In 2011, I started keeping track of the YA books that made the “best of” lists across the professional publications, which include Kirkus, Horn Book, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and in instances where it’s happened, Library Journal. My methods of data collection have varied a little each year, as sometimes I’ve been more interested in one element than another or it’s a matter of time, energy, and having read or having had access to titles to verify what they do or do not include.
Since there’s now been four years of data, I thought it would be worthwhile to look at the similarities and differences as seen through these lists. This will be an imperfect post with imperfect data; it wasn’t until the last couple of years I better understood what I was looking at and how to look at it. That means some of the data might be lacking in some years and it might be inaccurate in others. That doesn’t change what’s worth thinking about, though.
All of the data comes from the following posts:
Because the journals have selected varying numbers of titles for their lists, haven’t selected any titles for their lists, and because my own counting has changed over the years, the number of eligible titles in each data set is different. That doesn’t make a huge change, though, when it comes to comparisons by percentages. Most years, between 55 and 90 titles are on these lists. Not all of the categories I’m going to hit in this comparison will have all four years featured; that has been noted where appropriate.
Let’s dig in.
Gender and “Best of” Lists
Have more female authors always been on the “best of” lists? Has there been any sort of change over the last four years?
In 2011, the gender breakdown was 58% women and 42% men.
In 2012, 80% of the authors on the “best of” lists were women and 20% were men.
In 2013, the breakdown was roughly 75% women and 25% men.
In 2014, the break down was roughly 70% female authors and 30% male authors.
Each of the four years, women had more books on the “best of” lists than men did. This is decidedly different than the New York Times Bestsellers list, which is dominated by male authors. On average, 70% of the “best of” authors are women and 30% are men.
There doesn’t appear to be any trend here in terms of whether male or female authors are earning more or fewer spots each year.
When it comes to the gender of main characters, comparison is a little tricky, since I haven’t been consistent about keeping track of that. I covered it in 2013 for the first time, but I didn’t create a catch all category of “cast of characters” until this year. So this data is imperfect by nature, but I’m going to share it, since it’s interesting nonetheless.
In 2013, the split of female and male main characters in YA fiction was almost 50/50. Female voices came ahead only slightly, with 53% of the titles. For a year when there were far more female authors than there were male authors, it can’t be said male voices were underrepresented in the books at all.
2014 had more female voices than male voices represented, but with the cast of characters as a third factor, the representation isn’t hugely different. Again, despite having more female authors on the “best of” lists, the difference in male voices in the books against female voices in the books remains not hugely different. There are plenty of books featuring male main characters and they’re earning recognition.
Debut Authors and “Best of” Lists
As more people talk about and seek out debut authors, has that impacted the “best of” lists at all? Are we seeing more now than we did in 2011 or are we seeing about the same number? This particular factor interests me as it relates to the Morris award and when the finalists are announced. I haven’t kept record of that from prior to this year, so I can’t make a call on how it may or may not influence picks on these lists.
In 2011, roughly 25% of the books on “best of” lists were by debut authors, while 75% were by authors who’d been previously published.
The numbers changed a little bit in 2012, as 20% of the authors were debuts and 80% were more seasoned authors.
The percentages were unchanged in 2013, with 20% of authors being debut and 80% being previously published.
2014 featured the biggest percentage of debut authors, at almost 29%, with previously published authors filling 71% of the “best of” list slots.
The data shows there’s never been fewer than 20% of “best of” picks going to debut authors. This seems like a really positive percentage and shows how professionals picking these lists aren’t sticking entirely to those voices that are familiar to them. I think that sort of recognition — one that happens with Morris titles, too — helps these books find new readers and helps grow excitement for those debut authors’ sophomore efforts.
“Best of” Books By Genre
Genre is touch to figure out every year. Some books could go one way or another way, and some books cross genres and blur the lines between them. In fact, something I’ve noticed about many of the “best of” titles over the years is that many of them seem to find themselves on these lists for that very reason — they are doing unique things with genre, making them stand out as memorable.
But have there been any trends over the last four years? Is there one kind of book doing more strongly than others? Are there genres which don’t seem to appear as many times as others on these lists?
The first stab I took at genre was in 2011, wherein for some reason I thought it was valuable to separate thrillers from mysteries. There weren’t as many genre-braided titles in this year, though as it shows, contemporary/realistic titles had the most representation, followed closely by fantasy, historical fiction, and then mysteries/thrillers, and science fiction.
The 2012 breakdown looks a little different than 2011, wherein fantasy titles outranked realistic, followed by historical, science fiction, then mysteries/thrillers. There was a noted drop in historical fiction here from the previous year.
In 2013, I discovered how much easier this data is to look at in bar form than in pie form. Realistic fiction took the top spots this year, followed by historical fiction, then fantasy. If fantasy and paranormal were folded together, it’s likely it would be even with historical, if not slightly more.
