The Decline of YA Fiction? What's Going On With YA Publishing

hello everyone i'm alexa dunn and today i want to have a discussion i want to address some concerns some fears some wild rumors that have definitely been going around you may have noticed some big shifts happening lately including imprints closing why a imprints closing and i'm seeing just a lot of worried discussion on forums like reddit on twitter and people are asking is why a dying is why over am i doomed if i'm writing y a so i wanted to kind of talk about some of it and explain some of what's going on and both alleviate some concerns but honestly i'm not going to gaslight you and if you hear people go no everything's fine waze not dying you have no reason to be concerned they are lying to you maybe they're lying to themselves too the reality is the industry is shifting y has been saturated for a while and what that means is too many books being published they're not selling enough and the category has needed to pull back for some time the breaks have been applied and that's the thing this has been going on for years the writing has been on the wall and industry insiders it sounds so snobby but when you're on kind of the other side you have an agent you have a book deal you start to see things i've been seeing things for many many years and in fact if you are a long time watcher of the channel or if you follow me on reddit i've been screaming the doom for a couple of years on reddit in terms of just trying to give people sound advice i've been doing it on this channel as well it's why i've led discussions on the decimation of the middle east dead genres how to pivot from setbacks even my video on querying during the time of kovid and we are going to talk about covid because i think a lot of people also have been like this is because of kovid no coven covid just hastened some things that were already happening so let's talk about the recent imprint shutterings two uh major meaning two big five why a imprints closed a couple of weeks ago one was jimmy patterson really the side of jimmy books that did original y a his side that still publishes his books is still there and an imprint which is the name of the imprint which was an imprint of macmillan uh jimmy was shot so both big five this of course is devastating for the authors involved though i can reassure you all of the authors that had contracted books are still being published but their books have been moved to other imprints at the publishers and in both cases this is this is where i mean it sucks across the board they lost their editors the editors were let go this means f there are fewer editors editors lost their jobs and yeah it's very stressful for the authors because they are then inherited by another editor at a different imprint they join a different list they don't know what's going on it is very very scary and kind of the concern is real but they are being published but of course this means the imprints are gone which means the editors are gone and those publishing slots are gone so yes this does mean that both hachette and macmillan flat out there's going to be less why being published similar but different also we're talking about simon and schuster so simon schuster underwent a reorganization much earlier in the year it was in the spring it happened to coincide with covid but it had been planned before kovid and in that case their y.a imprint simon pulse was closed but they didn't fire all the editors they moved the editors around two other imprints at simon schuster and all the books so that's like a similar-ish thing it does mean that there will be less y.a acquired at simon and schuster because simon pulse was a major y imprint and it's gone but the editors still exist they're just on different staffs they joined different imprints and will be adjusting lists accordingly going forward so yes this means three of the big five have shuddered major y.a imprints which means fewer ya acquisitions but as i mentioned this has been coming for a long time so with kovid as i mentioned with simon schuster it had nothing to do with kovid simon schuster has been preparing itself for sale for a while they are looking for someone to buy them they're currently owned by viacom and viacom wants to get rid of their books division basically jimmy and imprint at macmillan i suspect but here's the thing this is all speculation all we have is speculation because the people who actually worked at those imprints aren't going to be spilling that tea on the real reasons that those imprints went away so all we have is speculation and i've seen both good speculation and poor speculation in the both of these situations it's very likely shutting those imprints had been maybe not directly planned but had been a possibility for a while and yes kovid hastened decisions kovid hastened things happening because yes everyone has definitely taken a hit with covid 19. but that's the thing about the y landscape so now let's talk about the things that have been going on for a while the writing that has been on the wall so first of all why a is a very young category we kind of talked about this before it didn't exist when i was a kid children's literature always exists but why as a marketing category because we're always remembered as a marketing category came about and started booming in the mid to late to thousands so it's a very very young category at best it's 15 to 17 years old if you think about kind of uh