I feel like there tends to be a lot of prejudice against young adult books from the adult standpoint. Maybe it's the cheesy love stories, or just the intended audiences but I know a lot of people who turn up their noses at young adult books. I think that they can be deep and thought-provoking. The Fault in Our Stars, for example, has phenomenal writing and questions the ideas or mortality. The Harry Potter series was clearly a massive success, and one can see why when you study all the symbolism and other literary devices in the story. On the other hand, the YA market seems to mass-produce books that it thinks will appeal to readers. Twilight was a mediocre book that sparked an era of paranormal romance and The Hunger Games was slightly better than Twilight and caused thousands of dystopian novels. When these YA trends occur, the book market is loaded with clichés and unoriginal stories. Do you think that the young adult book market can hold its own against books written for adults?
I love reading YA books, but the same as you, I think some writers nowadays are much concerned about making the books popular, instead of making the books worth-reading. For instance, there is that Fifty Shades of Grey book which is very popular to most teens now which is actually a bit alarming because this book has an idea about sex, and not just sex, it focuses on BDSM. Because of its popularity, a lot of YA books now are filled with graphic erotic scenes and are now following Fifty Shades' path.
Young Adult books — most of them are shallow and poorly written but most people won't even notice that. There are a few outliers of course. Books like "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" and "You Don't Know Me" are great books which anyone can enjoy. Since they already have a target market, I'm sure YA adult books no matter how bad they are will still be bought.
The issue for YA writer is that they need to market it and the criteria gets narrower with love interests and any supernatural elements. As I have been looking through lists of agents, many YA agents are looking for marketable, fast selling books and they aren't looking for the next classic. I do think the genre will lose it's pace by the next decade, right now it's trendy and a bit how Mills and Boon was when it first came out. This generation will have moved onto other genres, hopefully!
Of course. I don't know if you're well aware but, although your question is valid, you already supplied the answer. In terms of sale, books from the young adult genre are already giving adult books a run for their money. But then again, I somehow don't understand the comparison. YA is YA and adult books are a wholly different genre, catering to a specific type of demographic.
