New Chapter for Young Adult Books

Sixteen-year-old Julie Gross knows what she likes: rain, vintage clothing, Tori Amos, journal writing and, especially, books. The Santa Monica High School student says she likes “a wide variety of genres” but prefers “real-life stories, things I can relate to.”

Her taste might be merely a curiosity, except for one detail: What Julie thinks about what she reads influences teenagers across the country. She is a member of the Teen People Book Club’s “Review Crew,” one of 21 teens paid to write book reviews for the club’s Web site and catalog.

“We hear so much that teens don’t read, that they aren’t interested, but clearly that’s not the case,” says Laurie Calkhoven, editorial director of the club, a collaborative partnership between Teen People magazine and the Book-of-the-Month Club. Since the club launched last year, industry sources say, it has enrolled nearly a million members, who buy books from the club’s Web site and catalog.

Julie and the rest of the review crew are part of a marketing force that in the last six years has transformed literature for young adults--the market description for 12-to-18-year-olds--into a $1.5-billion industry. Seven years ago, the book world was wondering whether such literature would survive. But by increasing the variety of books being published for teens, launching new ventures and rethinking how to market to a media-savvy generation, librarians, publishers and booksellers have managed to resuscitate the genre. Though far behind the curve of other media, the book industry is beginning to cash in on the economic power of the teenager. And this is not just a “Harry Potter”-inspired craze; youth literature is in the throes of what librarian, author and Booklist columnist Michael Cart--who in 1994 first sounded the death knell for teen literature in a speech to the Young Adult Library Services Assn.--calls a second “golden age.”

The “young adult” genre began, quite specifically, in 1967, with the publication of S.E. Hinton’s “The Outsiders,” a book about a group of “greasers” caught in the middle of a class war that captured the turbulent life of many American teens and shattered the notion of what teenagers could and would read. More books followed--authors Robert Cormier and Judy Blume wrote about “real-life” issues such as sex and suicide and drugs--and by the mid-1970s, an astonishing number of so-called “problem novels” had found an audience.

But as this new genre grew to maturity, its early promise began to fade. The number of American teens fell, as did the number of books for them. By 1994, “I was hearing increasingly that Y.A. literature was either dead or in imminent peril of dying,” says Cart. “I felt an opportunity for us to look back at the roots of Y.A. literature and then to try to build on those a new literature for a new kind of teenager.”

In a deliberate effort to revive the genre, Cart teamed up with other leaders of the young adult literary community--including editors Marc Aronson, then at Holt, and David Gale, then at HarperCollins--who, Cart says, “made it their business to persuade their publishers” that investing in books for teens was good for literature and for business. Their timing was, in many ways, fortuitous. By 1998, the number of American teenagers had begun to rise consistently for the first time since the 1970s. Today, there are more than 30 million teens in the United States, and that number is expected to grow to 35 million by 2010.

And these teens spend money--almost $150 billion a year. One has only to look at the list of 2000’s top musical acts--which was dominated by such performers as the Backstreet Boys and Eminem--to understand that these demographics represent an incredible economic force. But the amount teens spend on books, according to the Rand Youth Poll, represents only 1% of their total spending and a fraction of the money that goes to movies and music. Although many of these teens use school and local libraries to borrow books, and many books for teenagers are purchased by parents, the book industry is betting it can persuade more teens to devote more money to the purchase of the written word.

“When Y.A. was officially called dead,” says Aronson, now editorial director and vice president of Carus Publishing and author of the upcoming “Exploding the Myths: The Truth About Teenagers and Reading,” “some publishers allowed one novel a year. But now that we know there’s a market there, you can try more stuff out.” And indeed, the books being published for teenagers in the first part of the 21st century echo a wide range of interests as well as the mature themes and topics of pop music, videos and movies. They are modern books for modern teenagers--including “reality fiction” like Todd Strasser’s “Give a Boy a Gun,” the story of the devastation left by two boys who storm a school dance with semiautomatic rifles and homemade bombs; Patricia McCormick’s “Cut,” the story of a girl in therapy for cutting herself; and Sarah Dressen’s “Dreamland,” the story of a teenage girl trapped in an abusive relationship, but also a range of nonfiction books, from fanzines such as “ ‘Nside ‘N Sync: The Ultimate Official Album,” which was the Teen People Book Club’s No. 1 book for 2000, to self-help books like “How to Be a Teenage Millionaire.”

To further increase the variety and scope of books geared to teens, publishers are linking with other popular media. Pulse, an imprint of Pocket Books, has published tie-in books with WB shows such as “Felicity” and “Dawson’s Creek.” Delacourt Press has doled out $1 million to publish two books written by Britney Spears and her mother.

Partnerships with magazines are flourishing as well, from the real-life diary series Scholastic published in conjunction with Teen magazine to the line of books HarperCollins launched with Seventeen largely based on features in the magazine. Teen-friendly Web sites are fodder too, especially given that teens use the Web more than any other demographic group. HarperCollins has introduced a line of books with Boycrazy.com, fictional romances with the same “girl empowerment” tone as the Web site, and Penguin Putnam teamed with the online teen site Alloy.com to produce AlloyBooks, whose latest titles include a collection of essays about faith and religion and an anthology of slam poetry.

