults with an appetite for the same with a more adult twist. Harris wrote those books quite awhile ago, the mass success she now has is probably somewhat due to Meyer's success. Authors can help each other quite a lot, especially within the same genre where we might think of each other as competitors.


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## Steerpike (Sep 4, 2012)

I'll read YA fantasy. I read the first Twilight and the first Hunger Games. I read some of the House of Night books, and I read Philip Pullman's His _Dark Materials_. Garth Nix's series beginning with _Sabriel _is quite good. Personally, I think there is a lot of great story telling in YA, it's just that recently I have seen some better-known adult authors jumping into it.


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## Kit (Sep 4, 2012)

Steerpike said:


> I'll read YA fantasy. I read the first Twilight and the first Hunger Games. I read some of the House of Night books, and I read Philip Pullman's His _Dark Materials_. Garth Nix's series beginning with _Sabriel _is quite good. Personally, I think there is a lot of great story telling in YA, it's just that recently I have seen some better-known adult authors jumping into it.



+1. My main problem with reading YA is that if the story was any good, I feel bummed that it wasn't longer and deeper.


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## Ireth (Sep 4, 2012)

I don't see a problem with it, personally. Adult authors can do just as well in YA -- look at Terry Pratchett, for example. His Tiffany Aching books are every bit as good as the rest of the Discworld series, IMO. The Amazing Maurice was one of the first books of his I ever read, and it got me reading the others and falling in love with them.


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## Amanita (Sep 4, 2012)

I'm quite fond of stories involving young people who discover their potentials and place in life. Many of the books I've liked are YA fantasy. To me this, is one of the most interesting "common plotlines". Maybe that's because I haven't finished my education yet myself and therefore, despite being in my mid twenties still relate well to the kind of stories involving people learning. Besides, the idea of learning new things and getting new insights in life is highly fascinating to me. And probably, I'm not the only one who feels this way because as mentioned above, many of the young adult fantasies are popular among older readers as well. 
Therefore I don't mind seeing more books in this genre at all if they are what the author wanted to write. Authors getting forced into making their books suitable for younger readers to bring more money in are a different matter, but as I've mentioned before, I highly dislike this kind of interference in any shape or form.


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## Lady D Garnet (Sep 4, 2012)

I don't see a problem with it.


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## BRappaport (Sep 4, 2012)

Honestly, writing is and will always be an industry. Yes, we can have more altruistic motives in educating younger people or sharing a viewpoint, but ultimately, our stories have to be noticed and passed along to gain the exposure they need to prove their point or rally opinions on it. Very few writers I know truly write for themselves. If they did, they are shacked up worse than Emily Dickinson and would never identify themselves as writers. Let's face it; we're in it for the fame. That's not as bad as it sounds, though. We can do some real good with what we write. Be proud that you opened a gate to Narnia, but don't be the creeper in the van with a handful of candy. These books sell because, sadly, the average American's reading level is up to fifth grade. Couple that with easily digestible plots and characters, and you have a quick buck that most would pluck up. That said, there are some gems in the genre, and urging a kid to read more can't be too bad. Just don't patronize the kids. You sell yourself and your audience short when you don't trust them to understand you. You're the writer. Figure out how to make this subject understood. "Hunger Games" is a good example of that. It's kids killing other kids. It's meant to be horrifying and urges you to consider our country's obsession with reality-based programming. When these books have deeper motives than "fling yourself at the hot guy," I back the trend.


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## Lord Darkstorm (Sep 5, 2012)

My only problem with it is that they have taken good books out of the standard shelves to put them in a new marketing group called...YA.  Just what is YA actually?  Novels that don't deal in certain things?  Hunger games had plenty of violence and things I found quite interesting as a reader...I saw no reason to group it into YA for any other reason than marketing.  Just like they took out the horror section and moved half into fiction and the other half into fantasy.  Vampires are not fantasy, they are horror, and were for many decades, but thanks to the modern world of marketing, I now have to filter through hundreds of twilight wanna be's to find something decent to read.  It's sad that the organization of fiction is based on something other than what the book is, but where some person in marketing..who by the way has never written more than a slogan usually...has decided it might sell best.  So all the good books that are crammed into YA in the midst of the hundreds of teen angst melodrama (of which I'm content to let them have), I will have to wait for it to become popular enough to warrant my attention before I will ever notice it.

Sorry for the rant, but it really does get annoying that they keep moving things around based on stupidity over reality.  Hunger games...scifi...twillight...horror, or more likely romance.  With what they have on tv that is rated for teenagers, I don't really see a reason to differentiate.


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## BRappaport (Sep 6, 2012)

To be fair, "Hunger Games" was specifically directed at younger audiences. I heard a rumor a while back that the author will be revisiting the series with an extended edition geared toward adults. I think that's fantastic and want to encourage it just to see YA novelists push themselves a little more.

I agree that too much of our genre has been shifted around to try to hook younger readers, though. I don't want to wade through the Twilight knockoffs just to find a gem, either, but if one vapid Twihard accidentally picks up a good book and gets converted, I can't object to that. You have to take the good with the bad.


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## Steerpike (Sep 6, 2012)

And by "taking the bad" I'd like to include all of the mindless Twilight bashers who can't seem to let the book go five years after publication. Are we going down that road in yet another thread?


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## Darkfantasy (Sep 11, 2012)

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, sadly with writing a book mostly gets published on whether there is a Market for it. I feel that as long as writers take responsibility for there work it's okay. But I hate Twilight and I think Bella is not a good role-model for young impressionable teen girls.

