New Teenage Lists

Teenagers divide into three groups – the aspirant or wanna-be teens, the glad-to-be-teens and the ‘don’t patronise me, I’m a person’ teens. Publishers are once again rushing to launch new ‘teenage’ lists. Will they appeal? To whom? Will they last? Julia Eccleshare explores.

What is a teenage reader anyway? Is it the pre-teen – the ten, eleven or twelve-year-old who aspires to a life style less dependent on their parents? Or is it the teenager in the midst of that process of individuation? Do teenagers read anyway and, if so, what should be published for them? The ‘cross over’ success of Philip Pullman, J K Rowling, Melvin Burgess and the rest would imply that teenagers are reading and that is certainly the view of five UK publishers all of whom have committed themselves to new teenage lists.

The graveyard of teen lists

Teen books have always been hard to publish in the UK. Their content is difficult, their audience imprecise and their marketing strategy unclear. In sales terms, UK teenage fiction lists in the past have not worked, despite the inclusion of many highly suitable and outstanding books, mostly by American authors such as Robert Cormier, Mildred Taylor, S E Hinton and Cynthia Voigt.

It was in the 1970s that The Bodley Head paved the way for the modern teen lists by publishing some impressive ‘social issues’ Scandinavian titles such as Mia by Gunnel Beckman (1974) which dealt with the, until then, taboo topics of teenage sex. Branded teen lists followed from various publishers but they all had a relatively short shelf life. Puffin had already tried once with ‘Peacocks’ (1962). Including many US imports such as Beverley Cleary’s Fifteen and the more literary The Girl of the Limberlost by Eleanor Stratton Porter, they never really took off in terms of sales. Puffin tried again with ‘Puffin Plus’ in the more liberal climate of the late 1970s and revamped the list a decade later under the cooler sounding ‘Plus’. This fared no better and following its demise, the only way Puffin could publish Melvin Burgess’s controversial Junk was as a Penguin, though it was carried by the Puffin reps. and sold for teenagers. In the late 1980s, Collins Children’s Books started the best teenage list to date with their ‘Tracks’ series. Methuen ‘Teens’ list in the early 1980s also looked good with striking covers and a strong identity. And there were others, too.

New ventures

Undaunted by these ghosts, last year Collins launched ‘Flamingos’, Red Fox repackaged their older fiction into the striking ‘Definitions’ list while Hodder matched their existing literary teenage list, ‘Signature’, with ‘Bite’ aimed at mid list readers. This year Macmillan is launching ‘Young Picador’ while Little, Brown, with no experience in the children’s market, is building on their successful reputation in adult science fiction to create a teenage list.

Each publisher has a slightly different brief. All place emphasis on the ability of their titles to ‘stand alone’ but all see the time as right for the publishing of individual titles under a loose, collective series title while rejecting the ‘collectible’ approach that made ‘Point Horror’ such a hit. Sarah Davies, publishing director of Macmillan Children’s Books, points to the recent success of single novels – led, of course, by Harry Potter and Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy – as the main reason behind the collective move into this kind of publishing: ‘Over the last eighteen months there’s been a decline in the mass market series. Instead there is an awareness of the possibility of attaching individual weight to a novel. The main area of growth for this is the 10+ or teenage novels with success coming both from UK novels such as our own with Peter Dickinson’s The Kin and with titles imported from the US such as Louis Sachar’s Holes. We want to be able to publish more challenging books and this is the best way of doing it.’

From August, Young Picador are launching with four titles: Exodus by Julie Bertagna, The Facts Speak for Themselves by Brock Cole, Massive by Julia Bell and Malka by Mirjam Pressler. ‘This list will primarily be about new books and new authors, not repackaging the backlist. It’s a deliberate mix of two strong UK novels by relatively new talents with an American import and a wonderful book in translation,’ says Davies. Macmillan’s confidence in the series has been reinforced by the considerable success they have been having with their recent ‘chick lit’ titles such as Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries and All American Girl. It is a success that has brought Julie Burchill to the list with Sugar Rush, her first children’s book. ‘It’s clearly a good time to publish for teenagers and especially to take on controversial books,’ says Davies. ‘Look at the amount of attention that Melvin Burgess’s Lucky: My Life as a Bitch has attracted.’

Repackaging the backlist

Unlike Macmillan’s ‘Young Picador’, ‘Definitions’ is not a list of new titles but a repackaging of old ones. Former head of publishing at Random House Children’s Books, Gill Evans arrived to find ‘a small but sophisticated heritage of older fiction, notably Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle and Aidan Chambers’s Postcards from No-Man’s Land alongside some acquisition of new writers. This immediately highlighted the issue of how to build on the strength of an exceptional backlist and to link this to promoting new writers into the same market.’ ‘Definitions’ is an eclectic list launched with the juxtaposed pairing of those first two titles with novels from Jan Mark and Helen Dunmore as well as the reissuing of Adèle Geras’s ‘Egerton Hall’ trilogy beginning with The Tower Room. ‘We see ‘Definitions’ as a vehicle to promote the backlist, to acquire previously published titles and also as a very desirable and attractive list which new writers would like to join,’ says Evans.

