YA

A major slump in sales of young adult (YA) fiction in the UK has been greeted with alarm by authors, who are leaving the category in droves because of poor returns, and by experts who have warned that failing to make books easily available to young people could severely affect literacy levels.

In 2001, when Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider nailed his first mission in Stormbreaker, young readers took an immediate liking to this intrepid, high-tech gadget-wielding, teenage spy. And they clearly wanted to see more of him. Horowitz penned eight subsequent Alex Rider adventures in quick succession before announcing-unequivocally-that 2011's Scorpia Rising would be his last Alex Rider novel.  Read more

Now 29, Thomas is the one doing the encouraging and it's all down to a short story she wrote while studying creative writing at college in Jackson, Mississippi. That story became her first novel, The Hate U Give, about Starr, a black teenage girl living in a poor, black neighbourhood in inner-city America who sees her unarmed childhood friend Khalil get shot dead by a police officer.  Read more

This week, we will take a closer look at how a different factor impacts reading: age.

Do books have age-specific audiences?  Read more

The children's book market has grown 44% in the last decade. Why? Because, as Nielsen's Children's Book Summit detailed, kids and teens still read... a lot.  Read more