Want to Explore What Makes YA Fiction Messaging Speak to All Ages?

Despite the strength of the digital age, print books are still going strong. In 2020, as the world settled in to weather the global pandemic, the print book market saw a considerable boost, and sales rose 18% in the US.

What about young adult (YA) fiction? Sales were slowly ticking up in the year before the pandemic, but with that boom in 2020, the YA novel market exploded as sales jumped roughly 30%!

What Makes YA Fiction Messaging Speak to All Ages?

So I guess that means youths everywhere stopped hanging on TikTok or whatever and started reading, right? Not entirely! A massive contributor to those sales comes from the adult population, too. So why is it that readers of all ages gravitate to the pages of YA novels?

The Anatomy of YA Stories

Before we can explore the ‘why’, let’s quickly refresh what makes a YA novel what it is. These stories focus on young people in the 12-18 bracket (though some tertiary 20-somethings do sneak in there as secondary characters.)

Even if they’re sci-fi or fantasy, they run shorter than their adult counterparts, with the average YA novel counting no more than 95,000 words on the larger end. And most importantly, they’re written to capture themes important to their teen and young adult audience, dealing with sometimes serious topics in a more digestible way.

By keeping the language relevant to the audience and making the reads quicker and more straightforward, these books speak directly to their readers, helping them deal with life’s ups and downs as the protagonist does.

A Wizarding Gateway Drug

So, when it comes to adults reading YA, one of the prime examples that come to mind is the craze over the Harry Potter series. When they started to pick up steam worldwide, the publisher began printing two cover variants, with one geared towards adult readers.

The mindset was adults didn’t want others to think they were reading a “children’s story,” but the fact was, they loved Harry and his wizardry. Some theorize that this instigated the adult interest in YA novels, that since Harry Potter, it’s become more and more acceptable for older audiences to enjoy books targeting young adults and teens.

Universal Messaging

Did people start reading novels like Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone because the cover art looked cool? Not likely. It was probably word of mouth. But once they started turning the pages, something caught their eye. Many experts argue that what truly pulls all ages into YA novels are the themes.

YA centers on a protagonist’s struggle, which usually covers a variety of themes from young love to coping with loss to coming of age, self-discovery, and beyond, all through the lens of someone experiencing these things for the first time.

Whether you’re a fifteen-year-old figuring out how to navigate a crush or a thirty-something reminiscing on a summer vacation at the lake in your youth, you understand what these themes are all about.

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Familiar Tales of Yore

It’s argued, and I tend to agree, that many adults reading YA novels get to feel what it’s like to experience these teenage ‘firsts’ once again. Many of us grew up reading YA, whether we liked it or not, via our school syllabus, so these stories and themes are familiar to adult audiences who continue reading them.

It also makes sense that if you grew up reading these types of books in school, your preferences would remain upon entering adulthood. What’s more, sometimes even adults need to remember how to deal with some of life’s situations.

Because while we often like to think that we’ve gone past our coming of age once we hit our twenties, in truth, we’re still learning and adapting as we go. And the lessons that YA novels subtly offer are, at their core, just as relevant at any age, even if the more adult situations have become more complex.

Easy to Read

With YA literature taking a more digestible approach to its concepts, world-building, and language, they’re easy to pick up and read. Sometimes you don’t want to invest the energy and thought into navigating overly complex plot threads and philosophical approaches to life.

That’s not to say YA novels are ‘simple’ as many titles deal with dark, mature issues despite their target audience. While they offer a certain amount of escapism in their pages, they’re still quite grounded and allow readers of all ages to explore themes with depth and care.

If anything, a lot of YA literature focuses more on developing emotions and thoughts around a given theme than adult books do. Again, because of how protagonists approach every circumstance through the lens of it being a new experience. Thus it makes for quick reading that still has substance.

Excellent Literature

Finally, it’s worth pointing out how wildly successful YA literature is because it’s so well-written. Regardless of the target age, famed YA authors from Suzanne Collins to John Green are creating magic on the page. That’s why they top sales charts and become household names due to film and television adaptations. Regardless of the target audience’s age, quality writing is still quality writing.

The stats are clear: people love YA books. From the intended audience to people well into adulthood, these stories hold something for everyone. In fact, for a long time, adults were the largest consumer audience of YA novels.

It could be as simple as an audience reading YA through their school years is just growing up and continuing to read what they know. But the quality and themes could also attract new adult readers to leaf through their pages.

Writing Getting By, it was centered around my high school experiences. But I can see how an adult audience could find something in common with Carver’s journey. Adults were once teens, too; those years are formative, living with us forever.

And to be honest, we never stop learning and growing, so YA novels hold lessons for anyone that picks them up. I hope I answered the question: What Makes YA Fiction Messaging Speak to All Ages?And so if you’re an adult taking in YA stories, please feel free to find me on social media and share some of your current or past favorites.