• STACKED
  • About Us
  • Categories
    • Audiobooks
    • Book Lists
      • Debut YA Novels
      • Get Genrefied
      • On The Radar
    • Cover Designs
      • Cover Doubles
      • Cover Redesigns
      • Cover Trends
    • Feminism
      • Feminism For The Real World Anthology
      • Size Acceptance
    • In The Library
      • Challenges & Censorship
      • Collection Development
      • Discussion and Resource Guides
      • Readers Advisory
    • Professional Development
      • Book Awards
      • Conferences
    • The Publishing World
      • Data & Stats
    • Reading Life and Habits
    • Romance
    • Young Adult
  • Reviews + Features
    • About The Girls Series
    • Author Interviews
    • Contemporary YA Series
      • Contemporary Week 2012
      • Contemporary Week 2013
      • Contemporary Week 2014
    • Guest Posts
    • Link Round-Ups
      • Book Riot
    • Readers Advisory Week
    • Reviews
      • Adult
      • Audiobooks
      • Graphic Novels
      • Non-Fiction
      • Picture Books
      • YA Fiction
    • So You Want to Read YA Series
  • Review Policy

STACKED

books

  • STACKED
  • About Us
  • Categories
    • Audiobooks
    • Book Lists
      • Debut YA Novels
      • Get Genrefied
      • On The Radar
    • Cover Designs
      • Cover Doubles
      • Cover Redesigns
      • Cover Trends
    • Feminism
      • Feminism For The Real World Anthology
      • Size Acceptance
    • In The Library
      • Challenges & Censorship
      • Collection Development
      • Discussion and Resource Guides
      • Readers Advisory
    • Professional Development
      • Book Awards
      • Conferences
    • The Publishing World
      • Data & Stats
    • Reading Life and Habits
    • Romance
    • Young Adult
  • Reviews + Features
    • About The Girls Series
    • Author Interviews
    • Contemporary YA Series
      • Contemporary Week 2012
      • Contemporary Week 2013
      • Contemporary Week 2014
    • Guest Posts
    • Link Round-Ups
      • Book Riot
    • Readers Advisory Week
    • Reviews
      • Adult
      • Audiobooks
      • Graphic Novels
      • Non-Fiction
      • Picture Books
      • YA Fiction
    • So You Want to Read YA Series
  • Review Policy

Reflecting On My Own Year in Reading

December 18, 2013 |

After breaking down the “Best of” lists last week, I thought about how interesting it would be to look at my own year of reading YA in different categories and see what I did and did not get to. Then I read this post over at YA Highway about making a commitment to be a better reading in the upcoming year, and I knew it would be worth it to look and see what a year in my reading life really looked like. While I don’t believe in making reading resolutions — that’s something I talked about at the beginning of this year — I do think there is a value in looking at what I am reading and reflecting upon why and how those were the titles I chose to spend time with. I think there’s merit, too, in considering what books I didn’t read and how and where I can better expand my reading in the future.

My reading this year has been significantly impacted by being on a committee. This committee has made me read a lot of books outside my comfort zone. I’ll be so bold as to suggest that I have read far more authors of diverse backgrounds when it comes to race, ethnicity, religious viewpoint, sexuality, and more than I ever have in my entire life. It’s been an amazing experience, and I can’t wait to talk a little bit more about it when my committee develops out final list at ALA Midwinter in January. Though I have read fewer titles this year than I have in recent years — about 170 so far, as opposed to breaking over 200 the last couple of years — I’ve read much wider and deeper than I think I ever have.

Because I can’t really talk about the books I’ve read for that committee nor what those books look like quite yet, what I decided to do for this post was look exclusively at the YA fiction titles that I’ve read in 2013. As of this writing, I’ve read 72 YA titles in the past year.

What have I read? Here’s a list, in moderately chronological order from the beginning of the year:

Pretty Girl-13 Liz Coley
The Murmurings Carly Anne West
Just One Day Gayle Forman
Thousand Words Jennifer Brown
All You Never Wanted Adele Griffin
Black Helicopters Blythe Woolston
The Whole Stupid Way We Are N. Griffin
I’m With Stupid Geoff Herbach
Wild Awake Hilary Smith
Scowler Daniel Kraus
Charm and Strange Stephanie Kuehn
Bruised Sarah Skilton
Me, Him, Them, and It Caela Carter
Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets Evan Roskos
Out of the Easy Ruta Sepetys
Sex and Violence Carrie Mesrobian
Pinned Sharon Draper
Rotten Michael Northrop
17 & Gone Nova Ren Suma
Permanent Record Leslie Stella
Over You Amy Reed
If You Could Be Mine Sara Farizan
Starting From Here Lisa Jenn Bigelow
The Book of Broken Hearts Sarah Ockler
Chasing Before Lenore Appelhans
Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip Jordan Sonnenblick
Fault Line Christa Desir
Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass Meg Medina
Second Impact David Klass / Perri Klass
If He Had Been With Me Lara Nowlin
The Chocolate War Robert Cormier
Sold Patricia McCormick
Freakboy Kristin Elizabeth Clark
Sex and Violence Carrie Mesrobian
September Girls Bennett Madison
Winger Andrew Smith
Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock Matthew Quick
Tomorrow CK Kelly Martin
The Program Suzanne Young
The Moon and More Sarah Dessen
All Our Pretty Songs Sarah McCarry
All The Truth That’s in Me Julie Berry
Maggot Moon Sally Gardner
Rotters Daniel Kraus
To Be Perfectly Honest Sonya Sones
Infinite Moment of Us Lauren Myracle
Teeth Hannah Moskowitz
Roomies Tara Altebrando / Sara Zarr
Fangirl Rainbow Rowell
Reality Boy AS King
Thin Space Jody Casella
The Theory of Everything Kari Luna
Cinder Marissa Meyer
OCD Love Story Corey Ann Haydu
Bright Before Sunrise Tiffany Schmidt
Dead Ends Erin Jade Lange
Friday Never Leaving Vikki Wakefield
Meet Me at the River Nina de Gramont
Engines of the Broken World Jason Van Hee
The Golden Day Ursula Duborasky
Waking Dark Robin Wasserman
Chasing Shadows Swati Avasthi
The In-Between Barbara Stewart
Inheritance Malinda Lo
Sick Tom Leveen
Juvie Steve Watkins
Ink is Thicker Than Water Amy Spalding
Heartbeat Elizabeth Scott
We Were Liars E Lockhart
Prince of Venice Beach Blake Nelson
The Killing Woods Lucy Christopher
Just One Year Gayle Forman

Gender Breakdown


When it came to my own year in reading, I definitely read more female authors than I did male authors. This doesn’t surprise me at all — though it’s also not intentional nor is it out of some principle I hold to read more female authors than male. I think the books I most wanted to read this year happened to also be written by female authors, and I do think because there are more females writing and publishing YA, the opportunity to read more females presents itself.

I read a total of 72 authors this year. I doubled up on two authors: Gayle Forman and Daniel Kraus. I counted them each only one time. Of those 72 authors, 80% were female and 20% were male.

Because I broke down the gender of main characters in the “best of” analysis, I thought I’d break down the gender of main characters in my own reading, too. This was tough because of multiple characters, but I found I’d had 84 main characters to pull from. Because it was too hard to tease out who were or weren’t main characters in Robin Wasserman’s The Waking Dark, I chose to keep that book out of this tally.

Like with the “best of” breakdown, the percentages are a little closer together than they were with gender of authors. There was one book featuring a trans main character, and I read 32 male characters and 51 female main characters.

Front List and Back List


What sort of distribution was there when it came to date of publication in my YA reading habits? Did I tackle more front list than back list?

It doesn’t surprise me in the least that I read far more books published in 2013 than I did books published prior. There were a total of 60 books I read published in 2013, with 7 books published prior to this year. I also read 5 books that will be published in 2014.

Again, I don’t put pressure on myself to reach certain reading goals, but I do think I want to spend a little more time in the coming year reading more books from the back list. I will say that this year I bought more books that were back list titles than I have in the past. I just haven’t yet read them. Perhaps it’s time to get working on that.

Books by Genre


I know I read primarily realistic fiction, and that was especially true at the beginning of this year when I was trying to wrap up reading some titles for my own book on contemporary YA. I also know I read quite a bit of horror, and that played out in an article I was able to write for School Library Journal in September.

