Today I got into an interesting conversation on Twitter about what the phrase "New Adult" means to people. It wasn't that long ago that agents and editors were saying it's
not a thing. But recently, Publishers Marketplace made a new category for New Adult in its deals listings. So I guess that means it
is a thing now.
I personally don't know much about it. In my head, "new adult" means contemporary romance featuring college-aged or twenty-something protagonists. Much of what I know, I learned from the
Clear Eyes, Full Shelves podcast on the topic (You can go listen to that now, I'll wait). But on Twitter I was told it is so much more than that.
So I decided to do some research. I went to the New Adult category on PM and looked at the sales they list. There are only 24 sales there right now, and I am sure there are plenty of self-published or indie published NA books out in the world--these are just the ones that were fancy enough to rate a mention in PM.
The above graph shows how many of the deals where for original works vs how many were for books that had already been self-published. Honestly, I rather assumed that self-published would be the majority. (I should note, however, that some of the deals that were sequels, prequels or otherwise based on already self-published works are in the "original" category so long as that text wasn't actually already published.) But it's still pretty even. Readers are still finding these books, and publishers are getting in on it.
Another thing that interested me is where are these books going to be shelved. That was a problem I have discussed with numerous other agents and editors. Ultimately, a book can be shelved in one part of the store. So are they adult or children's? I looked at which imprints were buying the books and sorted them by adult imprints or children's imprints. And you can see that, NA books are not really going to children's houses as much as they are going adult places. This sort of confirms my impression that "NA" is for adult publishers who want to get in on the "YA" market & readership.
Should I ever acquire a NA novel, I'm going to want to know which houses to send it to. These are the places those 24 deals were with. You can see that
William Morrow (at Harper Collins) and
Atria (at Simon & Schuster) the top buyers of NA. These are both adult imprints, of course.
Surprisingly, St. Martin's--which kind of coined the term "new adult"--is not on the list.
Finally I looked into what genre NA books are (besides being NA, duh). Like I said above, I associate NA with contemporary romance but I've been pitched Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Mystery NA which sometimes confuses me. (Why not just shelve it in those genre spaces instead of worrying about the fact that NA doesn't have shelf space at the moment?)
Anyway, I am not entirely right. There are NA sales that are not contemporary romance. These sales were fantasy and dystopian--kinda of younger paranormal romance. I've also heard from a couple NA authors on Twitter who wrote historical new adult novels that got picked up before this PM category was introduced.
So that's what NA means to Publishers Marketplace and to me. What do you think of when you think of "new adult"? And do you have any favorite new adult novels?
