Why I'm Quitting
Or, a mini-lament about young adult fiction and my plans for the future
Notes:
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I record myself reading, but I beg of you to please listen at 1.5 speed.
I was set to publish this today at noon when someone I respect shared related views that I had to incorporate, so this is updated to the minute!
Get ready for a nerdy rant-adjacent post lamenting the state of fiction for teen readers and a too-long explanation as to why I’m quitting. I have been casually working on this draft post for months and months, and I’ve been thinking about some of the issues I get into here for years.
Before I get into it, though…a little background context is important: so who am I, how did I get started with writing for young adults in the first place, and why does this matter?
Who am I? This–jm laine–is a pseudonym I use to protect my children and my professional life. I like to think of myself as having a secret identity. By day, I am a high-level administrator and educational technology director at an independent PK-12 college preparatory school. I have more than twenty years of experience working in schools–the majority in high school with a brief stint in middle school. I began this career as an English teacher and continue teaching a summer creative writing class for high school students to this day. For reasons that I think should be obvious, I need to keep my writing life (the alter ego, my super secret identity) separate and protected from my professional life.
How did I get started with writing for young adults in the first place? I have been crafting stories for as long as I could hold a pencil. When I was little, my stories were about kids my own age in fantastical situations, or animals (particularly elephants stuck in zoos–it was a whole thing). I moved on to writing books about teens who were older than I was at the time. Then, I went through the classic emo poetry stage in high school. By the time college rolled around, I had zero interest in the lives of teens, and I dove into imitating “the greats” with short stories that were not nearly as deep as I imagined them to be at the time.
Then, I quit writing altogether for a decade. Being in my early twenties, working full time and coaching a three-season sport on the side meant that my plate seemed full, and, though a voice from my past nagged me consistently to go back to the page, it was never as loud as everything else. But I quit coaching and turned my attention to earning a graduate degree and when that wrapped, I heard about this weird little thing called NaNoWriMo (gosh, I wish that organization hadn’t crashed and burned the way it did). One NaNoWriMo later and the writing bug had sunk its teeth so deep into me that I don’t know if I’ll ever get free (or if I want to).
But at that critical moment in my life, young adult fiction was having quite a moment of its own. My students were reading avidly and discussing books for fun! As an English teacher who volunteered to teach several sections of struggling readers every year in the public school system, I knew what a life-changer a riveting book can be for a ninth grader stepping into high school and the era of critical decision-making. (Is it right that decisions teens make in high school can negatively impact their entire lives? Absolutely not, considering their frontal lobes are nowhere close to being developed, but I digress.)
It wasn’t only that I saw the runaway success of other young adult authors. I’ve never been a “jump on the bandwagon” kind of person anyway. And, I also cannot claim altruistic motivations for writing for young adults either. The thing is that my childhood was rotten with upheaval, trauma, poor decision making, indifferent and sometimes downright abusive parenting, and a general failure to thrive. The single, consistent thread throughout five moves and parent switches was that school was predictable. It didn’t matter which school I was in at any given time, the rules and metrics for success were largely unchanged and daily life was dynamic—not to mention the social conflicts laden with guaranteed drama every single day. I find comfort working within the constraints typical in this period of life as it was both a time that made sense in terms of my daily school life and also presented the most upheaval for me. As a career educator, I find the struggle between parental and society restrictions at a time when young adults are striving for independence particularly fertile ground for storytelling and exploration of what it means to become authentically oneself. But on another level, when I was a teenager, I needed books that dealt with things I could relate to because I didn’t have the stable home life, access to mental health care, or, due to frequent moves and other struggles, social connections that might otherwise have helped me grapple with my struggles. This period of life calls to me on an emotional and arstitic level.
Why does any of this matter? As an English teacher, I know the critical need for teens to have a wide array of titles from which to choose. The emphasis here needs to be placed on for teens. Yes, they can and in most cases should read from the classics as well, but they must also read from contemporary authors who are writing, not with adult women in mind, but with actual teenagers in mind. That is why this all matters, and it has a lot to do with why I have grappled with my decision to quit writing young adult fiction—for the time being.