But what did the actual distribution of YA genres look like this year for me?

Almost 70% of my reads this year were realistic, with historical fiction and horror in far second and third place. I read an equal number of science fiction and fantasy titles, as well as two titles I chose to classify as magical realism, rather than putting them in another category.

LGBTQ and POC Representation


I know one place I can definitely do better, and it is reading more titles written by or featuring LGBTQ or POC. I’m trying to be more observant of this because I want to make sure these are titles I’m spending more time reading and recommending not only here at the blog, but also in my own work in the library.

Out of the 72 books I read this year, I read a total of 9 books that were written by or featured LGBTQ characters or situations within them (by “situations,” I mean it’s a plot point or discussion when the main character may not identify). Some books do double duty, and the author and a character identify.

The books I put in this category include:

  • Me, Him, Them, and It by Caela Carter (the main character’s aunts are lesbians)
  • Over You by Amy Reed
  • If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan
  • Starting From Here by Lisa Jenn Bigelow
  • Freakboy by Kristin Elizabeth Clark
  • Winger by Andrew Smith
  • Teeth by Hannah Moskowitz
  • The Waking Dark by Robin Wasserman
  • Inheritance by Malinda Lo
When it came to POC in the books I read this year, I did a little bit better. But I could still improve in my reading. I read a total of 11 books written by or featuring POC characters or situations within them (again, by “situations,” I mean it’s a plot point or discussion when the main character may not identify, such as in Geoff Herbach’s I’m With Stupid, where Felton’s girlfriend/not-a-girlfriend is biracial). Some books do double duty, and the author and a character identify.
The books I put in this category include:
  • I’m With Stupid by Geoff Herbach
  • Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn
  • Pinned by Sharon Draper
  • Permanent Record by Leslie Stella
  • If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan
  • The Book of Broken Hearts by Sarah Ockler
  • Fault Line by Christa Desir
  • Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina 
  • Sold by Patricia McCormick
  • Chasing Shadows by Swati Avasthi
  • Inheritance by Malinda Lo 
Debut and Seasoned Authors

The final category I looked at in my YA reading this year was whether the books I read were written by debut or more seasoned authors. I limited myself to the 60 books I read published in 2013. 
I read a total of 23 novels by debut authors this year and 37 written by more seasoned authors. I’m pretty impressed with this divide, actually: I read far more debut novels this year than I thought I did. 
What I’m Taking From This


I’m not sure there is a whole lot to “take” from breaking down my own YA reading this year, though it does offer insight into the kinds of books I tend to gravitate towards. Part of this was certainly related to outside projects going on in my life — I saved a number of books I was really looking forward to reading as rewards for getting through committee reading. I also front loaded this year on realistic fiction so I could write about them in some way. 
Part of me wonders what it would look like if I broke down my year in writing reviews and features here on STACKED. I wonder if I don’t talk enough about diversity or about other topics outside my own comfort zone. But then I think about those things I did write about: female sexuality, body politics, and more, and I’m seeing that the way I read really does impact what I’m writing about, whether I’m calling something out specifically or not. It all influences my thinking and my perspective on reading and on writing about reading.
Which brings me back to that YA Highway post and a quote from Haruki Murakami that has been one of my all-time favorite quotes for years: If you only read the same books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.  
The more I push myself to read outside my comfort zone, the more I think I’m able to write outside my comfort zone and the more I’m able to read those books I love reading and which are comfortable to me in a manner that makes them have more power or impact — whether it’s because I discover I like them more or because I discover they might be problematic or speak to an issue in a way I never thought about before. While my YA reading year didn’t feature as much diversity as I hoped, my committee reading certainly has, and I see where the ideas I’ve read about there and the voices I’ve experienced have impacted my thinking about the other things I’ve read.
For those who love reading and those who love to talk about reading, particularly those who spread their love of reading to other readers or emerging readers, I think spending time to reflect upon your own reading is invaluable. I don’t think you have to set goals or resolutions to read or do certain things in your habits. But I do think when you look at the hard data and admit to yourself where you’re weak, you’re acknowledging something about yourself and about the perspective you have. Even though I don’t set goals, I see where I have some holes and I find that I want to do better. Not only does it make me a better reader and a better global citizen, but it helps me better encourage other readers to do the same thing. 

When it comes to the end of the year and reflecting upon your own reading, do you notice any trends? Are there things you wish you did better? Or are there things you’re impressed you did do, even if it didn’t feel like it in the moment? I’d love to hear what you see in a year’s worth of your own reading.

Filed Under: Data & Stats, reading habits, Uncategorized

“Best of 2013” and “Best of 2012” YA Lists Compared & What We Should Talk About

December 12, 2013 |

On Tuesday and yesterday, I looked at the data about this year’s “best of” lists, as tallied from School Library Journal, Kirkus, Horn Book, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal’s “Best YA for Adults.” I used almost the exact same metrics as I did in 2012, adjusting a bit for new categories and removing a couple I didn’t necessarily find that interesting or have enough data to pull together into anything worth looking at.

Because I used the same tally sheet and looked at so many of the same factors, I thought it would be worthwhile to compare what the “best of” lists in 2012 looked like against this year’s “best of” lists. Were there any notable differences between the two years? Were there more books considered “best” one year than the other? Was there a big difference in gender representation? What about other factors? If “best of” lists give a snapshot of a year in YA, then what will comparing two consecutive years say about preferences in “best” books? Again, this is all data and nothing conclusive can be said about it, but it is interesting to look and speculate.

In both 2012 and 2013, I used the same criteria to define a YA book. I didn’t look at non-fiction, and I didn’t include graphic novels in the final results. In both years, I also took Amazon’s age rating of the book being for those 12 and older as a standard for “YA fiction.”

Range and Spread of Titles Selected


The first thing that caught my attention when looking at the 2013 data was that it seemed like there were far fewer books being labeled “best of” than there were in 2012. Turns out, my suspicions were correct.

Note that this bar chart begins at 50 and Google won’t let me change it to begin at 0. But it shouldn’t matter, as it’s pretty clear there’s a difference in titles selected: last year, there were 89 unique titles on the “best of” lists. This year, there were only 55.

I decided to look at each publication and compare their number of unique choices last year against this year. Every publication selected more YA fiction last year than they did this year, except for Publishers Weekly, which picked 16 titles this year and only 11 last year. There’s a big difference in Kirkus’s number of choices, where they had selected 82 last year and 42 this year. Repeated titles were included here, as long as it was a unique journal which selected it (in other words, every instance of Far, Far Away counted as an individual title, as long as it was a different journal that picked it).

Even accounting for the non-fiction and graphic novel selections — which were minimal this year, as well — there were definitely fewer books selected as “best of” this year.

Does the fewer number of titles being selected as “best of” suggest that maybe this was a weaker year for YA fiction? Or if that’s not the case, did fewer books stand out and resonate this year among editors tasked with selecting the bests? Most “best of” lists are decided by vote and by the editors of the journals, and I wonder if there’s any correlation between the number of “best of” titles selected and the number of starred reviews earned this year. In other words, did fewer books earn starred reviews in 2013 than in 2012?

Even with Kirkus’s more esoteric selections, as discussed yesterday, there seem to be surprisingly few bests this year. Is this a trend we’re going to continue to see in the coming years or will 2013 be sort of an outlier?

Author Gender and “Best of” Lists


I didn’t keep track of the gender of the main characters in 2012 the way I did in 2013 (part of it having to do with having way more books on the 2012 list), but I did look at the gender of the authors on both sets of lists. For 2012, there were a total of 90 authors and in 2013, there were a total of 55.

In 2012:

There were 72 females and 18 males.

In 2013:

There were 41 females and 14 males.

As can be seen, there was a smaller percentage of female authors in 2013 than there were comparatively in 2012. Eighty percent of the authors in 2012 were female, whereas about 75% were female in 2013.

Although there aren’t hard numbers to represent all of the YA books published as categorized by author gender in these years, it does make me wonder a little bit if there were fewer female authors in 2013. Or were there fewer female-written books that stood out as “best?” It’s a small percentage drop, of course, but it’s an interesting trend, especially when taken in light of the data about the New York Times gender split for their YA list.

