Over on One.Blank.Cog, Ehren wonders:
Not too long ago HarperCollins Canada announced that they would be repackaging certain young adult novels for adults. Why???
Ehren thinks adults should own up to loving YA, and embrace the original covers in all their exuberant, cartoony, lime-and-pink-and-foil, teen glory.
As a nearly-published YA author, I can’t help but feel endeared to that sentiment. And as a fairly design-oriented person, I check out a lot of kids and YA books on the strength of their packaging. (Were it not for the original packaging of A Series of Unfortunate Events and the chain of events that discovery set off, would I even be writing at all? Spooky.)
However:
- Baby steps. Adult cover today… teen cover tomorrow… You never know. If people develop an affection for the genre they’ll eventually have to buy the teen cover because for most books there will still only be a teen cover. And I bet those people will be too lazy to make their own book covers to hide their
shameamazing reading experience. - People who buy adult covers may not actually love YA. Let’s sell them the book anyway. Suckers.
- I’d personally be all for a second “adult” cover for my book (Break On Through, Doubleday Canada, spring 2008) because that would mean… drumroll… at least two printings! And no one goes to that kind of trouble for something that’s not expected to fly off the shelf. Who would not want to be loved so much and to do so well?
- Might some young adults want to feel older-adult? Original covers have to appeal not only to kids, but (perhaps more so–) to librarians’, teachers’ and parents’ ideas of what appeals (or what they believe ought to appeal) to kids, ’cause most kids aren’t buying their own books. Not that librarians and teachers don’t have first hand experience of what many kids want, but how do you keep in touch with the 12 year olds who are reading more “advanced” adult books? I was never reading the “right” books at that age. How do you keep the YAs reading YA?
- Or does this speak to the legitimacy of YA as literature, and the possibility that these age groupings were never more than a function of marketing all along?
All of that considered, I have seen a draft of the cover of my book and I am pumped. It would be mighty hard to improve on the original illustration that’s going on there.
It’s all food for thought. This whole discussion is making me book-hungry.
Comments
Comment from Ehren
Time: August 17, 2007, 8:37 am
You are quite right in many regards Jill. I suppose I am merely being idealistic according to “me”
I don’t really like the idea of pushing books that are supposedly in one market into another via a simple cover redesign. I believe there are other ways of pushing forward a genre that has potential in other markets. That being said I can totally understand why there are advantages for the author to have two editions of a book.
The YA/Juvenile/Teen fiction or non-fiction in itself is a difficult realm to categorize. Adults being adults don’t really venture enough into this area unless it is for their classroom, family, etc. What can be done is a re-classification of the content inside the book so that it has the potential to be associated with “adult/grown-up” content. After all, I often hear people telling me that they are tired of reading all those literary fiction novels or serious non-fiction titles, and that they’d like to read something lighter and fun. Well, what can be more fun to read than a YA novel?
Comment from Jill
Time: August 17, 2007, 9:17 am
Well nothing, obviously.
There is also a developing YA-Crossover genre, I think particularly at the border of chick lit & YA, and more so in the UK than North America.
Do I have any titles to offer as an example? No. Someone help me out here? (La S? Can you name any?)
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