YA Deals 2011-2012, Part III
So trends! Well...
Paranormal
is definitely moving away from vampires and werewolves. The only vampire deal I saw was for an existing series, and I only saw two werewolf and two angel blurbs, of which one each was new.
There were several folklore tales, a few ghosts and demons, and one dragon. Otherwise, it appears that "psychic" is the new "vampire" (ignoring the fact that our friend to the left is a psychic vampire to being with.)
Nonfiction:
Most of the nonfiction deals were for memoirs (and several of those account for the adults moving to YA).
Historical:
Nobody writes
about the 70s. Hasn't anyone seen "Dazed and Confused"? "That 70s Show"?
These pictures are kind of random, except for Shakespeare, Poe, Houdini, Shelley, and Jack the Ripper.
"
Retellings
" fell all over the genre map.
And finally...
Only 3.5 celebrities got YA deals in this time period.
(I'm counting one listing as a 1/2 because the blurb made him sound internet famous, but it was no one I'd ever heard of.)
This is a good reminder to be wary of infographics: from looking at this chart, you might infer that being a celebrity makes getting a deal more difficult, or that celeb deals are tiny. However, none of them listed a price tag, which means you can probably use your imagination and/or logic to figure out the rest.
Check back next month when we'll be looking at covers, minority representation, and how many floating/dead/girls in ballgowns we can count.
If you have suggestions for other publishing-related charts, please leave them in the comments, and thanks for reading!
Same disclaimers apply:
I took "math for liberal arts major" in college...
All figures were taken from Publisher's Marketplace deal reporting. I didn't download any statistics from their website- I counted the deals (not individual books) manually and assigned my own categories when necessary. Special thanks to Phoebe North and Kristin Halbrook for helping me categorize titles; a few errors are likely and are totally mine.
These charts are not a full representation of YA publishing, because some agents and editors choose not to list deals in Publisher's Marketplace, nor have I included any foreign sales.
Dystopian includes apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic.
These books sold in the past year, but your local bookstore shelves won't reflect these numbers until at least winter 2012, at the earliest. See Carrie Ryan's post for more information on YA deal time frames.