At the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference in New York City this past weekend, organizers reported the largest turnout for the event yet—1,004 attendees—plus roughly 150 speakers and Pitch Slam editors and agents.
In general, this is not a newsmaking event and not intended to be. The programming specializes in craft and business awareness for authors and aspirants to the writing profession. In a conference-closing keynote address, Scholastic editorial director David Levithan—who’s also a highly successful author and co-author of more than 20 YA titles—offered some expert insights into the young adult sector.
For years now, YA has been the darling category of the industry. When a new Potter release lands or a Twilight series takes off, it becomes the leading seller in the trade not least because many adults read YA. Two years ago, Nielsen reported that 80 percent of YA books are sold to—and read by—adults. But we’re in a lull at this point, awaiting the next runaway YA bestseller. NPD BookScan, in its 2017 first-half trade assessment (see our further coverage in today’s edition) reports that YA so far this year (not including the rest of children’s books) is the smallest category NPD cites in print sales in the first two quarters, holding a 4 percent share, with 11 million units sold. That does represent a small (1 percent) growth rate, year over year—but the category’s share expands whenever there’s a YA blockbuster on the market. NPD sees social themes leading the YA market at this point, singling out Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon and the Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Dog Man Unleashed books as doing particularly well.
Levithan, whose long tenure at Scholastic has included editing work on the Hunger Games series, is well aware of this adult-consumers-of-YA phenomenon. Seated at the American publishing house of JK Rowling’s books, he knows how blockbusters can drive the sector and industry. But Levithan, who has edited hundreds of writers and close to 1,000 books, emphasized several times this caution for authors: don’t give in to the urge to write to trends. “We’re in a golden age of YA books where anything goes. You have the freedom to write whatever you want to write,” he said.
Levithan took his own advice in 2003 when he wrote Boy Meets Boy in response to a dearth of queer YA content. “There was no shortage of nervousness about this,” he said, because at that point, positive gay literature was largely missing from the canon. His book was published by Knopf Books for Young Readers, and gay themes have been a part of many of his writings since.
Bottom line: “If there is a common core to what YA is about” for both teen and adult readers, Levithan said, “it’s emotional truth. You have to be honest with your reader and honest with yourself as a writer.” Scholastic’s surveys, he says, have consistently shown respondents saying they love YA best “when it’s real”—ironic considering how frequently it exists in fantasy. The quality of believability is the essential element, he said. And the key is not to chase others’ success. “The people who are hitting their marks,” he told the audience, “are the ones who don’t follow trends and don’t write to the market. They just write the stories they want to write.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
