The Sassy Librarian: publishing

publishing

Showing posts with label publishing. Show all posts

Public domain image via Pixabay

While I enjoyed all my sessions at the ALA Annual Conference (woo-hoo, Chicago!), the best program I attended was facilitated by the fabulous threesome of Kelly Jensen, Sophie Brookover, and Liz Burns. These outstanding librarians took time out of their busy Monday morning to present "New Adult: What Is It & Is It Really Happening?"

YA with Sexy Times

This fun and information filled session gave me enough to ponder over the course of a few posts, but one of the stand out points made by Liz Burns in particular was the idea that right now, New Adult is currently synonymous with Contemporary Romance starring the 18 to 24 age group. She made a point of saying that this growing genre was more than just "YA romance with sexy times added" but instead included elements of living away from authority figures, beginning to conceptualize the independence that comes with college or living independently, while also exploring sexuality and relationships in a more frank and explicit way. It's all about forming an identity as an adult, and you really can't do that successfully until you start living away from home.

No judgement was offered by the panelists regarding this trend, but it was suggested that the genre might gain more legitimacy when readers (and librarians and publishers) began associating it with other genres, broadening the scope of the label. I think this is actually the usual stigma against romance and when you add in more explicit sexual content, someone is going to get their panties in a bind about it, but I understood what she was saying. As much as I hate it and I feel it's very anti-woman (if men were the predominant readers of romance it would be a mark of an intellectual mind to have your shelves filled with it), the public has trouble thinking young adults (or new adults) falling in love has any kind of value. Luckily my days are largely spent with the intended audience, so I can enjoy like-minded enthusiasts who do think this is valuable topic!

Liz actually went on to say that the much bigger issue surrounding the perceived legitimacy of New Adult was the fact so much of it is currently self-published, with the accompanying poor editing this entails, but she imagined that as publishers finally opened their hearts and wallets to the authors with books to sell, the quality of the work should rise accordingly.

But for now, I wanted to make the point that there are certainly books and series which fall outside of contemporary romance (and do not have two eighteen year old laying down with each other or embracing with plenty of skin showing). Here were a few ideas that came to mind.

New Adult Beyond Contemporary Romance

So what books might fit the definition of New Adult but fall outside the realm of Contemporary Romance? Here are a few that were discussed at the ALA session or that occurred to me would feel right at home in this category.

Halfway to the Grave by Jeaniene Frost and it's immediate sequel, One Foot in the Grave, is fabulous urban fantasy paranormal romance, with the nineteen year old Cat Crawfield, the half-vampire offspring of a woman raped by a newly turned vampire, bent on teaching herself how to kill the undead. She does a pretty good job of it, too, but finds her world derailed when the incredibly hot and deadly 300 year old master vampire Bones, catches wind of what she's doing. While I would call the entire series urban fantasy, the first two books really fit the New Adult category. The romance with Bones is on equal footing as Cat's acceptance of herself and the fight between good/evil and the first book does NOT have a happy ending (I recommend getting both of them if you're beginning to read this series to prevent a bad case of agita). The sensuality level is very high, but it's extremely appropriate as Bones was a professional male prostitute before he was turned (and the man has skills, let me tell you). Their sexual intimacy is a big metaphor for Cat breaking down the walls she's built to protect herself over the years and vital to the storyline. So "neh" anti-sexy times contingent!

Diana Peterfreund's Secret Society Girl series has several of the New Adult markers, and clearly Dell Publishing is smart enough to know this as they have rewritten the introduction on Goodreads and elsewhere to this series to include a reference to "fans of Beautiful Disasters." The Ivy League college setting, the protagonist's struggle to define herself and often fight for her education amid the demands of the secret society to which she belongs and finally the drama surrounding various mysteries and her romantic entanglements put this firmly in the New Adult genre without being contemporary romance. Peterfreund even comments on her blog about how she was contacted by numerous would-be new adult writers eager to hear her tips since this series was so clearly New Adult, yet she makes a point of how she has purposely focused on writing about younger teens or about late twenty something, specifically because the New Adult market wasn't robust enough to support sales of literature for this age group.

