The Atlantic highlights the rise of YA fiction.
From the article...
Meredith Barnes, a literary agent with Lowenstein Associates, demonstrates superhuman patience while explaining young adult literature to me. I am familiar enough with the basics: that YA is not to the written word as PG is to film. That it is publishing's closest thing to a safe bet in years. That it has seen explosive growth as a result. To wit: 3,000 young adult novels were published in 1997. Twelve years later, that figure hit 30,000 titles--an increase of a full order of magnitude. In 2009, total sales exceeded $3 billion, which is roughly all the money. (McSweeney's has the break down, and an astonishing array of statistics.)
While the purchasing power of young people has certainly increased over the years, such astounding figures and simple observation suggest that it's not just 12-year-olds smashing piggy banks on the counter at Powell's. Adults are buying and reading these books. When I was a teenager, young adults hadn't yet been invented and books aimed at my demographic were uniformly about babysitting. Blame 1 Corinthians 13:11, or the lack of Y to my A, but it no more occurred to me as an adult to browse the YA aisle than to catch a Jonas Brothers concert. The simple weirdness of men and women over the drinking age perusing the children's stacks before general fiction seemed cause for alarm and a fair argument for education reform.
Ms. Barnes offers reassurance that adult interest in YA is not the result of a crisis in the collective level of literacy in the United States. Rather, it's indicative of the quality and enduring themes addressed by young adult. "The fluid demographic barrier speaks to the emotional turmoil that makes contemporary young adult literature unique," she says. "Every decision feels life-changing, and every choice in these books can seem life-or-death. The emotions are no more or less valid than what one might experience at 30, but it's the first time, and thus very powerful."
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