Debut Novelists on the “Best of” Lists

Did debut novelists do better in 2012 than they did in 2013 when it comes to being on the “best of” lists? Let’s take a look.

In 2012:

There were a total of 18 debut novelists in 2012, which came to 20% of the total number of authors on the “best of” list.

Compare to 2013:

There were 11 debut novelists in 2013, which also equalled a total of 20% of the authors on this year’s “best of” lists. In other words, no difference in debut novelists on the lists in the last year.

Genre Representation in “Best of” Lists

I mentioned that this year, there was a rise in realistic fiction in frequency of appearance on the “best of” lists. I thought it was notable, as the last couple of years have mentioned that realistic fiction would become “the next big thing,” and the “best of” lists at least suggested that realistic fiction caught more critical attention this year.

But was there a rise in realistic fiction this year as compared to last year? And if so, what was in abundance last year that maybe didn’t show itself as popular among the “best of” lists this year?

Here’s the 2012 breakdown:

Fantasy took up the largest portion of the “best of” lists, though realistic held its own. Last year, when I did the genre breakdown, I made “mystery and thriller” a separate category, which I did not do this year. I suspect if I were to reconsider categories, many of those books would end up under realistic fiction, thus making it about the same size as fantasy in terms of appearances on the list. Historical and science fiction followed in popularity.

There were more historical novels on this year’s “best of” lists than there were in 2012, with roughly 24% of the books falling under that genre. Compare to last year’s 14%. But what’s most notable is that fantasy dropped sharply this year, at roughly 19%, while in 2012, fantasy occupied almost 40% of the “best of” lists. There were also fewer novels categorized as science fiction that appeared in 2013 than in 2012.

Realistic fiction’s presence on the “best of” lists definitely increased, even if the mystery/thriller category is rolled into realistic fiction for 2012’s counts. This year, realistic fiction was nearly 44% of the “best of” lists.

Best of by List Frequency

With the fact there were fewer books on this year’s “best of” list than in 2012, as well as a shift a bit in terms of genre representation, I thought it would also be worth looking at the frequency of titles appearing across multiple lists. There were 5 lists total, and I was curious whether more books would appear more frequently on lists in 2012 or in 2013.

In 2012, here’s what the frequency of books on the “best of” books looked like:

The vast majority of books only showed up on one list, though a good portion also showed up on two lists. Smaller numbers appeared on three and four lists, and there was a single book which appeared on all five of the lists (that went to Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity). For the curious, the books which were on four lists each last year were Vaunda Nelson’s No Crystal Stair, Margo Lanagan’s Brides of Rollrock Island, AS King’s Ask the Passengers, John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, and Libba Bray’s The Diviners.

Compare to 2013:

There were a smaller percentage of books appearing on a single list this year than last, but there was a pretty big increase in the percentage of books on two lists, as opposed to one list in 2012. That’s percentage-wise, though, of the total number of books across the five lists. Raw numbers show that it was actually only an increase of one book appearing on two lists this year — 11 in 2013, rather than 10 in 2012. Both years saw a total of five books on three lists, though because of the smaller number of books overall on this year’s list, the percentage appears larger.

As mentioned in a previous data post, there were no books this year that ended up on all five of the “best of” lists (except for Boxers and Saints, which was not included in any of the data because I didn’t include it in YA fiction but considered it a graphic novel instead).

So What Does This All Mean?


In the big context of “best of” lists and accolades at the end of any given year in YA fiction, the data doesn’t really say a whole lot. It does, however, give us a picture of what a year in YA looks like. This year, it appears we have fewer female authors penning books considered “best of” (though it’s still a larger percentage than male authors), and we have many more realistic fiction filling out the lists than other genres.

We have fewer books earning multiple spots on “best of” lists, but with fewer books overall, what does that say? Again, the question I keep circling back to and have from the beginning of looking at this data is how much one list impacts another list and how much marketing may influence these things.

This year felt like a noteworthy one when it came to books being sold to readers and sold to readers in a very big way. There appeared to be a lot more money spent on a lot fewer titles, and I wonder how much of that reflects in these “best of” lists. The more a book is sold as a great book, how much more likely are we to believe that?

Even the most objective readers can’t avoid hearing and seeing the buzz about certain books. I’m not suggesting that editorial boards choosing their “best of” are swayed by this kind of marketing, but rather, this kind of marketing really did stick out this year more than other years. Which then leads me to another set of questions that seem to be the ones authors and creative types deal with themselves: do these “best of” list creators stick to their purely objective “best of” picks or do they feel at times pressured to bend to what the popular opinion of the “best of” books might be?

The most popular book this year among the “Best of” selections this year was Rowell’s Eleanor & Park. It was a good book.

But this was also a book that received spectacular marketing and publicity. It got a review in the New York Times by John Green, along with five starred reviews. That wasn’t lost on the book’s marketing, either — how many places was the book heralded as one that John Green himself loved and that other readers would, too? It was SMART. It helped a new YA author, who had only published one book into the adult market prior, gain immense traction and attention very quickly (it didn’t hurt the attention Rowell’s second book out this year received, either, as we were reminded that Green loved her first book in the marketing there, too). Readers have fallen in love with Eleanor & Park over and over, and it showed up on nearly every list this year where adult readers were told it’s okay to read YA because of books like that.

Was it this year’s “best” book? Would this book be seen as this good were it not for all of the marketing behind it? What about without all of the adult praise it earned (you know, it’s a “YA book that is okay for grown ups to read”)? This book was impossible to avoid, whether you were a YA reader or you weren’t a YA reader.

It’s hard not to think about the other books that came out this year that were as good as Rowell’s. But what were they? Are they some of those books Kirkus called out that, yesterday, I questioned as to why they were on the list in the first place? Have I become accustomed to thinking that outliers on these lists indicate a poor choice? Or is Kirkus on to something I’m unaware of because those books have yet to be sold and marketed to me as a reader (or more accurately, as a librarian who buys these books and then sells them to teen readers)?

The smaller the field of “bests,” the more I wonder what was overlooked simply because a few big titles had so much weight behind them.

Of course I have no answers. I just have a lot more questions, and they’re the kinds of questions I like to end a year with because they make me reevaluate my own reading, my own means of book recommendation, and my own personal “favorite” or “best of” lists. How much farther out do I want to reach to find hidden gems? How many of the big books should I make sure I do read because maybe I am missing something big there, too?

As of this writing, I haven’t yet seen the Booklist nor the BCCB “best of” lists, and I’m curious how those will stack up against these lists. Likewise, what will YALSA committees select as best books with their Printz this year, their Quick Picks, or their Best Fiction for Young Adults?

I’d love thoughts and ideas regarding this year’s best of picks, especially as they compare to last year’s. Any thoughts? Do you have any books you wish had seen time on the “best of” lists that didn’t show up? What about books that appeared on the list that make you scratch your head a bit?

Filed Under: best of list, data, Data & Stats, Uncategorized, Young Adult

“Best of 2013” YA List Breakdown, Part 2

December 11, 2013 |

This is part two of this year’s “best of YA” list breakdown. Make sure you read yesterday’s post, or at least the introduction of it, to understand why and how this works. To summarize the key points and to make sense of today’s data, I’ll repeat some of the important details: none of the data presented here is meant to “prove” anything. It’s presented in order to offer some discussion points, to explore trends and themes within the books deemed as the “best” of this year’s YA fiction, and any errors in data tabulation are mine and mine alone (and hopefully, there are few, if none!).