Bookstores are also using the multimedia approach to reach teen buyers. Both independent and chain stores are creating special areas for teen readers, displaying magazines and sometimes CDs alongside teen-oriented books. “I’ve actually gotten books for presents for my friends,” says Lizzie Bonamy, a high school senior, because “Vroman’s [Bookstore in Pasadena] has a section just for teenager girls, and that whole section caught my eye.”

Jewel’s two recent books, though marketed to adults, found their niche with the singer’s teenage fans and were often displayed alongside her music. And their remarkable popularity reflects another shift within the industry: The line between what is a “teen” book and an “adult” book is disappearing.

In stores and in the Teen People Book Club catalog, books such as “Drowning Ruth,” a recent Oprah Book Club pick, stand side by side with more traditional “young adult” classics such as “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” “If you look at the top 20 books we sold last year,” says the teen club’s Calkhoven, “they are all over the place. Teens aren’t just reading books about boy bands or astrology or how to look pretty--they are also reading serious novels and books like “Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul.’ ”

Amid all of these marketing changes, books for teenagers, especially works of fiction, are regaining the kind of recognition the genre once enjoyed. In 1996, the National Book Foundation reestablished a National Book Award category for young people’s literature after a 12-year hiatus. More recently, the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and the American Library Assn. (which awards the Newbery and Caldecott prizes) added categories for young adult literature. But while such awards often provide a temporary bump in book sales, they do not provide a long-term solution. And that’s where teenagers like Julie come in.

Creative Ways to Generate Buzz

While most publishers rely on television talk shows, newspaper ads and traditional reviews to publicize upcoming adult releases, publishers of teen books have far fewer options. Monthly magazines such as Seventeen and Teen People run one or two book reviews a month, but in most circumstances, limited budgets prevent publishers from undertaking ad campaigns or author tours.

“Your best shot is giving them away to kids who read, to begin to create a word-of-mouth buzz,” Aronson says. “Harry Potter” had little advance publicity but was talked up by children and teenagers, and the book’s success proved the potency of word-of-mouth. Traditional bookstores have always been good at hand-selling books, especially to parents of children and teens. And online bookstores such as Amazon and BN.com “recommend” books based on a user’s past purchases. But the Internet sellers also allow readers to post insta-reviews on their sites.

On the Web, teenagers’ affinity for letting people know what they think about the media they consume has taken word-of-mouth to the next level. “Teenagers have always been involved [in book discussions] through library reading groups, but there you only get the better readers,” says David Gale, now editorial director at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. As publishers rethink how to connect with teenagers, they are also realizing that they can harness teens’ need to comment and offer feedback even before books are published. Last year, in cooperation with almost 20 publishers, the Young Adult Library Services Assn. launched the “Galleys for Teens” project, a kind of instant focus group for teen books. Publishers make upcoming releases available to specific teen reading groups based in libraries across the country, and the teens make comments and evaluations of the books--their cover art, age-appropriateness, even character development and dialogue--which are then forwarded to the publishers.

Thus far, teens are echoing what publishers already had begun to sense: They want a choice of hard- and soft-cover books, and their artistic tastes demand more from books’ covers. “Kids are contemporary,” says Aronson, “why shouldn’t our covers have that contemporary, emotional edge? After all, we are selling to kids who are responsive and astute about visual imagery.”

As teen book covers have moved away from the “realist” approach to a hipper, more graphic and art-heavy look, new books reflect this change, and classics are being “repackaged.” Simon & Schuster has launched a redesign of its entire Judy Blume line; gone are the ‘70s illustrations and the pastel colors, in are the more contemporary images in deeper shades like black and purple. “You’re not supposed to judge the book by its cover,” says Bonamy, “but it gets you to look at them--they are brightly colored and flashy and fun reading.”

While all of these changes suggest that teen literature has moved to a new level, there is also a real fear that, for teenagers and their publishers, the palpable joy of book-making and book-reading will be lost, as books become, simply, one more commodity to be bought and sold. Could a book like “The Catcher in the Rye,” were it published today, withstand the focus groups, the cover art standards and the power of the bottom line? “The best Y.A. literature has been written just for itself,” says Peggy Campbell, the young adult columnist for the Horn Book, a magazine covering the children’s book industry.

For teens such as Julie Gross, books have special meaning. “I love reading,” she says, reflecting on the perks of her job. “It’s not any more work to read an extra book, and I love writing, and you get paid for it.” Yet it’s with the other teenagers, the ones who are discovering books because of their new content and focus, where the greatest opportunity lies. Mary Arnold, president of the Young Adult Library Services Assn. and a librarian in Maple Heights, Ohio, is optimistic. “With all the possibilities,” she says, “I think teenagers and reading will expand rather than disappear.”