see here- http://ctscanhollywood.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/why-the-new-adult-book-section-is-needed/

Here, the book is being read and raved about by both teenagers and adults all the way up to people in the sixties.

As a secondary school English teacher of over twenty years (and a writer of children’s and YA for 15) I maintain good readers read what ever they want but reluctant readers are often guided by word of mouth and/or direct marketing (a film version often helps as well).
IMHO (which prob isn’t very humble)
Cheers
Tania
Dunedin, New Zealand

By the way, to help you navigate through the maze of query letters you receive I’d like to recommend one sent by yours truly on Oct 25th.

But!! I welcome this new line and new category because I have several books–GOOD books; I don’t want to hear the lecture from everyone about how if I could just write a better book and stop churning out the illiterate dreck, etc.–that star college students or college-aged characters. Or that have college or a music conservatory as a background (NOT as a major plot element, but as a setting). I’ve always loved books set at college (or in theaters), and I thought that the Harry Potter books might open the market to school-set books, but no. Until last week, I was still hearing that agents don’t know where they could sell a book set at a university, unless it were a cozy mystery (which they don’t want and won’t represent anyway.) And I’ve had lots of “helpful” advice saying that my characters needed to be 26+ for readers to identify with them, as college students “don’t read outside class.” Well . . . I knew there were readers like myself who, as teens, wanted to read about what it would be like to be in college or fresh out of college. And readers who don’t care how old the characters are as long as they charm the readers and tell a rollicking story.

For a while, chick lit fed this market (IMHO), at least for females. It was typically about a young woman in her first job and/or going to some sort of college or tech school, and it was a coming-of-age as well (not in the sexual sense, usually, but in the sense that she had to learn to stand on her own. At least that was true in the GOOD chick lit, not the junk that got churned out to put between powderpuff covers and that said “if only I could get a man, it’d be OK.”) When the edict came down that “CHICK LIT IS DEAD,” not only did some of my books go into the Twilight Zone, but also I found that there was no place for any new-grad heroine. Illogical, Mr. Sulu!

Thus I welcome the creation of a new line and category. I’m on the other side from you of that invisible line between the Unwashed Unpubbed, remember, and ANY line that is buying fiction is GOOD. If they are actively looking, YAY! I have novels, polished manuscripts that have not found homes, starring those younger people who’re too old for trad YA but not old enough to interest Oprah’s Book Club and the blue hair crowd. There’s a readership being neglected. Let’s at least TRY to reel them in.

And who knows? Some of this literature might prove to be Worthy Adult Literature after all . . . it’s just in a Catcher-in-the-Rye setting, or tells the story of a new holder of the Associate of Arts who goes forth to battle dragons and tilt at the windmills of advertising. Let’s give it a chance. ANY new line sponsored by a large NY house where I might make the cut is to be lauded and praised!

In the end, art outlives the sales pitch.

Plus, in a purely selfish way, I find the idea of “New Adult” intriguing. I recently queried a manuscript to agents where my protag is 20-year-old college student and the setting is a university. I heard more than once that the agent liked the writing but had no idea where she’d be able to sell it. Protag was too old for YA, to young for general fiction. With my new WIP, I find myself doing it again. My writing voice veers toward YA but I’m not drawn to teen characters or high school settings. Anyway, there’s my two cents.

Why would we want to make it harder for people to find books? Think about other retail models. There are departments in department stores. This helps sell stuff.

And while I know you, the kind and egalitarian Michael Stearns, would never elevate one type of book above the other, the reality is, the literary world does. The NYT story on the National Book award led with the fiction, went down to the poetry, and eventually found its way to YA. The lede even said “The National Book Award went to…,” as if there was only one award given.

While I didn’t explain the thought-trail that led me to that statement, it’s sort of hard to deny that a certain type of writer gets on the awards list, gets published in the New Yorker, and so on. These books are typically more of your “thinkers,” but maybe because that’s the stuff we get the most practice thinking in advanced literature courses.

Anyway, while there are certainly people who hate being categorized and are repelled by such things, I think it’s fine to help the rest find books that might suit them. It doesn’t mean you have to shop there, or that you can only shop in that section, but this demographic and psychographic business is real.

And now, I’m off to browse among the Masculine Asses. Or maybe in the Cougar Department.