Rutgers discussion on college-age main characters

[julieswanson]

Last month I attended the Rutgers One-on-One Plus Conference. In both my one-on-one with my mentor and my five-on-five discussion with four other authors and their mentors, I posed the question--how do editors and agents feel about YA stories featuring college-aged main characters? My mentor (an editor) and the agents and editors in my five-on-five

Comments

[annemariepace]

I think part of it is that your biggest readers are in middle school, so those kids are reading up to high school. High school kids have far more demanding reading loads for school (and their social lives become more time-consuming as they become more independent) so reading for fun drops way down on their to-do list. OF COURSE teens still read, but fewer do. And those who do read for pleasure are capable of reading almost all of the adult lit out there.

So it becomes a marketing decision--is there enough of an audience to justify publishing it? There ARE books that take place in college (the first one that comes to mind is Ellen Emerson White's newest), but is there enough demand to make it a whole sub-genre? I dunno. It seems to me that if there were, they'd be publishing it.

Editorial decisions are often driven by "conventional wisdom" as well, and conventional wisdom says no. But conventional wisdom wouldn't stop an outside-the-box-thinking editor who comes across a killer manuscript.

[julieswanson]

I agree that it's going to take someone willing to make a gamble (several someone's taking several gambles) if we're going to find out if it sells (yet it seems to me the few books with characters in college ARE selling well???). I don't know that a whole sub-genre is that answer either. I think it can be kept within YA--if the story line is truly appropriate to YA of course--but the cover art just has to say "older" like a lot of YA covers already do, and they have to be marketed as such as well.

[anne_tosa]

AnneB from the VK discussion boards here. Thanks, Julie, for bringing up this topic again. Your point about the late bloomer is well taken. Here's hoping college will turn into the next undiscovered country; high school has been done to death (and undeath!). College opens a much broader world both for plot and setting. (I can see the knock-off series coming already: Ivy League Intrigue, Land Grant Ghouls, Med School Mysteries...)

[julieswanson]

Thanks for your input. I hadn't thought of your possibilities (they sound like Gossip Girls only older)! Another thing college does is get rid of the parents.

[anne_tosa]

Um, the college genre only gets rid of the parents except at fall break, Thanksgiving break, winter break, spring break (everybody doesn't go to Florida!), and summer, Parents Weekend, a month before the semester when they have to cough up the tuition payments, and the first three years when they call/write/email/IM to complain that they haven't heard from the MC for....days!

But hey, otherwise where would the conflict be!

[b_sheridan]

I popped over via the VK boards,too.

anne_tosa 's comment on Med School Mysteries really caught my attention because I have around 40k done on a story featuring a heroine who is a first year med student.

Everyone who read it said it reads like a YA but I figured it was just too "out there" to fit either the YA or adult market.

[julieswanson]

Good luck with your story. My two teen daughters (15 and 18) love Grey's Anatomy and so do their friends so I bet the idea of your story would appeal to them.

[b_sheridan]

Thank you. Hopefully I can find a like minded editor or agent when the time comes. ^_^