cassie claire publishing i think it was 2003 but really i would think about twilight which i think it was a 2007-2008 and the hunger games around the same time so it's a category that's about 12 to 15 years old and we started reaching the natural saturation point of a brand new sexy booming books category that bought a lot of books because a lot of people were buying them so excite much books we started gradually reaching that saturation point five to six years ago the way landscape of purchasing i mean 2008 to 2012 is probably like the height of the boom they were just buying books left right and center that's when a ton of writers got their foot in the door that's when a ton of books broke out and created big careers for people still kind of continued out some of those things acquired that were coming out uh in 2015 2016 even up to 2017 but i i'd say breakouts from 2016 2017 are outliers because it had already really started saturating because when you have 150 to 200 debuts a year steadily every single year and those are just based off of the debut groups there might have been even more debuts but that's one rough way to get numbers that's a lot of new people coming into the market that's a lot of books to market and as we all know publishing doesn't market all of those books it's a lot of competition and you can't just continue to publish 200 debut authors a year continually continuing and continually and expect to nurture and keep those careers going and in fairness that's been a problem with wei for a while that you can get your foot in the door but can you sell another book so concurrently what has been happening sales have been going down steadily over the last five six years but i feel like it's gotten especially bad in the last three to four like if you actually look up book scan numbers which aren't even the most accurate but you can still kind of judge some trends it's bad i it definitely used to be that if you couldn't sell 10 000 copies you were considered a failure and that's considered a success now for many many books you're lucky to break let's say 1k or 2k copies now whereas that definitely was considered failure uh back when uh the goal posts have shifted y sells less the outliers still sell a ton but the average book just doesn't sell much which is the decimation of the mid list i do have an entire video on that i'm going to link to it down below where i go into detail that i don't want to detour too much here on but essentially the mid list used to support publishing across the board it's not just a y concept it's the steady sellers in the middle who regularly sell like 10 to say 40 to 50 000 copies and their careers build over time and they just steadily sell down the middle well as i started going more like no we want all the big books they stopped supporting those books and lo and behold they've just disappeared over time and it is literally now it's it's like it's like our economy you are either in the one percent where you are a huge breakout book and you sell tens of thousands of copies hundreds of thousands of copies and you have it made in the shade and you're away a success story or you fight at the bottom for scraps and most people are fighting at the bottom for scraps here's the thing why this is a natural progression as i mentioned young category this was always going to happen eventually but it's definitely been made worse by some of the attitudes and behaviors of the white industry i also recommend you watch my why sci-fi doesn't do well in ya video because i talk about this mentality and how they approach acquisition and marketing and selling of books and why it inherently works against sci-fi it's the same idea it hurts a lot more genres than just sci-fi it hurts a lot of books it hurts historicals it hurts quiet books it hurts fantasies and contemporaries that are perfectly mainstream but like aren't gonna sell 100 000 copies it hurts most books except for the biggest books so the writing was on the wall and something had to give and the bubble had to burst and it's finally bursting basically except it's more like someone pricked it with a pin the balloon a couple of years ago and the air has just been s sledding out now this is mostly gone uh what's definitely happening and people are finally noticing and talking about uh and i i've been quietly watching and predicting this for a while a lot of those authors who did sell during the boom who got five six seven books you know kind of in their career aren't selling more they're not able to get further book contracts that's part of the midlist disappearing but even recent debuts it's it's a higher stakes game now when you debut again there's 150 to 200 of us a year and it's i'm noticing specifically from 2018 debuts and up obviously the 2020s they're still fresh sticking their kids um people who just aren't even getting a second book contract off of their debut contract it is harder than it used to be but also this is the doom and gloom video but you want the real deal about what's going on uh they're requiring fewer debuts i suspect that was intentional like i've been noticing the trend for a while and i've talked about it a bit in some videos and i've definitely talked about it privately and i've definitely talked about it on reddit at least this is a pep talk that i give to the am mentees a lot it's both true and also disconcerting um that like hey like they really barely for a while they had barely acquired for 2021 and