Monday, October 08, 2007

teen genre missing here?

It was interesting (and a pleasure) talking to the charming David Levithan, publisher of the Push imprint, in New York. There is a whole teen genre in the US which doesn't exist here, which David said started when they pulled the teen books out of the children's section and put it next to the adults section.

2 comments:

Jess the Reader said...

I surprised you think we don't have this genre here. I've definitely seen it grow over the past ten years - there is much more choice now than there was when I was teenager (I'm almost 25). Even better, authors and publishers seem to be realising that teens are a buying power of their own, so there are books being marketed directly to them, rather than to their parents. This always infuriated me as a teenage reader, and then as an older teenage bookseller.
Teen Power!

Andrew's red dog blog said...

I don't want to be confusing teen with YA, which has grown I think in the past ten years. Teen to me does seem to be much more potent over there than here. Series like Gossip Girl just don't seem to have been given the same profile by publishers and booksellers as they are being given "over there". I like your point about marketing direct to teens. I think publishers consider it a difficult market as "interest in reading is dying off post primary" and maybe it is a failure of marketing - getting the message out there in the way the teens are wanting to receive it.