New books, new looks

Collins, like Macmillan, is trading on the reputation of their adult literary imprint, ‘Flamingo’. Publishing fiction director, Gillie Russell says, ‘We have always had a tradition of publishing original and powerful novels for teenagers, but the creation of this imprint gives us the ability to launch new writers alongside some wonderful established authors, too.’ This is borne out in the launch list which includes Margaret Mahy’s Twenty-four Hours as well as a first novel, The Starling Tree by Julia Clarke and Ted Van Lieshout’s prize-winning Brothers, a moving dialogue between two brothers, one dead and one alive, translated from the Dutch.

Hodder has segmented its teenage fiction. The newcomer ‘Bite’ – ‘The sharpest new writing for young people’ – is described as ‘a contemporary fiction list for aspirational readers of 11 and up’ and fits in neatly with the existing ‘Silver’ list for fantasy fiction and ‘Signature’ for literary fiction. Hodder have gone for bright and bold new-look covers as well as ‘funky, witty and at time heartbreaking stories’ including in the launch titles David Belbin’s Festival, the story of four teenagers enjoying the ultimate summer at the Glastonbury Festival and Sue Mayfield’s Blue, a powerful novel of bullying and betrayal. Later this year they are extending ‘Bite’ to include non-fiction with the publication of agony-uncle Matthew Whyman’s XY, a ‘no-holds-barred, edgy but factually accurate, guide to every aspect of being a boy’.

Branding and positioning

So, a wide range of subjects, old and new authors, and some clever use of names with resonance. So far so good and certainly children’s books are more in the public eye than ever before with Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass hitting the Booker longlist and the film of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone notching up the biggest box office figures ever. But, the failure of teen lists before has always been bound up with their marketing. Teenagers have not in the past bought books. What will these books look like and where will they be sold?

Little, Brown is most likely to have the answer. Unlike the four children’s publishers venturing into the teen arena, Little, Brown is an adult list which is attempting to reach new readers below their familiar audience with their ‘Atom’ list. They know that many of the readers of their adult science fiction titles are teenagers and their new list will cater more specifically for them but without being patronising. They will continue to use the sophisticated design that identifies their adult titles and the books will benefit from the marketing that already attracts adult readers to the list.

Children’s publishers, moving up into this older age range, have the problem that their books tend to remain looking like children’s books with illustrated covers rather than the design led covers adopted for most adult novels. Their books are also more likely to remain within children’s bookshops or children’s book departments – not places where teenagers like to be seen.

Breaking through these barriers is one important key to the success of these new series and certainly, branding and positioning are seen as the key by Macmillan who believe that the ‘Young Picador’ spines will get them onto adult shelves: ‘Our aim is that they should be distinctive and sophisticated which will be the immediate attraction,’ says Davies. ‘Once bought, the quality of the titles will speak for themselves.’

At Red Fox, the umbrella title ‘Definitions’ – which is cunningly used across the top of each title with a witty definition of one of the words, or the whole title – links the books. ‘Designed to bridge the gap between adult and children’s fiction, it is a way of branding together our literary fiction in a sophisticated package for style-conscious teens,’ says Evans. ‘The branding is exceptionally light but effective, allowing for strong individual packaging while creating a solid list worth revisiting.’ All that is true but the books remain looking like children’s books and, as such, will be bought by pre-teenagers, not teenagers themselves.

Gillie Russell describes the Collins ‘Flamingo’ titles as ‘having a distinctive design, looking edgy and sophisticated’ and they do, but whether they, or any of the others, will really fulfil the required potential of having a ‘cool look which will have a strong appeal for teenagers’ is less certain.

Honor Wilson-Fletcher, recently appointed as Sales and Marketing Director of Hodder Children’s Books, comes from a bookselling background and, while she is committed to making ‘Bite’ as eye-catching as possible, she is also clear that children’s books, even carefully formulated lists designed to speak to the eyes and hearts of teenagers, lag far behind the other merchandise designed for teenager purchasers – most notably music. More importantly for sales in bookshops, they lag behind adult books and in the current climate with children’s books being seen as able to compete with adult books, there is often only one promotional opportunity.

Maybe what the books look like will not matter, nor will the problems that previous teenage lists encountered apply. Maybe these five publishers are right that now is the time to publish for teenagers though, judging by how quickly other Fast Moving Consumer Goods from CDs to fashion are reappraised and repackaged, they will not be able to spend long admiring their handiwork before the lists will need reappraisal. Certainly, across the market from the distinguished UK literary writing for teenagers led by Pullman, Burgess, Anne Fine and Aidan Chambers, all of whom have the ability to write without patronising their readers, to the fast-moving teen tiles of Rosie Rushton and Louise Rennison the books are there. And yes, teenagers have money, do shop and seem to want to read. But is targeting particular kinds of readers with particular kinds of books really the answer?

Crossing barriers?

Maybe the reason that teenage lists have failed in the past is that good books should cross barriers, not be confined within them. Children’s publishers, more than any others, are increasingly determined to label books by their readers rather than by their content. In reading, at any rate, pre-teens want to be teenagers, teenagers want to be adults and, judging by those reading Harry Potter, adults want to be children. Authors, titles and covers sell books. In the long run, it will be the individual authors, such as those listed above, not series, that will be remembered by teenagers as the books that mattered to them.

Julia Eccleshare is the children’s books editor of The Guardian.