Guest post: Natashya Wilson of Harlequin Teen

Unless you've been living in a cave with no books, you know that paranormal romance has really taken off in the teen market. Of course, what every librarian knows is that romance has been popular with teens since the dawn of time. Every librarian also knows the Harlequin brand, even if he or she doesn't read or buy romance. So when I read articles like this one in USA Today, my personal reaction was, "Harlequin is doing teen books? Excellent." I may not know my romance as well as others, but I did know that Harlequin would take the genre seriously and I was very interested to see what they would come up with.

Normally, I never turn my blog over to guest posters, but it's a little different when that guest is Natashya Wilson, senior editor at Harlequin TEEN. I asked her to talk about some of the questions that librarians are frequently asked about YA romance and new series: What's the content like? What's the audience? What are the imprint's plans for the future? Here is her post. It's long, but worth reading.

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Sex, Language and Harlequin TEEN

by Natashya Wilson, senior editor

Harlequin has a new YA imprint, Harlequin TEEN! we announced. And people speculated---what would it be like? Sweet romances? Steamy, sexy teen reads? Would adults buy a YA with the Harlequin name on it for their teens? Would teens pick up something from Harlequin? We at Harlequin TEEN are betting yes, and I would like to tell you more about the type of content you’ll find in our books.

Harlequin TEEN is a single title imprint focused on delivering a variety of entertaining, commercial reads targeted at teen girls, ages 13-18. Because it is not a series in the sense of our traditional romance series, we do not have specific guidelines about sexual and language content, and those elements vary from book to book and author to author. However, we are not seeking shocking, graphic reads, and you’ll find the content of our titles very much in line with many other popular single-title YA releases in the market today.

The majority of our list is relatively “clean,” as in sex and swear-word free. However, we do have the occasional title that includes or mentions sex and/or might contain a few swear words. If a story does include sex, it must be a natural part of plot and character development, not gratuitous, and not described in graphic detail. “Bad” language may appear when using a euphemism or alternate word would sound unnatural or out of character. We don’t seek out books that include profanity or sex, but if it works in context, we won’t insist an author take it out, either. Our goal is to deliver authentic, satisfying stories about memorable characters and situations. Just like most other mainstream YA publishers.

So what are our books about? My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent (August 2009) features a heroine who discovers she is a banshee. Intertwined by Gena Showalter (September 2009) features a teen hero with four souls trapped in his body. Elphame’s Choice by P. C. Cast (October 2009), a reprint of our 2004 Luna title, features a goddess-blessed heroine destined to leave her home and save a banished people. Elphame does include a sex scene, but it is a natural part of the plot and character progression and the book would be less without it.

Our 2010 lineup includes a girl who discovers she is half-faery, a police chief’s daughter on the trail of a mysterious graffiti artist, and a teen dating expert who gives her peers advice through her Web site. We’ve got a loner-turned-rebel-leader fighting for justice in a future world, more Soul Screamers banshees, a teen witch, the next Intertwined novel, and ghosts. And more! And sex and profanity are almost entirely absent.

The name Harlequin has become synonymous with romance, and we’re aware that many people (including many who have never read a Harlequin!) have preconceived ideas about what a “Harlequin” is. Unfortunately, those who aren’t familiar with our series tend to assume they are all about sex and titillation—I assure you, they are not. We’re proud of the power of our name, and decided to use it for Harlequin TEEN despite the potential challenge of getting past those preconceptions. We are certain our YA editorial will speak for itself, and will soon be as accepted as titles from any other publishing house in the general marketplace.

While all of our titles currently do include romances or romantic elements, all have a wider scope than a traditional relationship-driven plot. As with all books Harlequin publishes, it is important to Harlequin TEEN to publish books that will surprise and delight readers, stories that will resonate and be remembered after the covers are closed.So what about sex and language in YA novels? What do you think is acceptable, how do you gauge the appropriateness of a read for your purposes? How can we at Harlequin TEEN best inform you about the content of our books? We want to hear from you! And we hope to see you at the next stop on our blog tour, In Bed with Books on 8/19!

And you may ask yourself, well, how did it get there?

Via Roger Williams at the Publish or Perish Literary Agency, here's an article that I found very interesting: The secrets of the Amazon bestseller list. If you wonder how an author's online presence affects book sales (or not), and how important is the Kindle to the bestseller list (or not), check this out.

The article opens:

It's almost a philosophical riddle: Do sales drive the best-seller list, or do best-sellers get all the sales because buyers see them on the list?

As much as we'd like to believe that the crowd picks the best books, a strong presence in retail locations -- front-of-store positioning and tempting discounts -- still counts a great deal in determining how well a title sells.

