1-3: Hunger Games Trilogy
4-6: Amanda Hocking's Trylle Trilogy
7-10: Amanda Hocking's My Blood Approves Series
11: The next Paolini book that doesn't even come out until November!
13,15: Other versions of the Hunger Games Trilogy
Anyway... I thought it was interesting at the lack of diversity in the Top 15 books -- it was basically 2 authors. I guess when you make it big, you really make it big.
I tried to sort for middle grade best sellers and ended up with a bunch of classics. Not sure if I should stick with middle grade in terms of "ease of breaking in" or try YA just to mix it up a bit. My passion would be equal for each.
Anyone have any thoughts where there are more publishing opportunities(YA vs MG)? This question is merely out of curiosity -- I'm not planning on quitting my day job anytime soon.
[edited to delete the url link to amazon that I couldn't get to work for the life of me]
[This message has been edited by Wordcaster (edited March 29, 2011).]
Through traditional publishing, it's going to be three years at least before your book hits the shelves at Barnes and Noble. The trends may be completely different by then.
If you love what you write, it'll show through.
That said, I'm with Meredith - write what you love; it's the best way to make your writing work. Perhaps I've been too corrupted (or just haven't yet had kids), but I don't think I have it in me to write a book that doesn't involve at least a little bit of swearing, sex, and violence. Aren't those the best parts?
Also, it is important to note that there is more to MG and YA than the age of the protagonist. Middle Grade plots tend to be more about internal conflicts - such as friendships, family interactions, etc. Young Adult fiction, while still concerned with the internal conflicts of the protagonist, tends to widen its scope to include larger scaled external events. In other words, in MG fiction the protagonist is learning who they are while in YA the protagonist is learning how to affect the world around them.
On whether to write MG or YA, I agree with Meredith's advice: write what you love. Leave it up to agents/editors to decide how best to market your novel.
quote:
I'm assuming YA is older than MG - I tend not to read in those classifications, so I'm unsure. My intuition would be that an approachable YA book would sort of overlap down, but that the reverse would be more difficult.
Yes, for those that don't pay attention to these genres:
MG (Middle Grade) is aimed at approximately the 8 to 12 year-olds. (Upper Middle Grade is sometimes 10 to 14 year-olds) Think the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, Neil Gaiman's GRAVEYARD BOOK, or the first four Harry Potter books.
YA takes off from the upper end of Middle Grade on to about 18 or so.
I love writing all types of fiction. Mainly, I was hoping to get something published in time for my 6 mo old boys to enjoy it, but it's only one motivation. I'll keep writing as long as I am able, whether successful or not.
I do think it is a little more than "writing what you love." For instance, a romantic relationship is better suited for YA than MG, so I think a novel has to be approached with the target audience in mind. But yes, if a certain age group of fiction gives you passion, it makes sense to continue to write for it.
However, that phenomenon is not unheard of in MG either - as Percy Jackson (who starts the series at age 12 and gets older each book) and Harry Potter (starts at age 11) show us.
So...your mileage may vary, but either is a good bet at the moment. The one thing someone pointed out to me recently about both MG and YA is that every couple years there are *brand new readers* in those ages and you haven't had to do anything to broaden your reach -- each year kids get OLDER, and thus they age into the next ladder on the reading scale. This is one reason these parts of the market are hot and have been for years, there's an entirely new audience who hasn't read your books yet!
I write both, it really just depends on the kind of story I want to tell. I try to aim for MG because I think there's not enough good stuff written there (I think there's plenty of good YA) particularly good sci-fi that isn't all space aliens and wildly implausible things (I write near-term pretty realistic sci-fi. Kids in space with semi-normal problems exacerbated by their unusual environments.) But that's really just my taste/preference. I have one YA book that is the start of a series, in the series I plan to delve into subjects such as drug experimentation and things that I just wouldn't touch in a Middle-Grade book.
quote:Like the new series "Once Upon a Time"?
Originally posted by LDWriter2:
Almost makes me want to try something different with Fairy Tales as a basic idea.
quote:I think (and please oh Beloved Cat Girl, correct me if I'm wrong) what Meredith may be saying is a bit broader. You don't even have to have a "target audience" and especially not an age group. Figure out what you want to write then worry about all the genre and demographic nonsense later. If the story you want to write has a lot of romance then market it as "YA" when the time comes (though I must confess I personally find the very concepts of "YA" "MG" and almost anything having to do with demographics asinine to the point of being almost insulting...I don't think age, race, gender or any of the rest of that has nearly as much to do with anything as advertising people want to think.)
I do think it is a little more than "writing what you love." For instance, a romantic relationship is better suited for YA than MG, so I think a novel has to be approached with the target audience in mind. But yes, if a certain age group of fiction gives you passion, it makes sense to continue to write for it.
quote:Even if this be the case...on a planet with 7 billion people, even if "most" people of a certain group conform to demographic whatevers, it still leaves an awful lot who don't.
And at least in discussions I've had, space opera is mostly a guy thing. Notice I said mostly not one hundred percent and many guys aren't into it but it still seems to be mostly a guy thing.
quote:Well, yes and no. Absolutely write the story you love. But you can't just completely ignore the target audience either. Although, you don't necessarily have to think about that too much during the first draft, depending on how you work.
Originally posted by Merlion-Emrys:
I think (and please oh Beloved Cat Girl, correct me if I'm wrong) what Meredith may be saying is a bit broader. You don't even have to have a "target audience" and especially not an age group. Figure out what you want to write then worry about all the genre and demographic nonsense later. If the story you want to write has a lot of romance then market it as "YA" when the time comes (though I must confess I personally find the very concepts of "YA" "MG" and almost anything having to do with demographics asinine to the point of being almost insulting...I don't think age, race, gender or any of the rest of that has nearly as much to do with anything as advertising people want to think.)
quote:TV, and my favorite show I might add. Times may vary, but I watch it on Sunday nights at 8:00.
Originally posted by LDWriter2:
Crystal is that TV or written?
quote:I must respectfully disagree with the first part, at least as a general statement. The last part, I think, is more where any relevance lies (or has been created) and even more so if you add in marketing types who are the ones, as near as I can tell, for whom all such demographic and genre distinctions actually make much difference.
The YA/MG division matters for kids (and those who oversee what media they consume.)
quote:I think in the end it depends, as almost always, on intent. If you have your heart set specifically on a given work being marketed as MG or YA then obviously, you must follow the criteria or guidelines for that. However, if your heart is set on the, in my opinion far broader goal of appealing to young people, I don't believe how it's marketed will be, in the end, that huge a determiner of whether that goal is achieved or not. In this case if anything your focus would be more, I feel, on taking care not to include too much content parents and the like would deem unsuitable...not in terms of complexity but just for appropriateness (language, sexual themes, violence etc.)
Don't, whatever you do, write down to kids. But that doesn't mean there aren't a few things you can and should do to appeal to them if you think your story is either MG or YA.