So, let’s get into the meat of this decision for me. It comes down to my goals as a writer. I want to be published without paying out of pocket to get my books in print. It’s really this simple, and I’m largely writing this piece as a way to work through my own thoughts, but, as always with this Substack, I would guess that if I’m having this struggle someone else out there is, too, and isn’t it nice to feel less isolated and alone?
What has finally pushed me to moving on? Three things: I have grown tired of living in the gray area of new adult (NA) versus YA and the related “spice” debate; as an industry outsider who pays way too much attention, it seems like the young adult (YA) market is careening towards collapse; and I’ve lost any sense of how to find YA readers without the backing of traditional publishers.
Let’s DIG in.
ONE: The young adult (YA) versus new adult (NA) debate has fascinated me from many perspectives: as a writer, as a high school teacher/administrator, as a reader, and as a generally geeky and curious person who finds niche things “fascinating.” I have an entire stories highlight on my Instagram from a time when I was always talking about this topic. Please note that I’m not going back to relisten or further curate that highlight1. It is what it is, even if my views and opinions or the greater world’s views and opinions have changed.
I have also read and re-read “Is YA still for teens?” that Nicole Brinkley2 posted four years ago. Brinkley’s article gives a great overview of the history of young adult literature as a category in traditional publishing and I highly recommend reading it and subscribing to her Substack. In a strange twist of fate—or me being somehow plugged into the zeitgeist—Brinkley shared an updated view on the status of YA publishing this morning. Check that out, too.
For the purpose of my lil’ rantings, here is the most salient quote from Brinkley’s post from four years ago, the contents of which have been marinating for years:
Instead, today’s YA marketplace is bloated with "upper YA" books designed, at best, with older teens in mind and, at worst, created to appeal to—to “cross over” to, in industry parlance—adults. Such books are longer, their protagonists older, and their plots feature situations that are typically experienced by people older than 18. Upper YA has become so prevalent that some YA publishing imprints are dedicated entirely to publishing so-called “crossover” books—to capturing that much-desired adult purchasing power while still claiming their books are for teenagers. In the current market, YA is not created for teenage readers. It is created for adults.
As an author actively querying YA, I can confirm that the number of agents who explicitly state they are seeking “young adult in the crossover space” is significant. Does my own young adult meet that criteria? Not on purpose, but I imagine adult readers will enjoy it. However, I did not write any adult themes or plot dilemmas into the manuscript because the characters are teens. There are first kisses, overbearing parents, sneaking out, curfews, and fights with friends throughout my horror.
What about new adult? At one point, the nebulous idea of a new adult (NA) genre was thrown out into the mix. Is new adult even a thing? No one seems to know the answer for sure, but in recent months publishers are trying again. Macmillan recently launched Saturday Books, a dedicated NA imprint which could indicate a shift, and Berkley and Penguin announced a “crossover” imprint (with only ten titles a year).
Largely, the casual consensus seems to be that NA books are mostly romances. My only evidence is weak and consists of diving down a rabbit hole on Reddit (lol), chatter with more seasoned industry connections, and a recent encounter with a word count limit of 80,000 words for NA queries3. One thing that seems to consistently shake out surrounding the concept of new adult is that this category informally carries the expectation of spicy scenes4.
Which brings us to the issue of sexual content in current YA and what I think of as the **angst** surrounding YA content in general. To be clear, violence, swearing, and other content that would typically elicit an R or TV-MA rating for movies or television never seems to come up in the discourse around what is appropriate for YA books. It seems like the morality police care not about that content; it’s the sexual content that comes up the most. Some folks seem to forget that teenagers do, in fact, have sex.
For my part, on-the-page sex between teenagers is a no-go and gives me the ick. I won’t write it, and I don’t want to read it. There are all kinds of cognitive dissonance happening whenever our culture’s obsession with adolescence is in the driver’s seat of adult entertainment, but again, that would be a post for another time. So why am I writing about this issue here?
