Self-Published Author Signs a Three-Book Deal, Heralding New Adult Fiction
From The New York Times Media Decoder:
Earlier this year, Cora Carmack self-published her novel about a 22-year-old girl who is a virgin in her last year of college and decides to have a one-night stand to solve the problem. She selects a man, but from there on things go disastrously wrong.
Her book, called “Losing It,” went on sale and within four days it had sold 5,000 copies, according to Suzie Townsend, her agent at New Leaf Literary and Media. By 12 days, she had sold 32,000 copies. Within the first week it reached No. 18 on The New York Times combined print/e-book bestseller list, despite not having a print edition.
And so in a pattern that is becoming more familiar for the book industry, established publishers came calling.
On Wednesday, New Leaf announced that HarperCollins had signed Ms. Carmack to a three-book deal that includes “Losing It,” for a sum in the “high six figures.”
. . . .
Here is how Ms. Carmack describes the audience in a post to her blog:
Young Adult books are about surviving adolescence and coming of age. New Adult is about how to live your life after that. New Adult is the “I’m officially an adult, now what?” phase.
Link to the rest at Media Decoder
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P.G.
Wot does high six figures means?
A million dollars plus, or what?
It’s a term I’ve heard a fair bit and never been sure of. A million dollar advance seems to be a pile of money on a new author.
brendan
I would guess $750,000-$999,999, Brendan.
I write Mature YA. My biggest fans are married young women in their 20s. They tell me they’re looking for greater depth and significance than they find in adult books.
Lemme guess. Six months before that same publisher said, “there’s no market for new adults. Do you have anything with vampire sex?”
Aw, Larry, don’t you know vampires have been “over” since Anne Rice’s ridiculous book that made a vampire a HERO was rejected multiple time in the late seventies?
I just checked out her book on Amazon. It was only published on October 12th. The article linked above is dated November 14th. That’s pretty darn fast. Either she’s onto something really marketable or the publisher wanted to sign her up before she realized that she was capable of earning a high six figure income on her own.
Right. What’s always left out of these articles is what she did, if anything, to get noticed immediately. I assume this is her first book. Did she hit up blogs for reviews? Do presales? Etc. Otherwise it’s another, “This writer won the lottery, you didn’t, happy her sad you neener neener” story.
The book has a stunning title. It made me read the blurb on Amazon a while back.
An intriguing title might be an undervalued promotional device.
Maybe it reminded people of the Tom Cruise movie, “Losin’ It” in the 80s. She put back the G.
This is her blog.
http://coracarmack.blogspot.com
The blog began September 18th of this year. She’s really had quite the fall.
The only marketing she really talks about is a blog tour, and giving away one free copy on Goodreads.
UGH, I just read some of the reviews and the sample. I would say it’s written in the 50 Shades style (1st person, awkward 20 something virgin, inner ‘goddess’ ranting at her, gorgeous hero but without the BDSM issues just the cover, annoying first name ‘Bliss’, boring, repetitive narration- just in case you missed it the first five times)
Since there’s an entire culture of women still jonesing for another Shades adventure, I believe there are thousands of women out there who are writing or trying to write their versions of Shades. Some can at least write well, but most are horrible, and copying Shades is even worse for so many reasons.
A few months ago,I betaed for a friend who suddenly and inexplicably needed to write her first book. She had no previous writing experience or education (yeah, that bad) A romance. Which I quickly realized was a Shades knock-off. When I discussed my feelings on Shades, she was very defensive, etc, and eventually she no longer wanted my beta services. She wasn’t that close of a friend, and I don’t miss the reading of hundred of words of the same conversation over and over.
But there it is. I think that’s why Cora was so successful and why she ‘got her sudden book deal’ We know publishers are looking to repub Shades/Twilight fanfic copies.
So guys, want fame and riches? Write a Shades knock-off, get a suggestive cover, write a great blurb and watch it all roll in as your soul and writing cred, evaporates.
FYI- if you’ve seen her cover (the dude’s chopped top) check out this cover she obviously stole. I stumbled across it on Goodreads. Shameful.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3802931-mile-high
Another self pubber giving honest ones a bad name.
Take it easy there.
She didn’t “steal” the cover. Many self pubs use stock images, and there are bound to be cases where two people use the same image.
