Back in 2009, the term New Adult (a genre of books about 18-25 year-olds) was coined by St. Martin’s Press, and people have been wetting their pants over it ever since. Said pants wetting usually involves a lot of judgmental commentary (“Why are older women reading this stuff? And why does it have so much sex in it?”)
Given that I’m writing a series of books about people in their 20s, I’m surprisingly agnostic about New Adult as a genre. I leave it to the keener minds in the publishing world and the public libraries to figure out how to sell books and where to put them. I care very much about the quality of these books, but how we package them is a logistics issue.
I do understand the impetus behind New Adult (besides its marketing potential). I’ve worked in communications at two universities, so I know that adults 18-25 expect targeted content. Yes, they’ve read Harry Potter and Gone Girl, just like the rest of us, so they’re not locked into reading one particular genre. But they want books that reflect their own experiences, too.
I hear a million lit fiends crying out, “But those books already exist!” Yes, yes they do. Except…
One of the primary complaints about New Adult is that it’s just a glorified extension of the romance genre. But that actually makes a lot of sense. More women read fiction than men, and women read a whole lot of romance. So it stands to reason that college-aged women are reading it, too. And the truth is, the times they have a’changed.
Just like Georgette Heyer seems downright virginal by today’s standards, a lot of contemporary romance probably feels tame to younger women, because their sexual habits and mores are different. Witness the phrase slut-shaming–an activity that previous generations indulged in with glee and abandon.
So New Adult romances with edgy heroes and plenty of sex make a lot of sense to me. Whether the genre as a whole will endure is another issue. Either way, I’ll keep writing about the lives of my 20-something characters, and let you all decide what you want to call it.