Historical fiction is where New Adult hits a roadblock, largely because the cultural definition of adult has varied throughout time. Yet if we dissect the markers listed above for the genre, there will undoubtedly be historical fiction or other genres with historical elements that fit this category. One series that immediately came to my mind was The Agency series by Y. S. Lee. In the first novel, A Spy in the House, Mary Quinn is seventeen and has graduated from her training at Miss Scrimshaw's (where she has been groomed to be a spy). Posing as a companion to a spoiled young woman gives her the entrance she needs to the suspicious parties in question, but a keen-eyed and handsome engineer becomes first an obstacle and then an unlikely ally. While the burgeoning romance is a strong plot element, far more compelling in this series is Mary's posing as "Irish" when in actuality she is half-Chinese. Originally condemned to death as a child by the arcane Victorian justice system, she wrestles with her identity and the confines of society which would eagerly dictate her future. I love this series (so much so that purchased the third book in England since it came out months ahead of the US date and had it shipped to me) and it's readily apparent how the quest for identity makes this series - which I believe takes Mary up to about age 20 or so - New Adult.

Finally, it was mentioned in the session that all too often New Adult has become synonymous with "white, college bound" protagonists (even the books with the hero being the underground MMA fighter who also has a band - but that's for another post!). Yet, a close examination of "street literature" or what is also called "urban fiction" puts it firmly in the New Adult category. These young men and women are usually finished with high school and are in the process of negotiating their future in a gritty urban setting. African American and Latino characters are the norm and crime and poverty motivating factors for behavior and choices. Authors like Nikki Turner, Ashley Antoinette Snell, and Deja King are incredibly popular. Often, the protagonists are determined to make something of themselves or help their families, often while defining what real love looks like.

I'd be interested to hear what other people feel fall into New Adult but are not contemporary romance. What is out there that would appeal to this transitioning age group?

I know, I know. How long was this *&%@! YALSA preconference, you ask? Don't you remember me saying it should have been a whole day and not an afternoon? If not, you aren't paying attention. And I think you'll enjoy this post and the next couple ones rounding out the preconference series. The last part of the preconference was a "speed dating" segment in which librarian experts went around to different tables and spoke about their work with various strategies using tools that promoted teen reading. First up for me was Tiffany (who likes to be called "Tiff") Emerick, librarian at Lansdale Catholic High School, who decided to make book trailers a collaborative project (the link is to her Glog which collated all the support materials) with a receptive English teacher. Tiff has a wonderful Google Doc of the project and tips for librarians or English teachers who might want to emulate it.

Her goals were to have the kids get excited and to feel that they had choices in the way they choice to create their trailer. They watched both publisher and amateur videos, talking about the pros and cons of them, and reviewed Tiff's rubric. The students received two grades, one from her and one from the English teacher. In her explanation to us, she said one of the best parts was the opportunity to explain copyright since the students would be using photos and links, and this enabled her to really go to town explaining and promoting Creative Commons, which many students had never heard of. She used Photostory (a Windows product) with the 11th graders and also taught them folksonomy tagging concepts with the Creative Commons material search. Obviously you could also use iMovie or even Animoto, since it added the new feature of being able to keep the order of your images under control.

The book trailers that passed muster with her (and she said that was most of them) she embedded into the library catalog, so if a student searching for reading brought up a specific record, the book trailer would be a link that could be clicked on and played. Great idea, right? I was floored by the quality of the trailers (do yourself a favor and check out the Beautiful Creatures trailer, it's amazing) and Tiff had a great energy and enthusiasm so it's easy to see how she brings out the best in her students.

I'm really impressed with many of the sources Tiff found to promote this idea (book trailers are something I've toyed with for a long time). This one above for Give Up the Ghost by Megan Crewe came from bookscreening.com, which bills itself a clearinghouse for publishers and authors to put up their booktrailers and promote their latest publication. You get the sense that they used to accept amateur video, but now are sticking to the slicker stuff from publishing houses. Which is fine, since the quality seems to be quite good, and a good trailer means more people are going to read it, right?

Publisher’s Weekly recently published an article, “What Do Teens Want?” by Carol Fitzgerald that’s been receiving a lot of attention from librarians serving teens. Fitzgerald names the growth of the Young Adult literary market (a 5.1% projected sales increase) with higher grossing areas for specific genres often fueled by the YA market (like scifi/fantasy which is supposed to experience a 13% increase).

While the author acknowledges that certainly there are plenty of adults interested in these books because of the recent phenomenon of books like the Twilight saga, the fact remains that teens are the ones causing that very phenomena, placing a great deal of power in the hands of this specific demographic. Publishers are naturally very interested in a group of such heavy readers as they are desperate to figure out how to market to them in five and ten years.