Hardly stealing. And hardly dishonest
James, you make a good point, assuming it is stock cover art. From the original author’s blog about her images on her blog.
http://gahausersblog.blogspot.com/
All images, unless otherwise noted, were taken from the Internet and are assumed to be in the public domain. In the event that there is still a problem or error with copyrighted material, the break of the copyright is unintentional and noncommercial and the material will be removed immediately upon request.
Makes me wonder about her cover art images as well.
And if hers are not stock then the second ones aren’t either.
My point–anything found on the internet is NOT automatically public domain. In fact this author complains in her blog about her work being pirated. (oh well) and some of the blog images have obvious watermarks on them. Definitely not public domain. And G.A. Hauser used to be a police officer.
What goes around comes around. The horrible trend (assuming the image in question was not stock and I’m right) is that an entire generation of artists think it’s not just okay, but normal, to take what ever they want, copy images and styles of writing as long as it makes them a buck on the gravy train. Because that’s what America is now, right? The next big thing? The next best seller? Who cares about integrity as along as you get yours.
As long as we say… good for them for beating the system, what are we really saying? That it’s okay to plagiarize (or dance on the slippery slope) as long as the majority is willing to pay you for it the hip trend?
The whole trend makes me sick. It why businesses like Enron happened. GREED GREED GREED GREED!
Well it beats a day job I guess. Can’t blame your friend for wanting to cash in as long as the gravy train lasts.
It’s amusing to read the five star reviews of this: “easy, fast read!” “Cute and easy to read!” “No hard words!” “I love it because it didn’t confuse me with a plot!” “Squeeee!” So there it is.
True, I really wanted to help her and we worked hard for several weeks. But she needed creative writing and remedial English from the ground up. Once she understood just how much work was involved with writing a coherent, not just good, story, she balked.
She’d figured on typing out a quickie romance when she had numerous foundational errors: like isle vs aisle and shotgun commas to start.
I agree, many women what fluff. It’s the same in fanfiction. Fluffy, feel good fanfics get the most reviews. Even if they’re not well-written. Just what women what.
Oh great another flaming made up genre ‘New Adult’ which will generate its own sets of prescriptive rules and about which readers will say, ‘I only read New Adult books.’
sigh.
lets splinter the market some more, shall we?
And yes, this is the new model of publishing. Publishers have always followed the market and now the market can show them what sells. I should imagine the bandwagon jumping mentality of ‘Everyone wants X so lets find some version of X’ will die off eventually, because publishers won’t need to guess, they will be able to see what is selling.
It should make for a much more diverse marketplace over time. But…sheesh…New Bloody Adult. Please stop it, marketing people, or I might go all Bill Hicks on your arse.
AFAIK “New Adult” evolved on its own in the digital marketplace. It’s called a niche market. I thought that’s was the promise of indie publishing. We who write off-genre according to tradpub were going to be able to find our audience–finally.
Fair enough, Barbara, but to explain my position more fully:
As a general rule I will read anything, but I prefer to read and write SF&F.
At one point I called what I wrote speculative fiction, because that took in the whole field. I haven’t actually written any horror yet, but at some point I will attempt it. Just like at some point I will attempt something in ‘Hard’ SF. (I tend to look on the various subgenres as writing challenges and I pretty much intend to hit them all if I can, though that doesn’t mean I will hit them successfully :)) So Speculative Fiction fitted my ranging-across-the-whole-genre-of-SF&F writing…um…’mission’ (god that really isn’t the right word, but it’ll do).
Then Speculative Fiction became a term used largely for literary types slumming it and SF&F types trying to gain some sort of literary credibility (I really don’t know why they bother — either of them).
It’s not actually the niche itself that irritates me. It is when the niche becomes a genre, because genre is a marketing tool used by marketeers. To say, ‘I write for new adults’ is different from saying ‘I write “New Adult Fiction.”‘
Marketeers seek to define the genre in such a way that it is easy to sell. They also pull other stories into a ‘hot’ genre even if they have nothing in common with the original niche. Look at ‘Chick Lit’ for example. That used to have a very defined niche. Now it is used for any woman orientated piece of fiction. And so it has become a term of abuse that rankles with female writers, because they see it as dumbing down their work and patronising them.
In much the same way that the term ‘Speculative Fiction’ is rapidly becoming a term of abuse in the Science Fiction community (even though it was invented — if I remember correctly — by Robert Heinlein, though he wanted to use it instead of Science Fiction rather than instead of SF&F&H).
