Trends in YA and Middle Grade: How the Times We Live in Affect Acquisitions

Current trends in children’s publishing favor dystopia and horror, graphic novels, and more audio and TV/film adaptations

While YA fiction sales have flattened out in the past year, the entire YA category, alongside adult nonfiction, has been driving growth in traditional publishing for several years. At the New York Rights Fair held at BookExpo in May, we had the opportunity to listen to agents and editors discuss what’s happening in YA and middle-grade children’s publishing. (In previous issues, we covered trends in adult fiction and adult nonfiction.)

Like any panel covering trends, this one started with agents and editors making the obligatory suggestion that writers not chase trends but be trendsetters. Agent Rosemary Stimola made her point by sharing the story of Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai, which won the National Book Award and Newbery Medal. It’s a middle-grade historical novel told in verse by a Vietnamese character. “I thought to myself, Three strikes, you’re out,” Stimola said. “If I had just thought about it in terms of trend and market I would’ve turned it down, but the story and voice stayed with me.” After all panelists agreed with Stimola in one form or another about the uselessness of chasing trends, the panel got around to discussing what’s selling and why.

One of the first trends discussed was the re-emergence of dystopian and horror genres. Stacey Barney from Penguin Random House said, “We’re in some dark days right now, so I’m not surprised if dystopian starts to come back.” David Levithan of Scholastic said acquisitions are shaped by the times and pointed out the rise of horror. “It does not take a brain surgeon to see why this is happening,” he said. “We’re seeing middle-grade horror, which I think is one of the best things for these times. … [Young readers] want to be afraid, but then they want the book to make them unafraid by the end.”

There’s also been an increase in YA and middle-grade nonfiction—not school texts, but books for fun. Levithan said Scholastic has launched a new narrative nonfiction imprint, Scholastic Focus, because “facts and truth are more important now than ever.” He said they’re looking for voices in nonfiction that will help young readers understand their own history and the history of people around them. He said readers now must navigate an era in which there is plenty of information yet no context. “We have to give them the context,” he said.

Barney said that a lot of the nonfiction she’s doing is memoir and inspiration—and that kids read memoir and inspirational stories for the same reason adults do. She noted that these stories are from kids who are exposed to a lot: “These are not the 12-year-olds of my day.” With the advent of social media, young people have more information, and they’re doing extraordinary things, she said. “They are their own sources of inspiration.”

Graphic novels are exploding across all publishers. Stimola said it’s a trend that cuts across age groups and affects everything from chapter books to middle grade to YA and adults. “With all the screens and gaming they’re doing,” she said, “it’s a kind of reading that brings them to the printed page more easily, a little more comfortably.” Agent Jenny Bent agreed: “That’s exactly my daughter’s experience. She was a very reluctant reader … she experiences life so much more visually than we did. Everything is images. They are on their phones, they are watching TV, so the thing that was her gateway into reading was graphic novels.”

Agents and editors are seeing growth in TV/movie adaptations for middle grade and YA work. Bent said that it’s easier to get deals than in the past. “[Studios and producers] are open to all kinds of voices and all kinds of stories that they weren’t even two or three years ago,” she said. Stimola added that, on the film side, for a very long time the focus had been on front list—what’s new and what would work for the big screen. But now with all of the streaming options out there, adaptations are a growth area—especially for works that are better suited to episodic format. She said, “Episodically you get to keep a lot [of the book] and even expand on it. And there were things that went to the big screen that failed miserably—it just didn’t work—but now they’re begin given great new life in episodic format. They’re very hungry for content and there’s going to be a lot more happening.” As you may recall from our BookExpo coverage of Kristen McLean’s talk, bestselling children’s books are often driven by content available on streaming services. However, when asked if film or TV potential affected what books they would acquire, the panel responded with an emphatic no.

Audio is also an area of growth. Levithan said that, at one time, an audiobook would be a weird outlier for Scholastic, but not anymore. “It’s a time thing. They can walk with it, they can have it in their cars. I think it is fitting in to the culture, filling in the time.” He mentioned that when Scholastic struck a deal with Audible to do the Baby-Sitters Club series, he was surprised when Audible decided to release all 131 titles on the same day. The reasoning? Binge listening. Apparently, he said, there are people who have a bad day and decide they’re just going to listen. “That has changed the game to a significant degree,” he said. For Barney at PRH, audiobook sales follow the life of the book itself—they increase if the book has won an award, for instance. “I don’t know that you see audio outpace the physical copy, but it is for sure becoming a robust market for us.” She said for a recent title, audio was a key component in the P&L and helped her get to a certain level for an offer. “I was blown away by that.” And in a comment that sparked laughter and surprise (with suggestions to take the money and run), Stimola said she recently received an audio rights offer for a wordless picture book.

Bottom line: If you’ve read each of our trend reports from the New York Rights Fair, then you know: what people are choosing to read is deeply affected by the times we live in—and also by the media and entertainment industry’s focus on diverse voices and stories. Levithan discussed the significant number of #OwnVoices debuts on the way and noted that bookshelves “will not look like they did 10 years ago.”