Because the gray area of sexual content in young adult fiction is one example that can serve the purpose of elucidating the general, constant angst that seems to surround young adult literature: the judgement, the hyper focus on what is/isn’t included in books, the frequent challenges against certain titles, etc. In case it needs to be stated directly: book banning is wrong. Full stop.
Once again, I think Brinkley nails this topic and I agree completely: “Sexual scenes meant to titillate don’t have a place in young adult literature, even in “upper YA”—but interested and curious teenagers do have a place among readers of adult romance books.”
Okay…back to what I was saying: There are all these people deciding what teens should and shouldn’t be reading, but none of them are teens which means the decisions are mired in a ton of adult baggage, posturing, politicking, bottom line considerations, etc. Everyone seems to have an opinion about what teens should be reading, and the only voices that aren’t represented are the teens themselves. And, I hate to only point out problems without solutions, but here we are. Nowhere else are there so many voices vying for supremacy in what constitutes appropriate for book content. People simply do not get up in arms in this way over what’s between the covers of books marketed to adults.
From my somewhat limited perspective, it seems to me that one5 of the reasons YA has an identity crisis is the truth that sex sells; as a result, publishers and writers are catering, not to young adults, but to a largely adult woman audience when they write because everyone needs money (yay capitalism [sarcasm]). If you want to spend two and a half hours hearing a thorough exploration of sexuality in Twilight, might I recommend Contrapoints video essay? This topic could be a whole series on its own, but to sum it up in as few words as possible, it seems that books are stamped YA because of fast pacing, ages of the main character(s) (often 18 or 19), and, my gut says, the gender of the authors—majority women. (I mean, only men can write “serious” fantasy [sarcasm again]).
Putting all of this together, it feels increasingly difficult for me to hit the right notes in books that I am writing which are genuinely meant for teen readers in a market that wants to leave them behind. I mean, not to make it all about me, but my horror directly deals with indifferent, cruel parenting and one girl’s struggle to find her own way out of the binds of generational trauma. Yes, adults might enjoy reading this, but there are kids—like me when I was a teen—who are grappling with these struggles right now and who need to know it’s possible to break out and free themselves from the cycle of trauma. Adults are not the target audience for my YA horror.
TWO: It seems like the young adult (YA) market is careening towards collapse. Are the reasons above part of this issue? Maybe. I’m only surface-level knowledgeable, so everything I’m saying here is from my limited perspective and experience and is probably tinged with some frustration. But you read enough Threads6 posts by well-known and respected literary agents saying things like this, and you start to wonder whether continued efforts to write YA is a well-advised career move.
In case you are new to the querying good times, the briefest summary of the situation is this: aspiring authors send a query letter (a formal pitch about their book) to literary agents hoping that the agent will offer to represent them and their work; that agent then goes through a similar process called “submissions” to find an acquiring editor at a traditional publishing house to buy the book. Imprints are smaller branches of publishing houses, each typically with a focus of some kind. Those editors that Elana Roth Parker references are the acquiring editors.
Anyway, back to my lowkey meltdown…if editors are abandoning ship and the imprints are closing, what does that say about the longevity of young adult fiction? Elana Roth Parker’s Threads are only an example of the kinds of things industry insiders have been referencing or saying outright for awhile now. Sure, I used to think that I could be the exception to the rule, but the querying is beating me down–especially given the facts that even crossing that hurdle means facing the bleak submission trends referenced above.
Furthermore, a noteworthy number of popular and objectively successful young adult authors have been announcing adult deals in recent years. Here’s a list for 2025, including powerhouses such as Renée Ahdieh, Stephanie Garber, Marie Lu, and Maggie Stiefvater. July 27 Update: Melissa Albert just sold her adult debut. Reviewing the list from 2023 and 2024, you can see the trend is growing. Sure, maybe all of these authors have grown out of the content constraints of young adult and/or wish to explore other markets and different themes. Maybe, too, some of them are getting tired of the **angst** surrounding YA (see above).
I could never cover the motivators behind this move as well as Maggie Stiefvater, so please read her explanation as to why she’s pivoting from YA to adult right now. Two insights from Stiefvater standout to me:
Her readers weren’t young adults: “My publisher would promote my tour schedules on an account called ThisIsTeen, and then I’d hit the road and sign thousands of books for rooms of people over thirty.”