i was like surely they have to acquire more books for 2021. we just haven't seen a lot of announcements 2022 still not a lot i've seen almost nothing for 2023. we still time to start seeing those but it's weird it's weird specifically until recently asterix the 2021 and 2022 really didn't have many acquisitions or in volume as it used to be and so i think that's a signal a sign um 2019 and 2020 were two of like the most stacked debut classes i had seen in a really really long time especially i mean i thought 2018 was pretty stacked then 2019 was even bigger and more and by stacked i mean like big buzzy books a lot of like hot debuts acquired at the same time all competing for oxygen at the same time but 2021 isn't as aggressively competitive which i think is a good thing for those books that are debuting because there's a little more space and a little more oxygen and well now sadly we have these imprints shuttering so that's really going to impact 2022 and 2023 there will literally be fewer spots for books and for debuts and it's it's a short-term suck it's a short-term suck because it means that there are people who are agented right now who might have a tougher time selling and it's it's heartbreak but for those who do sell this is part of why a course correcting itself to be a healthier normal book category we're basically course correcting so we are like every other part of the book world adult obviously adult just being books for a really long time again y is a very young category around for decades and decades and decades and decades it's very normal for there not to be a million imprints for romance or sci-fi or regular novels they don't stuff their lists full of dozens and dozens and dozens of debuts they don't make their lists fight for marketing oxygen like the hunger games why a very uniquely basically saturated itself and honestly we got too big too fast too big to fail not really and that's the thing uh why is not dying it why is dying but it's not dying why is not going away why a is shifting and changing as it has to shift and change because we pushed ourselves to a breaking point and we haven't had a big breakout definitely not a mainstream crossover hit in a long ass time and it was those mainstream big crossover hits the ones that made y.a hot that basically had publishing executives bathing themselves and money and that's not happening anymore we haven't managed to create that kind of breakout success in a really long time and like we haven't had a trend like a a definitive trend like paranormal followed by dystopian we haven't had one of those in five six seven years what is next nya no one knows so i take this as partly positive this is the pep talking part because no one knows what the heck is the next thing i'm actually seeing publishing being slightly adventurous in some of their acquisitions now alongside this uh it's also a separate conversation i think i brought up in the midlister video because we're not going to detour into money for too long but advances have also been steadily declining over many years as part of the y a boom the way bubble slowly letting out air it's good and it's bad it's sucky that you're not gonna get your huge splashy six-figure deal but it's great because your weird little book that publishing now is like you know we might take a chance on this because we don't know what's next but this feels different they might only pay you 20 000 but you have a shot i actually am hopeful because maybe that next big thing it's out there and i hope publishing is gonna take the chances to actually acquire those things well i hope they learn their lesson that you can't just buy every book in existence and try to force hundreds and hundreds of books to compete with each other hunger game style but also publish the same type of book over and over and over again because you're desperately chasing a past success it's a horrible model they'll never stop completely but i hope this weird shift forces everyone to just kind of both kind of expand what they're acquiring but also narrow their focus better really focus on tight well-written books that serve both sides of the market because there's this whole other thing the other thing why i did to itself which i think contributes to this is we pushed so much to the adult side of the market the upper way side of the market that we got rid of lower oia which i think also impacts uh the category and sales i think why i just need to be more healthy about publishing a breath of books that's what it really needs to do in my humble opinion so the point is things are changing it sucks it's more stressful it's harder to get published in the first place now and it's harder to stay published once you are published it is i guess a different kind of hunger games as long as we're using that metaphor like it's always been hard it's just like the the screws have tightened in slightly different ways here's the shift that everyone has to make when it comes to y a y a is no longer an easy route to publishing this was a horrible kind of idea that developed and also sadly for a time was definitely true people would be like i want to be published i'll write y a why is easier it's easier to break in they throw six figures at books all the time and like the oh boom when something's booming yeah of course and admittedly yes it was easier for a time that is no longer the case why is just like every other part of publishing it's all hard and so in a good