All data is based on 55 book titles, 55 authors, and in situations where discussion turns to main characters in a book, there are 62 identified main characters. All of the data is pulled from five “best of” lists: School Library Journal, Kirkus, Horn Book, Library Journal’s “YA for Adults,” and Publishers Weekly. 
I thought it would be interesting to break down the lists into less “big picture” stuff and into smaller picture stuff. Where yesterday looked at things like presence of books featuring POC or LGBTQ characters, as well as gender breakdowns of both authors and main characters, today I wanted to look at more granular list data. All of my raw data can be accessed here. It’s not necessarily pretty, but I’m happy if people want to use it to draw additional connections between and among “best of” titles. Some of the information I included on the chart did not make my blog posts (there was too little to talk about in terms of print run, genre, and gender, especially compared to last year) and some of it will appear in tomorrow’s comparison post between 2012 “best of” lists and this year’s “best of” lists. 
So with that, let’s dig in.
Month of Publication



Were books published earlier in the year more likely than those published later in the year to make the “best of” lists? Or, because their newness and shininess wore off prior to decision-making time, were they less likely to make the lists?
When it came to books published in the first half of the year (January – June) against those which published in the second half of the year (July – December), here’s the breakdown:

“Best of” books published between January and June came to 25 total titles, while those published between July and December equalled 30. There’s not a major difference between representation of titles in the first half of the year and those in the second half. 
What about breaking it down more? Is there a month where more “best of” books were published? The answer to this one is yes.
The leader of the pack this year is September — thirteen of the books on this year’s “best of” lists were published that month. March had the second highest number of books on the lists, with 7, followed by October and April with six each.
Worth noting in this data is something I’m trying to better understand. On Kirkus’s list, one of the books listed (Nowhere to Run by Claire Griffin) appeared to have numerous publication dates, according to Amazon’s various listings. It was difficult to parse out whether this book was actually published this year or was published last year, since I saw a November 2012 date, as well as a March 2013 date. Kirkus made a handful of choices this year which didn’t make perfect sense to me, and I can’t help wonder if maybe that 2012 publication date was accurate. Either way, I operated as though the book was published in March of this year. 
What about the month of publication for those debut authors? Was there a better month to be a debut author and end up on the “best of” lists? 
There were four debut novels on the “best of” list published in March, followed by two in July and September. April, June, and October had one each. 
Publication Format

I’m always curious whether hardcovers or paperback originals do better on the “best of” lists. There seem to be fewer paperback originals published in YA than hardcovers, but it’s a category I still like looking at. If there is data on this at all, I would love to know about it. 
One thing I wanted to point out in this data was something that interested me with the Kirkus list. One of their titles, Outcast Oracle, appears not to be for sale in a non-e-book format in the general market. I checked both Amazon and Barnes and Noble and it’s only available for purchase as a Kindle or Nook book. I went to the publisher’s website to see if there was indeed a print run at all, and it appears you can buy a paperback copy from the publisher directly. I also hopped onto Baker & Taylor, which is where my library purchases its books (and where a large percentage of public libraries make their purchases) and the book is not available on there in any format. 
Which makes me wonder a little bit about how valuable that title being on the list is, since getting access to it is such a hurdle. You either need an ereader OR you need to purchase direct from the publisher. Will having it on this list give it a bump in sales or encourage an easy way to purchase it? I’ll talk a little bit more about this tomorrow, since it’s fascinating to me what including this particular title might suggest. 
But back to the category at hand: I looked at hardcover books, paperback originals (which is where I stuck the title above), and those books which feature a split run, where both a hardcover and a paperback are published simultaneously. 
There’s no question that hardcover format dominated the “best of” lists, with 52 of the titles published as hardcover. Two books were published as paperback originals, which included both the title noted above, as well as Kelsey Sutton’s Some Quiet Place. One book appeared to be a split run, which was the previously noted Nowhere to Run by Claire Griffin. 
Were there fewer paperback originals published this year? Fewer split runs? Of course, some publishers only do paperback originals (like Flux) and some publishers make it clear their “bigger” titles are hardcover. I’ve yet to figure out what it means when a book is published as split, if anything (this year, a few books that were published split run but weren’t on the “best of” lists include Jody Casella’s The Thin Space, Sarah McCarry’s All Our Pretty Songs, and Hannah Moskowitz’s Teeth). 
Publisher Representation on the “Best Of” Lists

Are there publishers which tend to do better on the “best of” lists? I’ve always had it in my mind that some publishers work on books that are less mainstream, a little riskier, and that those books do tend to be noticed on the end-of-year lists for those things. Candlewick is perhaps the one which stands out most in my mind for this, as well as Lerner/Carolrhoda LAB. 
I’ve flattened all of the imprints into their respective publishers for simplicity’s sake (so, St. Martin’s titles are under Macmillan), and because I wanted it to be readable, I broke it into two charts. Here’s a look at how the various publishers did on the “best of” lists:


I purposefully didn’t do it in a decline since that would mess up the scaling on the charts themselves and I wanted these to be as close to the same scale as possible. But as you can see, Candlewick led the publishers with the most books on the “best of” lists, with a total of 7 titles. Penguin had 6, with 5 titles from Scholastic, 4 from Little, Brown, and 3 each from Harper, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and Houghton Mifflin. 
As should be clear, there are a lot of titles on the “best of” list not published by a Big 6/5 publisher (so, not a book published by Harper, Little, Brown, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Penguin/Random House). Comparatively, mid/small/indie presses had more titles on these lists: 33 of the books on the “best of” list came from non-Big 6/5 publishers, while 22 did. 
I think this is pretty impressive, especially with Candlewick’s large presence. Carolrhoda LAB had two titles, which is also impressive given how small their seasonal lists are. 
“Best of” Lists and Starred Reviews Earned

Since we know the “best of” books now, is it fair to assume that books which appeared more frequently on the lists tended to have more starred reviews in the six major review journals? 
I pulled the starred reviews from ShelfTalker’s round up of “The Stars So Far” in November. I looked at stars earned from the following publications: BCCB, Booklist, Kirkus, SLJ, PW, and Horn Book. Of course, there’s a lot of leeway and error that can happen here. Not all journals will review all books. Not all journals review the books in a timely fashion, and so there’s a possibility that some of these books will earn stars later. 
Not a single one of the YA novels I looked at had earned stars from all six of those publications, either. 

Among the “best of” books, here’s how the starred reviews broke down:
  • Seven books earned 5 starred reviews
  • Four Books earned 4 starred reviews
  • Thirteen books earned 3 starred reviews
  • Fourteen books earned 2 starred reviews
  • Sixteen books earned 1 starred review 
The breakdown doesn’t surprise me a whole lot, especially because the majority of the books on the “best of” lists came from Kirkus’s list, and they tended to have earned a star from Kirkus. In other words, a lot of single-starred books were the books Kirkus selected as “best” (though certainly not all). 

So what about starred review frequency against the frequency to which books appeared on “best of” lists? Here’s the chart:
List Appearances vs. Star Earnings 5 lists 4 lists 3 lists 2 lists 1 list
6 stars 0 0 0 0 0
5 stars 0 1 2 3 1
4 stars 0 0 1 4 0
3 stars 0 0 1 2 10
2 stars 0 0 1 2 11
1 star 0 0 0 0 16
Again, no books made all five lists, and the bulk of the books fell into the category of landing on one list and earning one, two, or three stars. 


Eleanor & Park
, the book with the most placements on the “best of” lists this year, earned five starred reviews.

Series vs. Stand Alone Titles on the “Best of” Lists

To wrap up the data, let’s look at a simple but worthwhile aspect: do series books do better or worse than stand alone titles on the “best of” lists? This is, I think, impacted pretty significantly by genre of the “best of” books this year, since realistic fiction tends to produce fewer series books than other genres. 
In this data, I included companion and prequels as “series” books (so Rose Under Fire and Invasion were rolled into that data).

Roughly one quarter of the “best of” lists were series books, while three-quarters were stand alone titles. Of those books which were part of a series, there were:
  • two prequels
  • one companion
  • six were the first in a series
  • three were the second book in a series
  • two that were third books. 


Some Concluding Thoughts on the 2013 Data

While I’ve commented throughout on what I think the takeaways or questions are about the data and “best of” lists this year, I did have a couple of other thoughts to share, and I would love if anyone wanted to weigh in on what they’ve seen. I have one final post coming tomorrow that will compare this year’s data with last year’s, which I think will spark some interesting conversation. 
First, it’s worth noting that Kirkus’s list is the lengthiest again this year, and it’s also the most strange. I’m confused by their inclusion of a novel that has been categorized in numerous places, including the publisher’s own catalog, as “middle grade.” That’s Fireborn by Toby Forward. Because Amazon listed the age range as 12 and older, I did include it all of the data, but since it’s a book not published until after the “best of” appeared, I’ll be curious what readers and other critics say is the true age range. To me, it even looks middle grade.
Likewise, Kirkus included more indie press titles (note self-published, but actual indie press) than other publications did. This led me to some of the questions above about Outcast Oracle and it makes me question who their list might be intended for. Any reader who spent time with their list likewise probably noticed it was difficult to parse out their picks from the paid-for advertising of books between their selections, too. If there are more and more titles being selected as “best of” that are difficult to acquire for, say, purchasers at institutions, it makes me wonder how much value the list itself has for users like myself, a librarian who does sometimes supplement collections with titles I may have missed. If it’s a book I cannot get without jumping through hoops, though, why bother? 
On the other hand, the more esoteric choices make me wonder how many gems slip through the cracks each year because they are from smaller presses. Right now, I think we might have a dark horse for YALSA awards, as well as an under-sung gem Chris L. Terry’s Zero Fade.  
Overall, this year’s list had a much smaller range of titles than I thought. Is it because this is a weaker year for YA overall or do the lists have an unintentional (or intentional) impact on one another? Horn Book, for example, only had 5 YA titles included in their “best of,” and LJ’s “YA for Adults” only had three by the criteria I used.

