Now that I'm posting, I'm on a roll, and I'm creating my third post in the last half hour. Or ten minutes. Whatever.
I'm struggling with The Age Problem(™). Basically, one of the novels I'm currently working on is about college students. The problem with this, is that it's the particularly nasty age where the characters I'm writing about are older than teenagers, but since readers (particularly teenagers) generally read up, my readers would probably be in their late teens. The question, really, is do I try and publish as Young Adult, or Adult Fiction? It's a tough call, really. I think that my characters, still being fairly young, are easily related to by teenagers. The problem is that they aren't teenagers.
Why can't they just have a "College Age Fiction" genre?
There's been a lot of chatter about this in publishing lately. What I can tell you for sure is that it would be considered adult fiction. If you're planning to go the agent route, that's what they'll want. If you want to go it alone, you might have a shot at St. Martin's Press. They've recently launched a new imprint they're calling "New Adult." It's exactly the age group you're talking about.
ReplyDeleteIt's a tough market, believe me. I've got my own book of this age group, and so far no luck. I'm hoping my current rewrite will do the job. Wish us both luck!
Let me know if there's anything I can help with when you're ready to work publication.
- Liz
That's what I was afraid of. It bothers me a bit that it's considered adult fiction (though I realize why it is, of course), because it's targeted to a specified age group. Ahh!!! Thank you for the information! I'll have to keep it in mind for sure when I'm trying to get published. Half the time, I'm about ready to throw down the towel on the book and start writing a new novel of the Young Adult genre.
ReplyDeleteAlso, thank you for your offer to help when publishing comes along. I'll definitely need it, especially since I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing in that regard. I wish us both luck, and let me know if your rewrite works!