Young Adult (YA) fiction continues its rise in popularity (one just needs to view the posts about ‘The Hunger Games’ on the Limebird forum). According to ‘Understanding the Children’s Book Consumer in the Digital Age’, a study published in September 2012 by Bowker Market Research, 55% of those who buy YA are aged 18 or over, with 28% of sales going to the 30 – 44 age group.
What those adults were reading varied widely; while 30% of respondents reported that they were reading something from The Hunger Games series, the remaining 70% reported that they were reading over 220 different titles, only two of which commanded more than 5% of sales overall – ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ and ‘Breaking Dawn’. In August of 2012, National Public Radio in the USA ran a survey which received 75,220 votes for the ‘Best-Ever Teen Fiction’, of the top 20, 10 were science fiction or fantasy (with the Harry Potter series number one and the Hunger Games series number 2).
It has been suggested that the readership of ‘mainstream’ science fiction is increasingly greying and that YA SF is the potential saviour of the genre, bringing hordes of new readers to the fold.
In light of the above facts, I thought that I would take a look at YA science fiction; what it is, and how it has affected me as a reader and writer. With the wealth of YA out there, I will only be scratching the surface.
Limebird Writers 