There’s nothing that can be said conclusively, of course. But what makes “best of” lists interesting to look at as data, rather than as something more subjective, is that it lets you consider the year in a snapshot. This might have been a weaker YA year. It may have been the year that male main characters were stronger than female. It may have continued a trend of featuring a small number of LGBTQ characters. It’s also interesting to consider what this “best of” snapshot will indicate in the future, too. Will we have more books of a certain ilk because they’re more likely to perform better?

Stick around for tomorrow’s thoughts and comparisons between this year’s list and last year’s. Although again it won’t make any hard conclusions, it can shed some insight into some of these questions. 

Filed Under: best of list, data, Data & Stats, Uncategorized, Young Adult

“Best of 2013 YA” List Breakdown, Part 1

December 10, 2013 |

Welcome to the third annual “Best of YA” list break down. Since 2011, I’ve gone through the “best of” lists developed by the biggest trade review journals and pulled together some statistics about those books. Which ones have repeat appearances? Is there a gender representation difference in the books deemed the best? What do we see in terms of POC, LGBTQ representation, and lots more.

This year, I wanted to look at a number of factors like I did last year, and it requires more than one post to do so. Because I still had all of my data from last year pulled into a single space (I did not in 2011, where all of my information was posted in another forum), I’ve written third post as well, comparing the data from last year against this year’s. They will publish today, tomorrow, and on Thursday.

The “best of” lists I looked at this year are the same ones I analyzed last year: School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Horn Book, and the Library Journal list of Best YA for Adults. I like to look at that last one, the YA for Adults, because I think it’s worth keeping an eye on and comparing with the lists that are geared less toward adults — are there crossover titles? Are there different titles completely? It adds another flavor to the data.

Because they come out a little bit later, I have not looked at the best of lists from Booklist nor BCCB, though it’s possible I may look at them comparatively in the new year (BCCB’s list comes out in January and Booklist’s should be out this week, either prior to this post or after it). I limited what I looked at to YA fiction only. This means no graphic novels (though if you’re curious, the graphic novels which made this combination of lists include Boxers and Saints, on all five of the lists; Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant on two of the lists; Will & Whit on one of the lists; Romeo & Juliet on one of the lists; and March on one of the lists) and I did not include non-fiction titles (of which there were very few).

I made my determination on whether a book was a YA book or not based on the criteria that Amazon listed it as a book for those age 12 and older. This meant some books which have been debated as being “for YA readers or not,” like Tom McNeal’s Far, Far Away, were indeed included in my count. I did not include illustrators for books that feature graphic or illustrative elements in my author counts or breakdowns.

Though more relevant to tomorrow’s post than today’s, I pulled my information about starred reviews from ShelfTalker’s last updated “The Stars So Far” post; since this was last updated in mid-November, it’s possible some of these titles may have earned additional stars since then. Information about LGBTQ representation in these books was pulled from Malinda Lo’s tallying, along with notes I’ve made to myself on the books I have read.

Before diving in, some caveats: none of this data means anything. I’m not trying to draw conclusions nor suggest certain things about the books that popped up on the “best of” lists. Errors here in terms of counts, in my decision to list a book as featuring a POC, in my tallying of MCs by gender, and so forth, are all my own. I have not read all of these books, so sometimes, I had to make an educated guess based on reviews I read. Tomorrow, I’ll link to all of my raw data in the introduction.

There were a total of 55 books on these lists, 55 authors, and a total of 62 main characters, as some books were told through more than one point of view.

With that, let’s see what there is to see in this year’s “Best of YA” lists.



Gender Representation in the “Best of” Lists


First, let’s look at gender and the “best of” lists. Do we have more male authors represented or do we have more female authors?

There were a total of 55 authors represented on all of the “best of lists,” with 14 being male and 41 being female. In other words, roughly three-quarters of the authors this year were female, while one-quarter were male. This is a really interesting breakdown, considering that the breakdown by author gender on the New York Times Lists (in this post and this post) showed something different.

One of the comments I received on my New York Times post breakdowns was that it would be interesting to look at the main character genders in the books listed. Since I didn’t look at that element in those posts, I thought I’d give it a shot with the “best of” lists this year.

As noted, there are more main characters than there are authors, so this is out of a total of 62 characters. Again, not having read all of the books, this is based on my best guesses having read through many reviews of the titles listed. I counted main characters as those who have a voice in the story. I did not include the Marcus Sedgwick book, since it is a collection of short stories and not having read it, making a call was impossible.

This chart tells quite a bit of a different story than the one above. Of the 62 main characters, 29 were male, and 33 were female. The percentages are much closer to even when we look at main character gender rather than look at the author’s gender alone.

There are a couple of questions to think about with this: Did we have much better male-led stories this year? Or do we tend to take male-led stories as “better” than those led by female? This is a question I’ve been thinking about a lot, as it’s something impossible not to think about. Female-led stories tend to have more romance in them, and it’s possible we have a bias against romance. Worthwhile readings on this topic are this post and this post over at Crossreferencing.

Again, I’m making no conclusions here, but I think these are questions worth thinking about. It does make me want to revisit my NYT analysis now and look at the gender of the main character, especially as some people took problem with the fact there was more male representation when it came to author appearance on the list. I have a suspicion that looking at the gender of the main characters of those books wouldn’t actually change my findings very much.

Debut Authors vs. More Seasoned Authors


What kind of break down is there between new authors and those who are on their second, fifth, or twentieth book? Are there more books by authors who’ve done their time on the “best of” lists or more by debut authors?

I am a purist when defining “debut.” These are first books. They are not first YA books. I did not hold published short stories or poems against debut status, as long as the book on the “best of” list was the author’s first novel. In other words, Alaya Dawn Johnson is not a debut author, despite The Summer Prince being her first YA book.

There were a total of 11 debut novels on the lists, making up 20% of the total. The other 44 novels were by authors who had previously published a novel.

What about gender of the debut author?

Of the 11 debut authors, nine were female and two were male.

Continuing to talk a bit about the debut novelists who made the list, how do the Morris Shortlist authors compare? Of the five books on the Morris list, three of those books saw themselves on any of the five “best of” lists: Carrie Mesrobian’s Sex & Violence, which made both Kirkus and PW’s “best of” list, In The Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters made SLJ’s list, and Evan Roskos’s Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets, which made the Kirkus list. That’s more than half.

“Best Of” by Genre


It’s tough to decide what book belongs in what genre. There are some which could go more than one way (especially when it comes to historical and fantasy, as some could go either way easily). Again, since I haven’t read all of the books on this list, I had to pull some of my decisions from reviews, as well as from talking with those who have read the book. In short: decisions are subjective, but they’re based on research.

I broke down my categories as broadly as possible. Thus, “realistic” is a category and not contemporary, for the sake of putting books like Eleanor & Park into what might be the best place for it to fit. I considered Far, Far Away to be fantasy, rather than paranormal, as I determined paranormal a category best suited for a story featuring a creature, rather than a spirit. I know it’s a bit arbitrary.

Did one genre do better than another this year when it came to best of lists? Let’s take a look.

Turns out that realistic fiction led other genres in “best of” lists this year. Out of a total of 55 books, 24 were realistic fiction. Historical had 13, with fantasy 10, science fiction 5, paranormal 2, and short stories 1.

Perhaps there’s something to the suggestion there has been a growth in realistic fiction this year. This is something I may try to tackle in a series of posts next week about trends in 2014 fiction because I think it’s better said there might be a rise in a certain type of realistic fiction coming up.