Even when the subgenres of fantasy were collapsed, realistic fiction still held the most “best of” spots in 2014. Fantasy wasn’t far behind. But most interesting is that historical fiction is nearly non-existent in 2014 on the lists — more books were historical fantasy than actual historical fiction. This year also ushered in more titles that were magical realism, as that was a subgenre/blending of genres not seen in previous years.
Maybe the most interesting thing about this data is how science fiction hasn’t been a leading genre in the “best of” lists. In fact, it’s fallen a bit — are we not seeing science fiction among the “best” anymore? Has there been a drop in the number of science fiction titles being published? Are science fiction books more likely part of a series and thus not always easy to put on “best” lists? There are more questions than answers, but I want to know more about what’s happening with science fiction in YA.
Also worth noting: despite the fact everyone considered this to be THE year for contemporary/realistic fiction, it’s not really doing better than in previous years. This is a statement I’ve made since the start, and I’ll stick with it: contemporary/realistic fiction isn’t a trend. It’s a staple, and it’s always been there and always been stable. Even if a couple of big names have made it more prominent in bookstores and in getting marketing/publicity money, the trend isn’t changing how well-respected and regarded it is. People have been reading it and people will continue reading it.
Diversity and the “Best of” Lists
So…have we been seeing more people of color and more LGBTQ representation on the “best of” lists in the last four years?
My data on this has been presented a few ways, depending on what information I could find about books or authors in a given year. I haven’t made any of this data visual in the past, so I’m going to continue in that trend:
- In 2011, 8 books were primarily about or featured a main character of color. 2 featured main characters who identified as LGBTQ. I did not count authors in this year, citing that finding the information was too difficult, and I believe this — people have been identifying more in the last couple of years, making that information more public and accessible.
- In 2012, there were 89 books and 90 authors represented in the data. I collapsed representation of people of color this year, meaning the count included both the authors who identified and he books that featured a main character of color. There were 20 titles/authors that fit. A total of 6 books featured LGBTQ main characters or story lines.
- In 2013, I kept the author/character counts separate for people of color, and I found that 8 of the authors were people of color, and 10 of the books featured main characters of color, for a total of 18. There were 55 authors and 62 main characters. A total of 5 books by my count featured main characters who identified as LGBTQ, though as noted in the comments, I didn’t include The Dream Thieves, so there are actually 6.
- In 2014, there were 14 main characters/authors that I identified as people of color and a total of 6 books that featured LGBTQ main characters or story lines.
It’s really tough to tell whether or not things are improving or not. Sure, there are more people of color and more LGBTQ stories represented in the last year than in the first year, but it’s still a very small percentage. As I noted yesterday, only 2 books featured stories where the main character identified as LGBTQ and a person of color. I think it’s about damn time we saw more of these stories and about time we saw more of these stories being recognized.
What can be said, though, is these numbers are still tiny.
Final Data and Thoughts
There’s not a lot else to dig into when comparing the data that’s particularly useful — I note every year that Candlewick seems to have a good number of titles on “best of” lists for a publisher as small as they are, and I also note every year that books published as hardcovers have a markedly better time of being recognized as “best of” titles than paperback originals or split run titles. Books published in April, May, September, and October have better chances of landing on lists than those published in November, December, January, July, and August.
There’s not a lot else to dig into when comparing the data that’s particularly useful — I note every year that Candlewick seems to have a good number of titles on “best of” lists for a publisher as small as they are, and I also note every year that books published as hardcovers have a markedly better time of being recognized as “best of” titles than paperback originals or split run titles. Books published in April, May, September, and October have better chances of landing on lists than those published in November, December, January, July, and August.
Journals have been changing their number of titles selected each year, and that’s been interesting to see. A few years ago, Kirkus selected 100 titles; this year, they selected 50. Not all of them ended up in my count, since they included fiction and non-fiction, but Kirkus still has the largest number of titles on the list, and the titles Kirkus selects more often only end up on the Kirkus list, as opposed to showing up on numerous lists.
Another worthy element to consider, which I haven’t here but could if I were to dig up all of my original spreadsheets, is whether there are authors who are perennial favorites. I have a suspicion, for example, that Maggie Stiefvater and A. S. King are two authors who have appeared every year on these lists (in fact, I know that they have!). Anyone who is up for the challenge of ferreting that out is more than welcome to do so, and I’d be happy to include that work in a link round-up feature here.
So, with all of this data now here, what’s surprising? Is there anything worth thinking about or any conclusions worth drawing? What sort of picture does this paint about what is considered the best in any given year? What is going on in science fiction?
I’d love to hear thoughts and ideas about this, or anything else noteworthy in the “best of” lists, as there’s now a four-year look at data.
I definitely think that SF is shrinking in middle grade and YA. I don't have the numbers to back that up, but while there are a few I've seen in the last few years (Phoebe North, R.J. Anderson), it seems like it's a much smaller genre than some. Of course, I'm thinking of traditional SF–if you include dystopias and post-apocalyptic stories, that's not necessarily true.