Adult fiction sells more books7: “The adult fiction pool is a much bigger ocean to swim in, and its tentpole titles sell at numbers that most YA can’t imagine.”
What, exactly, is publishing’s plan to cultivate future readers? The lack of future-proofing seems…substantial. I hope this is a blip, a pendulum swing that will right itself, and not a harbinger of hard(er) times. Alas, that’s not what this post is directly about either. For some thoughts from a much more knowledgable person, I would like to once again recommend Brinkley’s post from today. All this being said, I see glimmers of hope for the future of YA publishing in general, but my own stance is unchanged—for the time being.
THREE: How does one find your YA readers?
Lately, I’ve been struggling with the question: what is my goal for writing? I have invested years of my sparse discretionary time honing my craft, learning from experts about the industry, attending conferences and workshops, working with critique partners and paying for professional critiques, and, above all else, reading and writing. I have four completed and polished manuscripts and two completed and unpolished manuscripts (of which we will never speak 🤫).
I began to zero in on my “why” above when I said that I want my books published without having to pay for it. With three kids, a career in education, and a challenging financial past, on the most basic level, I don’t have the discretionary income to invest in self-publishing my work, which isn’t cheap if done well (my conservative estimate is $6,500). But I have to dig a little deeper than that. I want the books published so that people will read them. Here is where I run into the third major reason why I am quitting YA–for the time being.
Where does one find actual teen readers in the current social media hellscape? As I wrote about before, I tried some basic promotion with my serial fiction KINGS OF THE NEW WORLD (one of my polished young adult manuscripts), and not only did my efforts fall flat but they actually worsened my reach and discoverability. Instagram suppressed my account. I have data to back me up.
It’s not that I care about being cringe and trying. I would absolutely engage in any kind of promotional shenanigans with a publishing house behind me. I have zero fear of being silly in public. The problem is weighing my return on investment. With a publishing house behind you, there is some guarantee of income and sales: the income from your advances and the sales from their distribution networks. That alone would make the time investment in social media hijinks more palatable because, rather than drumming up views from nothing, I would be working to amplify resources already being allocated and I would be adding possible touch points for potential buyers. Check out this Thread from Beth Revis that contains a better explanation on how social media can contribute to moving the sales needle.
And, from the perspective of my theoretical teen readers: who am I to try and sell entertainment to them? I’m just some old lady being cringe on socials. Ew.
Plus…self-publishing in the children’s market (which includes YA) comes with significant challenges that aren’t present in the adult market. I’m talking about the gatekeepers. No, not the literary agents and acquiring editors–those are traditional publishing’s gatekeepers. I’m talking about parents and school librarians and wallets. The fact is that most school librarians will not have permission to stock self-published books for their students. Funds are already tight, book challenges are rampant, and there is no reason for a school librarian to bring on the added stress of shelving a self-published book that has not passed muster with trusted industry professionals.
Then, there are parents. Sure, some really tuned in, bookish parents might be open to purchasing self-published books, but how would they hear about the book in the first place? Finally, wallets. Many teens are buying with their parents’ money. See previous point. And, if they’re using their own money, are they going to fork it over for some random self-pubbed book or the book their friends are raving about from TikTok?
What’s next?
So, you might be wondering: what next? And why do you keep emphasizing for the time being? I am almost 40,000 words into drafting an adult science fantasy, which I originally conceived as a young adult science fantasy and spent many, many hours brainstorming and worldbuilding to rework the most important elements for an adult audience. But, I still have an active full manuscript and more than a dozen active queries out on my young adult horror. I believe so fervently in this book that it is physically painful to think of closing the door on it.
However, when the intended audience is truly teens, self-publishing does not feel like a viable option for financial and distribution reasons as outlined above.
So my plan, at this moment, and subject to change, is to hope for the best for my YA horror (I’m rooting for you!) while working to write the best adult science fantasy I can possibly write. If the YA horror lands me an agent and the chance at a book deal with a traditional publisher, I will gladly reignite the torch and go back to writing for teens and adults. If I find myself without representation in the coming months, I will pitch the adult book out into the trenches and hope for the best, and should the ephemeral winds of publishing be on my side, I can always use my established publishing cred in the adult world to try and bring my YA novels back into the mix.