Books by “Best of” List Frequency


How many books saw themselves on more than one “best of” list this year? Even though the staff of the journals choose their titles by vote (usually), it’s always curious to be to see what trends emerge in titles that appear more than once. Do those very early lists like School Library Journal’s in November influence those which appear later? Or more realistically, do awards like the National Book Award or the Horn Book/Boston Globe Book Award put titles onto radars as possible “best of” picks? What influences what, if anything?

It’s worth noting here — and I’ll repeat it again in the next posts — that the journals each choose a different number of “best of” titles. And with my criteria listed in the beginning of this post to define “YA Fiction,” the number of titles eligible shifted, too. Kirkus had 42 titles, School Library Journal had 13, LJ’s “YA for Adults” had 3, Horn Book had 5, and Publishers Weekly had 16. Again, I’ll come back to these totals in future posts.

Within the five lists, there were no books which appeared on all five. Only one book saw itself on four of the lists, and that was Eleanor & Park. It did not make the “Best YA for Adults” list by SLJ, though Rowell’s other book, Fangirl, did make that list.

There were five books which appeared on three lists, eleven books which appeared on two lists, and a total of thirty-eight books which appeared on one list.

The bulk of this year’s “best of” titles only showed up on one list.

“Best of” Titles by Book Format


This year seemed to be the year of novels with a twist to their format, and I think that some of the data on the “best of” list reflects that. Though this, too, is interesting to compare to last year’s list. Were there any verse novels this year? What about books told with a graphic-hybridization? What about sketches or illustrations that weren’t quite at graphic novel style or what about those mixed media projects?

It’s not surprising that standard novels made up the majority of format for storytelling. Forty-nine of the books on this list were your average novel (which isn’t a means of degrading novels as “average,” but rather suggesting they aren’t doing anything noteworthy in format). There were three novels this year that included some kind of illustrative element to them that stood out, including Maggot Moon, Winger, and The War Within These Walls. There was on graphic novel hybrid with Chasing Shadows, one mixed media novel with In The Shadow of Blackbirds, and one short story collection, Midwinterblood.

There were no novels in verse represented this year.

Diversity and “Best Of” Lists


Two topics I wanted to look at within the “best of” lists included representation of LGBTQ and POC. Again, standard disclaimers that I haven’t read all of these books, and I pulled data from my own research (as well as the linked-to blog post above from Malinda Lo).

First, let’s talk about LGBTQ and the “best of” lists. How many stories featured characters whose sexuality was discussed or a major part of the book? I’m looking strictly at the books and stories, rather than authors, because it’s challenging to make that determination and, I think, unfair to make it, too.

Five Books featured characters who identified as LGBTQ. These books were:

  • More Than This by Patrick Ness
  • The Sin-Eater’s Confession by Ilsa J. Bick
  • Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan
  • Winger by Andrew Smith (minor character)
  • Zero Fade by Chris L. Terry

What about books written by or featuring people of color? This one is easier to make a determination of when it comes to author, so I’m breaking this town into two data sets: by author and by character in a book. Remember there are 55 authors and 62 main characters represented.

Authors who are POC on the “Best of” lists: 8. I did include Myers twice in the count, since he had two different books on the list.

Main characters who are POC on the “Best of” lists: 10, with one story featuring a secondary character who is a POC.

Those authors and books (some of which are written by a POC about a POC) are:

  • Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell 
  • Zero Fade by Chris L. Terry
  • Invasion by Walter Dean Myers 
  • Golden Boy by Tara Sullivan
  • Death, Dickinson, and the Demented Life of Frencie Garcia by Jenny Torres-Sanchez
  • Darius & Twig by Walter Dean Myers 
  • Champion by Marie Lu
  • The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson
  • The Counterfeit Family of Vee Crawford-Wong by L Tam Howard
  • A Moment Comes by Jennifer Bradbury
  • Chasing Shadows by Swati Avasthi
  • Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina

Country of Origin and “Best of” Lists

I wanted to round up today’s post and data by looking at something I did not look at last year, which is the country of origin of the author. Do authors who aren’t from the US fair well on our “best of” lists? Do they tend to do better than US authors?

I’ve got three categories for this data: US born and still living in the US; foreign born and foreign living; and I have a small number of US ex-pats. Here’s the breakdown:

Of the 55 authors represented on the “best of” lists, 40 were from and still living in the US. A total of 12 were foreign born and foreign living, and three were born in the US and now living in a foreign country. 
There’s not anything to conclude with this information, but it’s interesting to see there is a fair representation of non-US authors on the list. The bulk were located in the UK, Canada, and Australia. 
***
Any thoughts on the data so far? Surprises? Non-surprises? 
Tomorrow there will be another post, this time looking at a number of other factors, including date of publication for the books on the lists, the spread of publishers represented on the list, and more. I’ll talk about the way this year’s “best of” lists compare to last year’s on Thursday, since there are some interesting trends in the books on these lists. 
Even if no conclusions can be made, it is always fascinating to see what a year in books looks like and what it is we define as “the best” in a year (and it’s equally or more fascinating to see what’s not included).

Editing to add that Malinda Lo has some really great observation and commentary about LGBTQ as represented on this year’s “Best of” lists. Go check it out.

Filed Under: best of list, data, Data & Stats, Uncategorized, Young Adult

A Closer Look at The New York Times YA Bestsellers List, Part 2

November 5, 2013 |

* This is part two of a two-part series. 


If you haven’t spent time with yesterday’s data, you should do that before diving into today’s post. This is quite a bit shorter, though it’s got far fewer images. Today I wanted to look at the publishers who are represented on the NYT YA List, as well as talk about what the list looks like now that Veronica Roth has jumped to series. I’ve also got a few concluding thoughts and observations I thought were worth sharing at the end.




Publishers Represented on the NYT YA List 

I’m always curious whether there’s one publisher which has more books landing on the bestseller list than others. Part of this stems from the idea that perhaps a bigger marketing push is why those books get on the list in the first place and then continued push on titles which maintain their spots over a lengthy period of time. I think, too, it’s interesting to keep this in mind with the rise of very cheap and short-term ebook sales and what impact those may have on books which then appear or stick around on the list. Because it’s not price that gets books on the list; it’s sales numbers.

Because I am human and because counting up the appearance of publishers on a list, I know I made a little bit of a counting misstep. I looked at 47 lists total, which included the extended books — leaving out the list where Veronica Roth has moved over to series — and there should be a total of 705 books to tally. But in my final numbers, I missed a few and ended up with a count of only 701 books. So, I’ve taken the liberty and rounded the biggest numbers by publisher up to the nearest 0 or 5, for simplicity’s sake. It did not impact the results.

I’ve flattened the publishers, folding all of the imprints within their bigger houses. In other words, Tor books and St. Martin’s books are counted under Macmillan. Because Penguin and Random House are still appearing as separate houses, I kept them as separate in my tally.

On the 47 weeks worth of lists, a total of 12 publishers are represented. They break down as follows:

  • Penguin: 295 books
  • Harper Collins: 140 books
  • Simon & Schuster: 70 books
  • Random House: 60 books
  • Hachette/Little, Brown: 45 books
  • Macmillan: 45 books
  • Quirk: 45 books
  • Scholastic: 7 books
  • Disney: 6 books
  • Bloomsbury: 2 books
  • Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 1 book
  • Nicole Reed Books: 1 book
As I noted in yesterday’s post, I have no idea why a self-published “new adult” title got onto the NYT List. Human error is the most likely reason, which I’ll talk about in the next section. 
It’s interesting to see that, without doubt, Penguin dominates with titles on the bestsellers list. Worth noting: Penguin publishes John Green, Rick Yancey, and Sarah Dessen, all of whom spent some time on the list. Harper publishes Roth’s series, Random House publishes The Book Thief, and Simon & Schuster publishes Perks of Being a Wallflower. Quirk publishes Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. 
If you’re curious about those smaller numbers: HMH published Dark Triumph which was on the list for one week, and Bloomsbury published Falling Kingdoms and S. J. Maas’s Crown of Midnight. 

**Edited to note: In the course of counting, tabulating, etc — my own human error noted that Falling Kingdoms was a Bloomsbury title. It is not. It’s Penguin. I haven’t adjusted the numbers or text, but it shifts another title to the Penguin column and one fewer to the Bloomsbury.