The MC for my Fantasy was an adult, a warrior. But then I thought, why not track her life, go back to when she first chose to take his path. She is not a God or demigod, she has no supernatural powers, and no 'destiny' to forfile. Her destiny is what she makes it, she could quite easily carry on farming pigs or whatever.

I think it's okay, to change age of a character and like I said. If the Market is big on YA Fantasy then that is where the writers will flock. Some of the books are good, others not so good. However, I do feel that some of the MC in YA are a little unrealistic and not rounded enough characters for me. I also get annoyed that they have to bring romance into everything, but I guess that's a part of gorwing up too. It's just I feel about choked by it all now.


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## shangrila (Sep 11, 2012)

I don't mind. It's their choice what to write, after all, the same as it's my choice what to read.

Personally, I have no problem with YA. There are good examples, like Harry Potter, that can appeal to both younger and older audiences and might serve as a way to introduce younger people into the reality that things aren't always good, but they won't always be bad either. I don't read a lot of YA, but that's mostly because I'm slogging through all the current fantasy greats in adult fiction, which means I won't be starting anything outside of that for a long, long while (for perspective, I'm a little way into Perdido Street Station, the first book of his I've read. I've still got Game of Thrones, Kingkiller Chronicles, Gormenghast, Etched City, the Elric series, etc, etc to go after that.)


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## Zero Angel (Sep 11, 2012)

@Steerpike: So what authors have you seen jump on the YA bandwagon?


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## Steerpike (Sep 12, 2012)

Zero Angel said:


> @Steerpike: So what authors have you seen jump on the YA bandwagon?



The ones that come to mind off the top of my head:

James Patterson
Lilith Saintcrow
Carl Hiaasen
and at one point I saw some YA versions of the Wheel of Time books, but that was some time ago.

There are a couple of others like Patterson, I think, who have written a lot of novels for adults and started coming out with YA books since the boom.


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## Androxine Vortex (Sep 13, 2012)

I personally don't have a problem with YA literature (though I admit 95% of the novels at the bookstore which are under that categorization just looks so unappealing to me) But I don't think I would try to lower the maturity level down for my books jsut for more cash. That's not why I write. And it's not like my books are loaded with sex scenes (I actually have zero of them in all my works) it's just that they are very, very dark and violent. And I don't plan on changing that for anyone because it's my story and I want to tell it the way I want it to be told.

Since the Hunger Games is very recent, yes I thought it was a very well done book. You could tell there was violence in it but you can also see how they "toned" it down for a younger audience. But I am not going to try to write my novel so that it fits into a specific genre. Whatever the outcome of my novel is will be the defining of its genre.


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## BWFoster78 (Sep 14, 2012)

Steerpike,

Add me to the list of authors (though I'm obviously not well known) jumping into YA.

This week, I started a YA suspense thriller that I'm co-writing with my seventeen year old niece.  Truthfully, though, I'm not doing it for the money or popularity of the genre as much as because I thought that the collaboration would be fun.  

It's going well so far.


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## Caged Maiden (Sep 14, 2012)

I just started a YA collaboration with another author as well.  I don't know much of what is happening in the genre today, but the gentleman I pitched the project to just wrote an AWESOME YA book, and I remember in my youth all the great books we read in school: Rats of Nimh, Where the Red Fern Grows, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc.  and I wonder whether young people even need sex and violence.  I was dying to try a novel in the spirit of Where the Red Fern Grows, so I pitched it, and we started writing.  It's certainly a contrast from the gritty, romantic fantasy I ordinarily write.


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## ellenosb (Sep 18, 2012)

Maybe part of it is that labelling a book as 'young adult' makes it more acceptable to a mainstream adult audience that wouldn't normally associate itself with reading fantasy.


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## JCFarnham (Sep 18, 2012)

ellenosb said:


> Maybe part of it is that labelling a book as 'young adult' makes it more acceptable to a mainstream adult audience that wouldn't normally associate itself with reading fantasy.



Weirdly enough you may be on to something. Normal I would hate the suggestion that young adult fiction is anything but what it is, but honestly? I know plenty of adults who shame themselves into not doing anything they enjoy. I can't count the amount of times I've heard "Oh I used to do such-and-such but I grew up." and I'm like "Whut?!" That to me makes no sense. If you enjoy something why stop just because its childish? Becoming an adult isn't an excuse to get boring. 

So yeah, if the young adult label ensures more people are engaging with fantasy because they can't guilt themselves into feeling "childish" so easily then I'm all for that haha


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## ellenosb (Sep 18, 2012)

JCFarnham said:


> Weirdly enough you may be on to something. Normal I would hate the suggestion that young adult fiction is anything but what it is, but honestly? I know plenty of adults who shame themselves into not doing anything they enjoy. I can't count the amount of times I've heard "Oh I used to do such-and-such but I grew up." and I'm like "Whut?!" That to me makes no sense. If you enjoy something why stop just because its childish? Becoming an adult isn't an excuse to get boring.
> 
> So yeah, if the young adult label ensures more people are engaging with fantasy because they can't guilt themselves into feeling "childish" so easily then I'm all for that haha



Yeah it's just a shame that it's sometimes more acceptable to say 'I'm reading a children's book' than it is to say 'I'm reading a fantasy book' because people still have prejudice/stereotypes attached to fantasy, and like you say, it's seen as being childish.  But the fact that there is such demand for these books shows that people love fantasy when it's in a socially acceptable form!


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