More Than Half Of YA Books Bought By Grownups—For Themselves
This is interesting: More than half the consumers of books classified for young adults aren’t all that young, according to a new study reported in Publishers Weekly:
“Fully 55% of buyers of works that publishers designate for kids aged 12 to 17—known as YA books—are 18 or older, with the largest segment aged 30 to 44, a group that alone accounted for 28% of YA sales. And adults aren’t just purchasing for others—when asked about the intended recipient, they report that 78% of the time they are purchasing books for their own reading. The insights are courtesy of Understanding the Children’s Book Consumer in the Digital Age, an ongoing biannual study from Bowker Market Research that explores the changing nature of publishing for kids.
‘The investigation into who is reading YA books began when we noticed a disparity between the number of YA e-books being purchased and the relatively low number of kids who claim to read e-books,’ said Kelly Gallagher, v-p of Bowker Market Research. ‘The extent and age breakout of adult consumers of these works was surprising. And while the trend is influenced to some extent by the popularity of The Hunger Games, our data shows it’s a much larger phenomenon than readership of this single series.’
Indeed, 30% of respondents reported they were reading works in the Hunger Games series. But the remaining 70% of readers reported a vast variety of titles (over 220), only two of which commanded more than five percent of overall sales—Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Breaking Dawn.
“Although bestsellers lead, there’s a long tail of rich reading that has interesting implications for the publishers of YA books in terms of discovery and consumer relationships,” said project editor Kristen McLean.” Read more here.
If you’re one of those grown-ups who read YA books: tell me why! I’m curious. I have a number of friends who do but I can’t quite fathom the appeal myself.
I flippantly said on twitter for the same reason I read adult books, but that is true – I read for pleasure, to learn, to escape, to challenge myself, etc. And the diverse range of books being published for youth allow me to do so. I read coming of age and contemporary fiction because I like it, it is usually easy and pleasurable for me to read and it reminds me what it was like to be young, but some of it challenges me – I still know I missed references in The Fault in our Stars (Green, J) similar to the way I never pick up on all the biblical references in Steinbeck. YA isn’t a genre it is a publishing category and a loose one at that. Some titles are published simultaneously for adults and teens – some for adults then later for teens. For instance if I want a copy of The Life of Pi in most bookstores I head towards the teen section. As a former school librarian and book lover I am pretty good at finding the hidden quality, but I like the not so high quality too. Just like with adult books. And frankly I have a lot more patience for the mistakes 16 year old characters (and people) make than adults.
A librarian friend informed me that a book earns the YA classification based more on the age of the protagonist than on the suitability of the material for the young adult market. Given that nugget, it seems quite natural that adults would be interested in books in the YA market. Like Mary Ann, I can think of several books that definitely cross boundaries – belonging in both the YA genre and the regular adult fiction genre. The Book Thief – a wonderful book marketed to the adult market in Australia and the YA market in the US – comes to mind.
I sometimes read YA non-fiction books if I want to get a quick introduction to a topic just out of curiosity (as opposed to needing to know it for work, say). For example, I recently was interested in the fall of the USSR. The public library had a couple of books that were clearly intended for high school students. They didn’t take long to read and I actually did learn a lot from them. On the other hand, I’m sure there are some great, nice thick books filled with analysis written on the subject that were nicely reviewed in the NY Times. And that’s great. If I really wanted to know a *lot* about the subject, I would probably read them (and do read them). But the YA books satisfied my need at that time.
For the record, I haven’t read any YA fiction since I was a YA. But I can see the need for something fun and easy to read after a stressful day at work.
How about that they’re often just as well written and often can be read in a sitting or two?
There is an innocence in YA that draws me to them. To go back to a time in life when there was nothing to worry about and are carefree. Innocence.
I tell my colleagues that I read YA books so that I can keep current for my students and stay fresh with my content. Really I read YA since I was a teenager. I think that it brings me back to a time when the worries of the characters in the book were much worse than mine. I find it much easier to bury myself in the YA world than in my current world- the escapism value is huge. I also find that books that I didn’t like when I was a young adult, I do now.