E-Book Originals, The Definition of “Series,” and Defining “YA”



I talked a bit yesterday about e-books and the impact of e-book sales on the appearance of titles on the list. What I didn’t talk about was that a number of e-originals have themselves made the list. These are books which are not in print but only exist in a digital format. This tells us a number of things about the buyers of these books, as well as about what those appearances may say in terms of who or what influences the books that do appear on the list. Or maybe more, who or what influences the titles which last on the list more than a week or two.

The e-book originals — short stories, it should be noted — that have appeared on the list include two of the Cassie Clare co-written titles in the “Bane Chronicles” series: “What Really Happened in Peru” and “The Runaway Queen.”

Kiera Cass’s “The Prince,” which was also an e-original short story, appeared on the list as well.

The reason I wanted to point these out is because, as noted yesterday, books jump to the series list after there are three titles published within that series. So the publication of Allegiant meant that Roth moved from the YA list onto the series list. But interestingly, this hasn’t always been the case with YA books, and it’s been inconsistent.

Taherhi Mafi’s “Shatter Me” series made the series list this year, despite the fact the third book within that series has yet to be published. Rather than have potentially two spots on the YA list, the books were instead grouped onto the series list. And the reason? The publication of an e-original titled “Destroy Me.”

By that theory, Cass’s books should have jumped to the series list with the publication of The Elite, which came after The Selection and “The Prince.” But it didn’t.

There is clearly some inconsistency and human error going on with the definition of series and it does play a role in what is and is not ending up on the YA list. Had Mafi’s books ended up on the YA List, rather than the series list, perhaps there would have been a week or two where women had more spots than men did. But we’ll never know because when the final book in her series does publish, it’ll definitely be on the series list.

Another thing that interests me on the YA List is how the creators define “YA.” As noted previously, two “new adult” authors have made the list: Nicole Reed and Abbi Glines. Both of their books are published for the 17 and older audience, which is spelled out right in the listing about the book on the list. This is an interesting — and frustrating — tactic used to get those books on the list meant for books published for the 12-18 market. Would those books stand a chance on the much more crowded adult list, were they listed as being for those 18 and older instead of those 17 and older? How blurry do we allow the lines between YA and not-YA to get, especially when it comes to something as influential as the bestsellers list? And, if we are going to have something called “new adult” fiction, then can we fairly give them a space on the YA list if it’s something completely all its own?

There is a lot to dig into here when it comes to readership and buyership. Those e-originals aren’t getting their sales through traditional means. I want to know who is buying them. My bet is on teenagers who are devoted fans to the series — which then would tie into my previous comments about teen influence on the list being why those titles appear once or twice and then disappear. I suspect, too, the e-original format severely limits long-term readership and audience reach.


The Post-Roth List

Part of my curiosity about gender and the NYT List came because I knew that Veronica Roth’s “Divergent” series moving over to the series list would open up two spots. Would they allow more women in? Or would more men have the chance to land on the list? What would her two spots — which have been there since week one — do to the average length of stay for male-written vs. female-written change dramatically now that her two books with 47-week histories are gone?

So far, there has only been one list to look at to think about these questions. But the list that came out when her books went to the series list looks . . . remarkably like every other list so far. No surprises. No one new. Nothing out of left field.

On this week 48 list, the stats broke down as such:

  • 9 men total were on the list 
  • 12 books written by men were on the list
  • Within the top ten, 6 males were on the list
  • Within the top ten, 8 books written by men were on the list. 
The average length of stay for these 12 male-written book on the NYT List for week 48 — the first one after Roth’s series shifted — was 32 weeks.
More stats about this list:
  • 3 women total were on the list
  • 3 books written by women were on the list
  • Within the top ten, 2 females were on the list
  • Within the top ten, 2 books written by females were on the list. 
The average length of stay for these 3 female-written books on the NYT List for week 48? Five Weeks. 

Because doing an average of overall length of stay across genders would be silly with only this one week post-Roth to compare, this is a number to still think about. The average length of stay for books on the week 48 list for men is 32. Women, 5. This is going to make a difference the further out we go from here, as I predicted yesterday. It will matter. 


The two women who were in the top ten were Marie Lu and Lauren Kate. As you likely know, Marie Lu’s series wraps up in November and she, too, will shift over to the series list. This will leave one — maybe two — spots open for new faces on the list. More than that, it’ll lower the average length of stay for a female-written book on the NYT List even further down. 
We’ll see if Lauren Kate’s book will remain on the list. It debuted at #6, so even if Roth’s books remained on the standard list, it’s likely Kate’s title would have made it on the list. But this list reflects the sales the week Kate’s book came out, so it’s worth keeping an eye on whether this one has staying power or if it reflects many of the other books which debut on the list one week and slide off the week or two next. Again, and this is all hypothesis, but perhaps those books represent high sales by the actual teen contingent, as they’re books teens are eager and excited about as soon as they are published (which isn’t to say those books don’t remain popular, but rather, they don’t sustain the same level of sales in the weeks after initial launch).

If you’re curious about publisher representation on the post-Roth list, I’ve got that for you, too:

  • Penguin: 5 books 
  • Random House: 4 books
  • Hachette/Little, Brown: 3 books
  • Simon & Schuster: 1 book
  • Macmillan: 1 book
  • Quirk: 1 book
There was not a single book from Harper Collins on the list after Roth’s series moved over. 

Other Observations


I thought I’d wrap up all of this data, commentary, and totally speculation with some of the interesting trends and ties that didn’t fit neatly into another category but were still worth thinking about. So this will potentially be a little messy and again, no graphics.

First: what were the total representations by gender on the list? This does include the numbers for the Post-Roth list and does include the extended list.

  • Males: 17
  • Females: 33
Of those:
  • Four male authors had multiple books on the NYT List. These were John Green, James Patterson, Brandon Sanderson, and David Levithan.
  • Twelve female authors had multiple books on the NYT List. These were Veronica Roth, Maggie Stiefvater, Sarah Dessen, Ruta Sepetys, Marie Lu, Ellen Hopkins, Cassie Clare, Marissa Meyer, Maureen Johnson, Kiera Cass, Rainbow Rowell, and Gayle Forman. 

Finally, I’d noted that there’s a trend for books to end up on the list one week then fall off, particularly for female authors. I took some notes on trends I saw in terms of books that didn’t last more than 2 weeks on the top ten list (or extended list) and thought they were worth sharing. This is very raw and it’s quite likely I’ve overlooked something here, but the trends are worth paying attention to.

Female-authored books which lasted only one week on the top ten before either falling off the list completely or falling onto the extended list.

  • Endless Knight by Kressley Cole: Debuted at #6, fell off entirely the following week.
  • Battle Magic by Tamora Piece: Debuted at #8, fell off entirely the following week.
  • If I Stay by Gayle Forman: Debuted on list at #6, fell off but returned later on in the 47 weeks I looked at.
  • Just One Year by Gayle Forman: Landed on the extended for one week, then disappeared.
  • Seige and Storm by Leigh Bardugo: Landed on extended for one week, then disappeared.
  • Of Triton by Anna Banks: Landed on extended for one week, the disappeared.
  • “The Runaway Queen” by Cassie Clare and Maureen Johnson: Debuted at #8, then disappeared. 
  • Never Fade by Alexandra Bracken: Debuted at #10 the week before Roth’s book moved over, but on the list following Roth’s shift, it fell off. 
  • Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken: Debuted on extended the week before Roth’s book moved over, nut on the week following Roth’s shift, it fell off. 
  • “What Really Happened in Peru” by Cassie Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan: Debuted at #4, then disappeared. 
  • Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers: Debuted at #9, then disappeared. 
  • Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys: Debuted on the extended, then disappeared.
  • Ruining You by Nicole Reed: Debuted at #9, then disappeared. 
  • “The Prince” by Kiera Cass: Debuted #6, then disappeared. 
  • The Madness Underneath by Maureen Johnson: Debuted #6, then disappeared. 
  • Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger: Debuted #9, then disappeared. 
  • Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes: Debuted on extended, then disappeared. 
  • Seraphina by Rachel Hartman: Debuted on extended, then disappeared.
Compare that number of titles to the number of titles written by men which appeared on the list once before disappearing:
  • Unnatural Creatures by Neil Gaiman: Debuted on extended, then disappeared.
  • I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga: Debuted #2, then disappeared. 
  • Shipbreaker by Paulo Bacigalupi: Debuted on extended, then disappeared. 