Entertaining Distractions
I finished Locke & Key. Loved it! On a whim, I started The Empress on Netflix, and despite the audio dubbing (which usually annoys me to no end), I’ve been enjoying the show. It makes me want to bring out my random fancy items–silver serving trays and antique tea cups that I inherited from my grandmothers–to serve tea. Except I live in South Florida, and it is way too hot to play around with that!
I also watched both seasons of FUBAR on Netflix with my youngest, which was not the best parenting choice in terms of language and content, but we had a blast watching it together, so we moved on to Psych. I watched every episode of Psych when it first aired, and I loved it then. We are having the best time watching the show together and are half-way through season two.
My reading slump is still slumping a wee bit because I haven’t been listening to as many audiobooks lately. While I’m drafting a book, I tend to use my listening time for music so that I can let my subconscious work on the book–but lower listening time means fewer books for me.
The theme for the summer so far has been trilogies. I loved The Fionavar Trilogy. After that, I read A Burning In the Bones, the conclusion to the Waxways trilogy by Scott Reignten. It’s truly a fantastic trilogy, and I highly recommend it. The magic system is intricate and unique; the characters are well-drawn; and the unraveling conspiracy is riveting. Loved it! So…after that, I quickly read through the Chaotic Orbits trilogy by Beth Revis; these three novellas are so much fun, filled with action, and lots of banter–science fiction at its best. Then, I just had to wrap up the Little Thieves trilogy by Margaret Owen, and let me tell you…I was so nervous at one point while reading this book that I had to reach out to some folks for spoilers just so that I could bear to keep going. Right now, I’m reading The Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb, and I expect that I will keep going through that trilogy as well.
Finally, we were among the lucky few to get a Switch 2 on the day they were released. Mario Kart World has taken a front seat. Knockout Rallies online are so much fun!
Words of Wisdom
As I am in the throes of drafting a new manuscript, the following quote is on my mind. Though I’m sure you’ve heard it before, it’s always an excellent reminder.
“I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.” ~ Shannon Hale
Until next time,
Okay, so when I found the highlight to save the link, my sweet Artoo, rest her sweet little soul, is there front and center, and it makes me way too sad to go back. She was always with me whenever I used to talk to the camera on my stories.
Brinkley also shared an update today, July 18, on this topic that caused me to come back to my draft and add a few things. Check out that update here.
80,000 words is considered the upper limit for romances. Coincidence? I think not. But do not get me started on word counts.
For anyone coming to this from outside the bookish world, spicy = explicit sex and the spiciness of a book is logged by red pepper emojis up to five, like star ratings.
Majory emphasis on ONE. There are many, but the sexual content discourse serves as an example of the larger situation.
I have significantly cut back on how much I allow myself to read Threads. I’m down to 10 minutes per day now.
Do we know whether that’s because of how it’s marketed or that the reading audience is truly wider? Unclear.
Edit: unrequested opinions on YA follow, hopefully not to hatefull lol. I appreciated your very detailed post with interesting market info, thanks.
By the time young adult existed as a genre (or I heard the term) I was in high school already, reading (to list the most excessive ones) american tragedy at school and the wheel of time at home. I don't know how or why someone would be that age and want to read a plot line taking place in high-school written with condescending baby word vocabulary, when they already live in that environment and would surely rather read about anything at all else. Shrug. I expect this perspective to be very narrowly my own, but still that is my take. Read books for adults, and race to reach adult reading level, then you have the universe.
Beyond that, on the topic of publishing and being found by readers: I could be wrong here, but young people are perfectly happy to read books digitally. And they hear about them from places like tiktok or Instagram.
As someone who’s about to go querying with my debut MG novel this is both fascinating and terrifying. It’s also just a huge bummer for actual teen readers, it feels like the market is pushing them towards more adult content. It’s hard enough to be in your early teens can’t we give them books to light the way?