way i'm hoping this weeds out the lowest common denominator writers who thought why it was easy and that they could vomit out a stupid book and make a ton of money off it and some of them to get rewarded for that mentality which makes me very very mad but that's the thing why a is for the hardcore real dealers i don't think you should give up on y.a if you love why a if you eat sleep and breathe why a you read a ton of why a it is your love it really suits your voice and your writing style and the stories that you want to tell and you work hard at it keep doing that because those are the people who will make it nya who will survive nya the category is tightening but it doesn't mean it's going away it will survive and every single year y.a needs new fresh voices and writers they're publishing fewer debuts but fewer from 200 it's not that bad i suspect that we'll see debut classes that sit more in the area of 120 30 250. i hope they don't edge closer to 200 and also in fairness a lot of that trimming is also coming from a lot of the smaller publishers are definitely going to fold i said that in the covid video i stand by that there are a lot of smaller publishers who tried to get into the ya game and there have been rumblings pre-covered of many of them just not being very good and so i think a lot of those will go away and again that is going to suck for a lot of people but i mean this is capitalism this is how businesses work so yeah i think things are going to continue to shift and tighten and change but i don't if you love y a i don't think you should give up on it this just means you have to be very very serious about it all you have to stay on top of reading you have to stay on top of the market as much as possible you have to stay on top of your own craft i do think we're gonna see less and less of someone being able to vomit out a book maybe edit it once land a huge agent and get a huge six-figure book deal and their book comes out the next year it's always gonna happen sometimes but meaning it's never a bad thing to work on bringing your a game in your writing work on your craft it's a gut punch every single time that you write a book and it doesn't work out because it's harder to get an agent now and so on and so on tackle those revisions write a new book narrow in on what isn't working keep going now in some cases this is this is the other thing i have in it quietly but still publicly like in videos and on reddit advising and mentees actually advising anyone who if you aren't 100 why a all the time if you even have an inkling an inclination toward anything else middle grade adult it's not a bad idea to explore those other areas so that's the thing if your heart and soul isn't nya or if you could certainly explore something else and it would be just as fun and challenging and interesting for you i'm also seeing plenty of people both debuts and authors who have already had a debut finding success in other areas in parts of publishing that have been more mature for a very long time and are in some ways easier to potion because they didn't saturate themselves to hack so this could be a good opportunity for many people to push themselves further out of ya especially because so many of us i mean if you're writing i hope you're an adult we are adults try reading outside of why a you might be surprised especially when it comes to like sci-fi fantasy romance you'd be amazed what premises you have don't always have to by a you could actually write somewhere else i don't think way tightening is a death canal for all writers it just means that a boom wonderful time is over it's been over for a while it's just people haven't noticed till now because now we're really getting the clear big signals like imprint shutting down so what should you expect going forward as i already mentioned i think debut acquisitions are gonna continue to decline but the interesting thing about 2021 is kovit did actually shift a lot of things they had to move a ton of books but also because i think they had well of course they had expected a normal acquisition season in the spring of 2020 and then that didn't happen i have actually seen a lot of acquisitions over the summer and fall that books that are now being crashed into 2021 and that's the thing just always remind yourself publishing stills to publish books y is not going away but i do i generally think we're going to see smaller debut classes but i also think genuinely we'll see better experiences for more debuts because this should mean there's more oxygen across the board for sales marketing publicity etc because honestly all of these imprints they were over tasked you know these poor marketing sales and publicity people editors as well but especially like you'll have six editors but then all the work is dumped on three publicists you know what i mean who were asked to work on an insane number of books and it is true that they had to make tough decisions with oxygen so i think this could potentially be better for a lot of people it sucks in the short term of course and then just the other thing to expect just realistically so in print shutting publishers selling hmh is up for sale now as well there's gonna be more consolidation this is just the beginning so it is a little scary um and i won't diminish those feelings if you have an agent like batten down the hatches with your agent talk strategy have a long term plan because it can be possible that if your publisher is sold or