My counts show that as 17 women have lasted on week before disappearing (I did not count Forman’s If I Stay since it did come back) and only 3 men who have lasted just one week before disappearing.

I should note there was a comment on yesterday’s post that shed some insight into this phenomenon — Maggie Stiefvater pointed out the pre-order factor playing into books landing for a week and then falling off. So there’s that consideration, and that plays into a whole additional series of questions that I’m not even touching on here but would love to see explored.

Where to Go From Here

There are a million avenues of exploration. And I welcome other people to spend the time to look into them. I’d love to know how the series list looks when broken down. I’d love to see how the NYT List stacks up against other measures of “success” — the BookScan numbers, the USA Today list, end-of-year “Best of” lists, and so on and so forth.

I caution anyone considering looking at these things to understand this isn’t easy to parse out or dive into. This is time-consuming stuff, and there are a lot of implications and considerations to have. You can’t “simply” count up the number of men and women who have had a book published within a year to discuss the notion of “dominance” within the field. That’s just counting. There are far bigger things that impact what dominance and acclaim and prestige are.

There is not one single thing that can be pointed to as the problem nor one single thing that can be pointed to as a solution. And to devalue the meaning of The New York Times Bestseller List as simply something “faulty” or “broken” is to make a grandiose statement about the impact it has in sales, marketing, publicity and not to mention word-of-mouth, the general public, and those who write the books. A system may be broken but it doesn’t mean it holds less merit in the eyes of those who give it merit.

I want to see more discussion of this. I want to see more hard numbers — but it takes time. I want to look at (and plan to with some time and energy) other distinctions within the book world, including things such as the distribution of starred reviews against gender. Do we tend to see male-written books as more literary than those written by females? I’d love to see someone tackle questions that popped up, too, about the differences in marketing budgets for male vs. female written titles. And of course, there’s the question of gender of the main character of these novels, too — though I think that is a much tricker, assumptive measure, particularly when you look at it against the NYT List. You’re suggesting something about readership, rather than you are about prestige. There’s nothing wrong about that, and indeed, there’s something really fascinating to dig out there. But it is not in any way the same thing.

Maybe someplace worth starting would be rounding up posts that tackle the issue of gender and YA and doing a meta-analysis. Go look at Lady Business’s posts about gender in the awards lists. Look at the post that came after NPR’s “Best YA Ever” list. Casey Wilson looked at the breakdown of gender on the NYT List prior to it being split into different categories and that’s more than worth a look. Go look at other posts that have explored gender and any sort of recognition (I’ve written a few myself). Might as well also check out Calling Caldecott’s post about gender disparity with the Caldecott at The Horn Book, too.

This stuff exists and has been talked about for a while now. Perhaps a deep exploration of what’s already out there will show where there are holes. It may also allow a bigger appreciation of how much discussion of this topic has happened.

This is not new.

Final Thoughts


Of course, nothing is conclusive here, except that there is in no way a female domination in YA, at least when it comes to what’s perceived as being “the best” in this category. The numbers show again and again men hold more places on the list and have the entire time there has been a separate YA list.

It would be interesting to look at the series list and see if this trend remains or changes. It’d also be interesting to look at other best-of lists and see where gender lines up (I’ve done that on the yearly “best” roundups, and I do plan on doing it again this year when all of those lists appear).

Keeping an eye on the list now that Roth is off is something I want to do because I’ll be curious what happens over the next six months. Will more women appear on the list? Will they last there very long? Or will the list remain essentially the same as it is now, primarily men who have been holding those spots for a very long time. It’d be interesting — though challenging — to look, too, at who has relationships with who on those very lists and what influence that might have on books that appear again and again and those which don’t.  A book that gets, say, a John Green blurb or review in a well-respected newspaper have a better chance of getting on the list and lasting there? Will more publishers reduce books in e-format for a very short period to get an author on the list in time for whatever their next release may be?

The List gives such a minuscule view of the YA world at large, and it is revered one of the most, if not THE most, prestigious places to be because of that. But it’s too bad that even that prestige comes with the now-disproven suggestion that women dominate the YA world. They don’t. Men do — at least when it comes to what many see as what “matters” because it’s “best.”

Responses to Yesterday’s Discussion


This section wasn’t in my initial post, but I feel compelled to add it.

I was blown away by the response to yesterday’s post, and I’m grateful for everyone who read it and took the time to think about it and discuss it.

But I want to point you all specifically to a very interesting — and very touchy — conversation that took place on Twitter about gender and the List. This happened between E. Lockhart, Maureen Johnson, Maggie Stiefvater, and John Green. Go read. Then come back.

Let’s pick this apart just a little bit. I don’t want to lead into too much of what it means or suggests because I think it’s fairly evident. But what stands out to me are the following points:

1. Green’s comment that we need to accept this is happening and “begin a conversation about why.”

There is no “beginning” this conversation. It has been on going for a long, long time. But it’s interesting that the moment a male steps in to the gender conversation, it’s a beginning. Just because someone decides to enter a conversation, doesn’t mean it’s the beginning of a conversation.

2. Lockhart’s suggestion that hetero lady librarians buy books because of good looking men.

I have to say it flat out: this actually offended me on a personal level, as a librarian myself. And seeing it from an author who benefits from the skills and work librarians do made it even rough to see. It so devalues the hard work and knowledge and dedication to doing our jobs well. It undermines how much we put into serving our communities and connecting our communities to the books they want to have.

Further, seeing that from an author who has written such amazingly feminist novels is utterly disheartening.

While it was most likely a mis-typed sentiment, I saw it, and I know many, many other librarians saw it. And many were not happy about it. It only further plays into some hugely problematic gender schematics — and as they relate to one’s professional affairs.

3. Green’s suggestion that by not being a top ten selling author in the country he’s not privileged.

Green’s been on the NYT Bestsellers list for 47 weeks, with multiple books. Green is in a very elite, VERY RARE, set of the 1% of YA authors out there. He has never not received some acknowledgment of his work.

This isn’t to say he isn’t talented — CLEARLY he is. Absolutely no one would ever argue that, nor should they. He’s earned it!

But being unable to assess one’s own privilege and reducing it to a comparison of another “bestselling” measure is derailing the bigger point.

4. Green’s offense on behalf of another author who has benefitted from his voice and platform.

Were his platform, fandom, and voice not seen as valuable and profitable and worth pursuing in the YA world, then people wouldn’t clamor for a review from him nor a blurb from him. Green blurbs and reviews very few books — fewer still in a lengthy column in The New York Times — and it would be silly not to see that as beneficial to any author who receives it, ESPECIALLY when that blurb is used again and again in future promotions for the author who received it.

This is a place of privilege. There is nothing wrong with that. But there is something to be said about understanding that privilege and value of voice.

This was never, EVER about a single book he wrote a review for. It’s about the value of his voice as it helped propel a woman’s work into a wider audience. As I noted in the comments on yesterday’s post, his blurb on E Lockhart’s forthcoming book is big and bright. There’s no question that is a selling point to the book — so much so that Random House tweeted about it.

And so I revert to the question I keep wondering about: how much does a revered male’s voice help a female’s career? When a man who is seen as someone with power and authority within a field — be it the YA world, the librarianship world, the teaching world, the publishing world, the corporate world, and so on and so on — why is it his word is what can make (or break) a woman’s chances in that same field? What is it that allows him continued authority and respect? And hell, he doesn’t necessarily even need to be revered. It’s likely having a male voice is enough to help a lady out in many, many places.

This isn’t just about John Green. It’s about gender on a much huger scale.

It is clear there is an issue to discuss here, and I am so glad it’s bring discussed.

But it should also be clear that in discussing this issue, there are even messier, sometimes more problematic, knots to untangle.

Filed Under: data, Data & Stats, gender, new york times bestsellers, Uncategorized, Young Adult

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next Page »
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Search

Archives

We dig the CYBILS

STACKED has participated in the annual CYBILS awards since 2009. Click the image to learn more.

© Copyright 2015 STACKED · All Rights Reserved · Site Designed by Designer Blogs