One of the hardest things for me to reconcile lately is switching my brain from libraryland to retail in terms of how books get into the hands of readers, and seeing that bestsellers are often made, not born. Libraries are unique in that their collections rely heavily on peer reviews of books. I keep forgetting, after my years of library work, that not everyone in the world reads Kirkus, PW, or Booklist to make their buying decisions. This isn't a bad thing; it's just the nature of the beast. Librarians buy books for libraries in much different ways than retail consumers buy books for their personal collections. The question of bestsellers is very chicken-and-egg, and it's one that I think librarians can benefit from understanding. Amazon itself is also a different entity with different buying rules than brick-and-mortar chains. Anyway, read it. It's full of answers to (some of) the questions that keep me up at night.

What I'm going to be for Halloween

Today's Last Tuesday's (wow, I'm really far behind on my blogs) edition of Pop Candy asks: What the heck will you be for Halloween? Here's my answer:

In these troubled economic times, and in these times where we all have to work together to save our planet, it's important to reuse and economize. Also, I can't sew. That said, last weekend I went to Michael's and for $3 bought a spool of lovely green satin ribbon. On Halloween, I plan to wear my black silk dress with the gray and green flowers on it, black pumps, and a length of green ribbon tied around my neck.

Oh yeah, you children's literature fans know EXACTLY who I'm dressing as.

With the green ribbon around my neck, I'm dressed as Jenny from the short story "The Green Ribbon" from In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz. Only I promise that when my husband unties the ribbon, my head won't fall off. At least, I don't think it will.

The best book no kid wants to read

The article everyone in the YA and children's lit world is talking about lately is Has the Newbery lost its way?, by Anita Silvey in the October SLJ. I read the article, and I read Melissa's response to it at Librarian by Day, and I read Monica Edinger's thoughts on the Newbery's relevance, and Roger Sutton's entry, titled Going for the Gold, and Nina Lindsay's response at Heavy Medal.

After reading all of these, I went back and reread the Newbery criteria, and after mixing it all together in my head and baking at 350 degrees I have the following:

1. Why do we care about whether kids like the Newbery books? It's not the committee's charge to pick books kids will like.

2. Isn't Ranganathan's second law "To every book its reader?" Whether a book has millions of readers or fifty, there is a reader for every book out there. Why does it have to be liked, or resonate with a huge number of people, to contribute to the genre? I don't particularly like the Beatles, but I do admit they contributed to the rock genre in important ways.

3. Clearly, we're not doing a good enough job not just educating the public, but educating our fellow librarians, about what the Newbery and the Printz are given for. Personally, I like to say that the Newbery and the Printz are given to works of art, books that stand apart and make us rethink what a children's or YA book can be. The Newbery is given to a book "for which children are a potential audience," which by my interpretation means that the Newbery people have always acknowledged that not all kids will lurve a Newbery winner. Potential, not absolute, not guaranteed. I think the use of the word "potential" shows that the Newbery committee does understand the diversity of children and their reading habits and that no one book will ever speak to all children. Except maybe Holes.

4. One of the things I like best about my job is that I get to talk about YA books with other adults and not be thought of as strange. I think there's extreme value in adults, looking at books published for children and teens, bringing their adult perspectives and experiences to a discussion about said books. It's why I pushed so hard for Octavian Nothing when it came up at the BCCLS Mock Printz in 2007. I thought it was the perfect book to demonstrate why the Printz is given. It was a work of art, chronicling an adolescence that was completely unfamiliar to most teens.

What did I hear at the discussions? "It was too hard to get through." "My kids wouldn't read it." "I didn't understand it." Now, all of these are perfectly legitimate reasons for not adding a book to your collection, where circ stats are key to knowing how you're going to develop your collection in the future. But for an award? I knew the minute I read it that given the Printz criteria and the committee's charge, that it would take an honor for that year if it didn't win the whole thing. Why? Because the Printz criteria, like the Newbery criteria, has nothing to do with how much the intended audience loves a book.

5. In general, I think Silvey's muchly-flawed article wants us to believe that the Newbery committee has a job to do that is not, in fact, in their charge. It is not the job of the Newbery committee to pick the book that will stay a favorite with generations of children. It is not the job of the Newbery committee to make sure that those small-town kids will love the Newbery winner. It is not the job of the "too many experts" on the Newbery Committee to pick the year's most perfect book for children.

Winning the Newbery Medal does not mean a book will automatically be loved or even remembered, or that all children should read it. (Why would anyone make such a ridiculous statement, that "every child" should read ANY given book, Newbery winner or not?) It means that in one particular year, that book made the most outstanding contribution to literature for children. Here's hoping school assignments catch up to that.

Tinhattery, happy endings, and Breaking Dawn

Tinhattery, happy endings, and Breaking Dawn

First thing to know before you read the rest of this entry: I have not read Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer, nor do I plan to despite her excellent taste in naming characters. (Carlisle AND Carlie? Awesome.) My opinions on the subject of this entry are entirely speculation, based on a little fandom experience. That said...

