Why We Need "New Adult"

I won't pretend to be an expert on what sells in the publishing world. If I were an expert, I'd be published and everyone would know my name. Alas, I'm still working on that.

A current argument in the writing/agenting/publishing world is the need for New Adult. What is New Adult you ask? It's that coming of age time, between high school and full blown adulthood, where you might be of legal age but usually don't feel like a full fledged adult like our parents. For me, it's the 18-25 years. Some are in college. Some are still living at home. In my journey, I went the marriage and kids route. For everyone it's different, but one common  thread is we were all trying to figure out how this adulthood thing worked.

I've heard the argument in kids literature that kids like to "read up".The upper Elementary student is reading about Middle School. The Middle School student is reading about High School. The early High School student is reading about the upper High School years. With this I agree.

But what about the upper High School student? You know, the ones about to graduate and move in to that next stage.  When I was finishing high school, I was thinking about college (I had not met my now husband yet) and deciding what I wanted to do. I would have loved to read about those years. See what others were doing. Was that available? Not that I could find.

So I take it publishers think that those about to graduate don't care about that next stage. Or maybe they don't believe that age group has time to read. I completely disagree and I know others do as well. I just finished reading a post from J. Lea Lopez  from the blog From The Write Angle talking about this exact topic. You can read it here In Support Of New Adult Fiction. We seem to think a like on this topic.

It is my hope that one day this category will be recognized. I feel it is needed. The "New Adult" years can be just as exciting and scary as the teen years, maybe more so, and should be represented. It's one of the biggest transitions in a person's life and deserve some shelf space!