Special Topics Paper

 New Adult Fiction is a developing genre in the literary and publishing worlds. St. Martin’s Press is credited with the term’s introduction when they sponsored a contest for new fiction featuring “protagonists who are slightly older than YA and can appeal to an adult audience” in November 2009.

Since then, New Adult Fiction has grown as a genre and publishing field, but is still not widely recognized by many booksellers, libraries, and other sources of literature. Consequently, without clear distinctions between Young Adult (YA), New Adult (NA), and Adult Fictions, the blending of these audiences is damaging their literary forms.

There are two obvious sources of this blending. One is the authors themselves as they experiment with their writing and attempt to reach new audiences. The other source is the marketing of these materials. Publishers are aiming their marketing campaigns towards the individuals with greater buying power--adults--which is exacerbating the issue of more adult readers consuming YA material than the original intended teenage audience.

Ultimately this blending of audience and genre is especially problematic when examining the presence of adult sexual content in a literary space designed for young adult readers. As platforms like BookTok have increased their viewership of book recommendations, content creators have noted a very clear trend concerning adult women readers entering this young adult space and desiring this mature content as opposed to reading erotica novels or other adult genres.

It is unclear as to why adults are not seeking out the literature that is intended for them, but it could be a consequence of nation-wide changes to educational core standards which saw a massive decrease in the attention paid to skills associated with the liberal arts, one of which is reading comprehension.

This essay intends to examine the rise of New Adult Fiction and the blending occurring across the field due to the actions of authors, publishers, and marketing professionals. From there it will delve into the risks and dangers of such merging and the potential causes for why this merge has and continues to occur.