Author Maggie Stiefvater noted in her blog today that fans of the Twilight Saga are not enjoying Breaking Dawn, with almost an equal number of 5-star and 1-star reviews. Currently there are 860 reader reviews and an average rating of three stars. Stiefvater suggests that this is due in part to the fact that Meyer ties everything up neatly at the end of the series. She compares the very neat ending of BD to the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which, despite the epilogue that I like to pretend doesn't exist, was not entirely happy. It left the readers with a mix of emotions. Not everyone got everything they always wanted and lived happily ever after. Stiefvater's conclusion is that readers like to be treated badly by an author, which made me smile in a good way. In general, Stiefvater's blog entry is made of win. The comments mostly agree and offer their own speculations as to why fans didn't like the ending, but none of them touch on one of my opinions: That Edward was taken away from female readers, and because he's living happily ever after with Bella, he can't live happily ever after with them.

Many readers of the Twilight Saga have said that Edward is the perfect boyfriend: He's hot (or cold, as the case may be), he's smart, he's rich, he's got amazing physical prowess, and he loves Bella no matter what. He does everything that he believes is in her best interest, including leaving without a trace for three months. But it's all okay, because it's all to make Bella a better person. Personally, Edward creeps me out, but there are legions of teenage girls who would disagree vehemently with me. Legions of teenage girls want a boyfriend exactly like Edward. They want to marry Edward and live happily ever after on a sunny island. They also know that the boys in their high school can't compare to Edward. How could they? So finding perfection in a boyfriend, at least at their high school is out of the question. They can, however, read about Edward and imagine being with him as described by Bella, and I think due to the book's being in first person they may even be able to imagine themselves as Bella, especially because Bella is devoid of most characteristics that would make her a normal high schooler (she has no extracurricular activities, for example). I haven't gone looking for Twilight fanfic, but I have a feeling there's quite a large number of fics in which Edward meets a new girl named Serena and he ditches Bella for her.

Are readers doing this consciously? I don't think so. They're of the same mindframe that leads fanfic writers to create Mary Sues: Often, readers want to be a part of a character's life and there's no way to do that other than fantasy. With Edward and Bella most definitely together forever and living a conflict-free life, the fact that the reader can never be with Edward is cemented. Romances work best when there's conflict, or when characters are flawed, or both. It's why Ron and Hermione's romance worked for me but Harry and Ginny's didn't. We all develop literary crushes and we all like to see romances succeed, but I think there's a degree of jealousy, small or large, on the part of the reader that spawns from not being able to have Edward.

The Influence of YA lit

Upon reading about the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson book, Influence, on People.com over the weekend, I noticed one thing missing from the People article: No one mentioned that Influence is being published as YA by Penguin Books for Young Readers. It was in their fall catalog, which I received last week. PW says it'll have a 200,000 first print run.

Now I have to wonder why no one mentioned it. It could be that it simply didn't fit into the article. Or the person who wrote the article doesn't know what division of Penguin is publishing it. Or they didn't care. Or they didn't mention it because YA lit is only Twilight, Harry Potter, and Gossip Girl. I can easily see why it's being published as YA: Teens are known for being especially interested in celebrity lives and fashions. Fashion design is a hot up-and-coming college major and I know if I were interested in that I'd love to read about Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano and all those other people whose clothes I can't afford. I think the idea of writing about and interviewing those who influence you is a neat idea for a book, something more interesting than the average 64-page celebrity bio that we see so much of in book catalogs. I've requested a copy and when it comes out, I'll read it. And encourage BCCLS librarians to buy it for YA.

Galleys: They're the new "So, you come here often?"

From my favorite blog to love and hate, Gawker: Getting Laid with Book Galleys.

I always seem to have a galley with me. Between my reviewing gigs plus what I get from publishers (thank you, thank you, thank you!!) I'm usually reading something that won't be out for a couple of months. Gawker, however, only mentions galleys of adult novels. So that makes me wonder:

Do children's galleys hold the same amount of intrigue as adult galleys? To be fair, I don't see any galley of any children's book standing up to the OMGWANT of the upcoming Chuck Palahniuk to anyone over 21. But I have to wonder: Would a galley of a YA novel hold even more mystique than a galley of an upcoming adult novel? Because not only would there be the mystique of "how did she get a galley?" there would be the mystique of "how did she get a galley of a book by an author I've never even heard of?" Would the relative lack of knowledge about YA that the general book-reading adult population, and certainly the Gawker-reading population, has make the reader of the YA galley even seemingly harder to get?

Okay, so the answer is "probably not." It's fun to wonder, though.

Editing to add: It seems the New York Observer is all over this, too: The Status Galley: How to pick up girls with the new Roth. Still doesn't answer my question about YA galleys, though.