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GET THEM WHILE THEY’RE YOUNG
Twitter @RealSarahNoffke | SarahNoffke.com
Scroll the feed on Instagram, and you’ll
come to a few conclusions. They might
be: she definitely shouldn’t be wearing
that, is that dude out of his mind, and
holy batman young adults love their
books. I follow more than a few book
addicts on Instagram, and they all happen
to be ones who are obsessed with taking
pictures of their bookshelves, rather than
their freckled faces. When was the last
time that you saw Helen, the retired
widow, arranging her books in the garden
so she could take a pretty picture to post
on social media? So what’s my point? It’s
that we need to be catering to this hungry
market. Young adults crave the actual
pages of books. They use the hashtag for
cover love more than anyone else. Young
adult fantasy is especially hot right now,
and I don’t see that changing anytime
soon. And if we know this knowledge,
then we should be using it.
When I was a young adult, I didn’t
think I liked to read. Stop gasping and
listen to me. It’s because the books I was
forced to read were Heart of Darkness and
Frankenstein. Now before you forever
loathe me for complaining about being
exposed to classic literature, please hear
me out. While those novels are amazing
in their own way, they aren’t something
relatable for a young adult. I know,
you’re shocked, I’ve never, not once,
sailed down the Congo. It wasn’t until
later that I accidentally picked up a young
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doesn’t know who they are, what they
want or who they love. The key to
good young adult fiction is exploring
these potentials. And the key to happy
readers is to find the stories that they
can relate to, while also creating
characters with extraordinary
potential. Finally, because I like sets
of three, the key to success for
authors, libraries, and retailers is
tapping into this hungry market.
Hooking the young and young at
heart readers is a great strategy.
From my experience, there aren’t
more loyal followers than those who
post their TBR lists on social media.
Having written five young adult and
new adult series, I’ll claim to know a little
bit about the genre. New adult is this
relatively recent category that is just
starting to emerge. It has fewer rules than
young adult and is relatable to a larger
audience. However, I will disclose that most
of the readers of my young adult series are
thirty-something-year-old women. I’ve
polled readers and found that there is an
irresistible draw to young adult characters,
due to their abounding potential. It’s fun
when a character is still developing and I keep hearing a rumor that the
book market is over saturated. Honestly,
I can’t find relevant data to support
that. If my Instagram feed serves as
antidotal evidence, then young adults
actually don’t have enough books. If I
see another picture in my feed of the
Harry Potter series with a newly
released cover, I’m chunking my phone
across the room. #coverlove
by Sarah Noffke (TopShelf Columnist)
adult novel that I fell in love with books. I
remember the exact moment. It was like
Prince Charming walked into the room
and I was instantly in love. That passion
for young adult literature then grew, and
now I read books of all genres. However,
too often I think we force the classics
before we’ve hooked the young reader. I
believe we cater to the adult readers, not
realizing that it’s the teens of the world
that are going to break down doors to get
at fresh paperbacks. They are obsessed
with covers. Obsessed with collecting
spicy fantasy novels. And most
importantly, they are consumers who have
decades of reading ahead of them.
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