your imprint is shuttered consolidation basically means either editors are let go or they're moved to other teams and like you usually are fine in the short term but it can mean then they're acquiring less going forward i think we are going to see that so for example simon and schuster or hmh if they sold to another publisher for example there would definitely be consolidation like what we saw with the penguin random house merger but it also just depends a publisher can sell to a company that isn't already in the publishing business and they might not consolidate much at all it really really varies the other thing that's also already been happening and i think people might notice more going forward but it's been happening for a while and i have an entire video on it as well you should watch my primer on ip or license content which is intellectual property where authors are hired to write someone else's intellectual property or idea this has already been happening for a long time and you know the properties like marvel or star wars but also quietly had a lot of your favorite publishers harper simon and schuster scholastic there are more i know some of them a lot of the books that you see sell were actually ip where the publisher that you know brainstormed an idea in an editorial meeting and then the editor reached out to agents to hire an author to develop and write it and so what's happening more and more that is a survival mechanism honestly both for debuts and for existing authors i think you're going to see more situations where it's honestly prudent and smart if you're not able to sell your debut the book you wrote and signed with your agent on ip opportunities can be a great way to get published same thing if you've already sold a book but you're struggling to get your options sold open yourself up to ip opportunities a ton of pro authors like the ones who write full time that is how they survive alongside their original fiction though the thing is so much work goes into ip that it's i i feel that it belongs to the authors as well i could rant long about people who look down on ip i'm not a fan i'm like a lot of work goes into ip and in fact the ones where the publisher hires you they want you to make that idea yours and it does become yours as you work on it and that's the thing a ton of authors are doing this already because it's one of the best ways to survive in the industry you're a good writer you're a workhorse writer you're easy to work with you get those jobs and then just kind of my final point of what to expect or the hope that i'm going to leave you with that's what i'm gonna call it as i mentioned why a still has to publish books why still has to publish debuts why are you still going to chase breakouts and fresh ideas they're not really going to change even though i wish they would you know be a little nicer to niche books quiet books historical sci-fi and give them a little more love and oxygen but the reality is of course they want more breakups because breakouts make a lot of money and it could be you and i want you to hold on to that hope like work on your book channel your love into your book make it shiny and gorgeous and write a great query and query agents both new and hungry but also some of those a-lister dream agents you don't know what's gonna happen and i think it's always worth trying because it could be you because it has to be someone because why is not going away it is dying it's diminishing it's changing it's not really dying it's not going to die why will not be dead but it is transitioning to a new phase of life and it is scary and it is weird but i mean i'm here for you like so seriously i have been trying to warn you for years and so many of the videos i make are to help you get through this it is harder than ever to get your foot in the door of y publishing but it is 100 doable and possible so don't give up basically is what i'm saying unless you want to try something else in which case seriously you get my full support do not torture yourself trying to pursue y a if it's not working for you so okay this was a doozy this is a big one but i hope this was interesting i hope it answered any questions you have alleviated fears that you had and let me know down below in the comments how are you feeling what are your questions are there things you've noticed that i didn't talk about just inhale exhale deep breath i know it's weird privately so many of us have been talking about this for a while we continue to talk about it like when we see that an imprint is shutting we're in the you know dms and we're like and we're checking in on our friends who are with those imprints and we're making sure everyone is okay it's big and it's scary but it's gonna be okay and give this video a thumbs up if you like it i will make more discussion style videos about the industry and the state of things and if you're not already subscribed to the channel go ahead and do that i post new videos two to three times a week as always guys thank you so much for watching and happy writing

Channel: Alexa Donne

Views: 45,305

Rating: 4.9369187 out of 5

Keywords: alexa donne, author tube, writing advice, how to write a book, publishing advice, young adult fiction, ya fiction, the problem with ya fiction, is ya fiction dying, young adult fiction dying, publishing ya fiction, ya publishing industry

Id: 8Oweb_KWF7Q

Length: 29min 20sec (1760 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 16 2020