In which I host an informal Q&A with questions nobody asked about a genre nobody cares about.
Maybe you’ve never heard of New Adult as a genre. Maybe you’re one of those people who’s getting a little tired of all these new and oddly specific genres that keep trying to pop up. Maybe you have heard of New Adult, maybe you’ve fallen prey to the misconceptions, maybe you don’t see the point.
Where did it come from?
Most source St. Martin’s Press as the originator of the term New Adult, but it didn’t take off without the help of the independent author scene. Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire, originally independently published, is said to be the book that initially paved the way for New Adult fiction.
But what is it?
Some say that labeling a book ‘New Adult’ is nothing more than a marketing ploy, but here’s the thing… Genres are all made up anyway a convenient way to sell books. How else is a reader supposed to go from ‘I would like a story about X’ to actually picking up a book? Pointing someone to a pile of books and saying ‘There’s books!’ will only sell to the more dedicated bookworms, let’s be real. Being able to point to a specific group of books with a unifying theme will never be a bad thing.
Like Young Adult, New Adult is really just an age range. Where Young Adult drops off at 18 years old, New Adult picks up 18-30. It can be paired with any other genre; Contemporary, SciFi, Fantasy, Historical, Paranormal, Dystopia… We have a lot of room to play here! Voice can also be a defining feature, as it is in Young Adult. First Person just lends itself a little better to these kinds of self exploratory stories, usually.
The real unifying theme is the protagonist’s age and the struggles they face. It has been called the genre of firsts; first real job, beginning college, serious long term relationships, etc.
I’m an adult… now what?: The Genre. If Young Adult is about shiny young kids with potential overcoming the big bad, then New Adult is those same kids after the dust has settled, picking up the pieces and deciding where to go from there. It’s about people establishing lives for themselves, deciding who they will be, reveling and stumbling around this new independence.
If it’s so great, why isn’t it a ‘real’ genre?
Well, Beautiful Disaster is a contemporary romance. So were the books that followed. Did you know, TeCHniCALly, 50 Shades of Gray falls under New Adult? And boy, if I had a nickel for every time I read some variation of ‘just sexed up YA’ while gathering information for this post… We got pigeon holed real bad. So bad, in fact, that the only real legitimization the genre got was a BISAC code as a subgenre of romance. (Meanwhile, YA is it’s own entire list with subgenres.)
New Adult can and should go beyond a trend in romance. There is so much untapped potential here! So many ways to let people feel seen and heard during a really crazy time of life.
Why does any of this matter?
Honestly, because I am a new adult and I would like to more easily find stories that deal with the types of things that are currently prevalent in my life. Because my friends are new adults and they say things like ‘why aren’t there any good stories about people like us?’. There is a readership. And any excuse to tell more, different stories is a good excuse in my book.
… And that’s my two cents on the new adult genre, thanks for coming to my tedtalk.
abruptly mystic 