Using the readership of teenreads.com (230,000 viewers a month), a survey was given to answer some burning questions. Naturally, as any librarian knows, the responders were largely female (96%) due to the site’s emphasis on fiction and the fact that most YA fiction is read by girls (at least to the point that they’d want to talk about). The survey also had a mostly younger teen audience (only 37% were 16 to 18 years of age, the remainder younger than this) so these results might be of particular relevance to middle school librarians.

Because of the fact that it’s obvious to any school librarian how shockingly overscheduled kids are, I was most interested in the number of books respondents reported to read and during what time periods. Forty-one percent reported reading over 20 books during the summer, with 26% reading 11-20 books and 18% reading six to 10 books. That’s 85% of these students reading at least six books over the summer. Granted, the readership of teenreads.com I doubt is comprised of casual readers, but nevertheless it shows how kids will read when more time is available.

But these readers don’t stick to just YA authors. They listed Mitch Albom, Jane Austen, Meg Cabot (who I actually consider more of a YA author, but whatever), Agatha Christie, Mary Higgins Clark, Suzanne Collins, Michael Crichton, Janet Evanovich, John Grisham, Charlaine Harris, Sophie Kinsella, Dean Koontz, George Orwell, Chuck Palahniuk, James Patterson, Jodi Picoult, David Sedaris, Nicholas Sparks and John Steinbeck as favorite adult authors that they’d consider as well. Isn’t that an interesting mix? We have a lot of these folks on the shelf, but I’m going to need to check and make sure we’ve got a complete oeuvre.

And as for the format (hardcover v. paperback) they prefer, it seems close enough that I don’t need to worry with 79% liking paperbacks and 74% preferring hardcover. Only 6% like ebooks as their format right now, so I’ll be interested to see if that number grows after Barnes and Noble starts heavily marketing the Nook, aka their version of the Kindle in stores. All of my teens LOVE hanging out at Barnes & Noble which is the place to see and be seen.

With the publishing industry as the focus of the survey, naturally the book buying habits of these kids were their focus. Forty-four percent of kids indicated that their book buying habits had changed due to the economy with 54% naming visiting the library as their main habit change. Sixty-eight percent share the cost of book purchasing with their parents (go parents!).

What really grabbed me was the data on “what would enhance their shopping experience”. More books to chose from (63% came in first) but check out what was second – 48% wanted more book reviews and recommendations from “experts”. Isn’t that interesting? It’s important to be reminded how overwhelming a bookstore is for someone who doesn’t read all the professional journals and can pick out the good presses and know the latest reviews. Events with favorite authors came in as important to 45% and comfortable places to sit (check!) got 40% of people clicking the radio button. With any luck, our new “book discussion” group (which has as its mission booktalking books to each other rather than reading the same book, important as 83% of respondents named peer recommendations as the reason they will read a book) will fit this bill but I really need to think about adding in reviews (maybe I can use Titlewave to grab them?) to the display process. Hmmm…

Tweaking the library webpage also came to mind as well as taking advantage of the MARC record field where we can embed companion websites. Over 85% of teens reported visiting the websites of their favorite authors for information about upcoming titles and 65% would love to see the author in person at an in store event. Only 19% utilized social networking sites for author interaction (and I couldn’t help thinking of my AWESOME new Facebook friend, Scott Westerfeld!) so clearly I’m a passé geek or total pioneer in author interaction. I’m leaning toward the former.

Blogs (I’m guessing author blogs?) and specifically “book and reader blogs” were also named as sources of interaction or information (32% and 31% respectively). Maybe the author website can go in the MARC record but we could have a section on the website for the blogs that might be the most popular (with a link to a screencast on how to use Google Reader for efficient browsing). Still 58% of them don’t read author blogs at all, and my curiosity is piqued – is this because they don’t know how awesome they are? Because they don’t read other blogs? Respondents have great taste in who they do read – authors named were Libba Bray, Meg Cabot, Ally Carter, P.C. Cast, Cassandra Clark, Zoey Dean, Sarah Dessen, John Green, Richelle Mead, Stephenie Meyer, Christopher Paolini, James Patterson, Tamora Pierce, Sarah Shepard, Melissa Walker and Scott Westerfeld. Considering most of these are in my “Author Blogs” list, I feel that discerning book readers are good blog readers as well!