It’s not the niche I object to. It’s the definition that will become prescriptive rather than descriptive and fill up with clichés and tropes that suit the market place to the point where another term will need to be invented just to get away from the stigma of the old one.
I write for adults, young, old, or new. I don’t write for children (because of the subject matter and prose). That is a much better way of describing your work because it gives the marketeers nothing to get their fangs into.
We may not agree on this, Barbara, but I hope I have clarified my position. It’s more a philosophical to be honest. The age range is Children’s book – adult books in my mind. Breaking the age ranges down into smaller segments is just silly. For instance, the shock that lots of ‘Adults’ read ‘Young Adult’ fiction. Why wouldn’t they, I like reading ‘Starship Troopers’ and ‘Kidnapped’ (though it has been a while for both) so why shouldn’t other adults like reading their modern equivalents.
EDITED: because I mixed up Young Adult with New Adult and to remove a potentially contentious remark about LOTR
Consentual sex, drug use, sexual abuse, pedophilia, murder, and physical violence are all elements contained in my Mature YAs. I consider those topics unsuitable for a 9 year olds but some people are okay with it. Parents and children shouldn’t be unpleasantly surprised with inappropriate content and to call one segment “tween” and another segment “Mature YA” is good for me and helpful to readers/customers. They should be able to make an informed choice.
See I wouldn’t consider a 9 year old a young adult. I’d consider them a child. And Mature Young Adult fiction sounds like an oxymoron (sorry if that offends but it is an honest statement).
This is pretty much what I am talking about. It’s salami slicing age-ranges into narrower and narrower definitions. I read full-on Science Fiction when I was a pre-teen, nobody said I shouldn’t read it because it was outside my age group. The school library was happy to let me read Heinlein, and Asimov, and Clark (secondary school not primary school) along with all the others. Plus ‘A wrinkle in Time’ ‘Narnia’ and so forth. I never differentiated, and I still don’t, if it had speculative elements I would/will read it (along, I hasten to add, with pretty much anything else so long as it captures my attention).
I never actually set foot in the children’s section of the local library, I headed straight for the SF section (Fantasy was shelved as part of SF in those days) and voraciously read the lot.
But if I was a child now, would schools allow me the same privilege? Would they even carry ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ or ‘Rendezvous with Rama’ or ‘The Gods Themselves’? Or would they only carry books that are age-range specific? Would the local library let a 12 year old take out any of those books without parental consent?
That’s my problem with this New Adult tag. It’s yet another salami slice in the age range. ‘Here read this, it is written with people of your limited life experience in mind.’
But I don’t expect many people to agree with me. It’s a philosophical objection to a marketing phenomenon and in a disrupted marketplace when book discovery is such a problem I doubt many people want to hear it.
I am happy to agree to disagree on this
Great! Then we disagree happily!
I’m with Steve on this. I was never happy with the term “young adult” (though I have read some wonderful YA books) and vastly prefer “teen fiction”, which it’s called in the UK. And I really don’t like the term “new adult”, because it’s superfluous.
18 to 25-year-olds or whatever the age range for “new adult” is are adults, new or not. I don’t know why you need to classify it further. It’s a pity that publishers apparently wouldn’t buy novels with protagonists in that age range for some strange reason, even though I’ve read plenty of books, including fairly recent ones, with protagonists in their early 20s. A lot of urban fantasy characters are in their early 20s, ditto for some chick lit heroines and even the occasional romance heroine. A lot of books already deal with young people trying to find their place in the world and have been for as long as there have been novels. I don’t see why we need a new genre or age classification for that.
Besides, I worry that if we increasingly classify books according to the age of the protagonists and the intended audiences (which doesn’t work anyway – a lot of YA is read by adults), good books get lost in the shuffle, because readers looks at a shelf (or an Amazon category) marked “new adult” or “young adult” and decide “That’s for kids, not for me”, because “adjective adult” always implies something that is somehow lesser than just plain adult fiction.
What is more, genre readers look on the respective genre shelves for books, so when an increasing number of fantasy or SF or romance novels are suddenly shelved as “new adult”, readers who might enjoy those books won’t see them. This is already happening to some degree with YA. Because so much SF and fantasy with teen protagonists is classified and shelved as YA, books that would have been classified as regular SF or fantasy ten or fifteen years ago, a lot of SF and fantasy readers are missing these books, because they don’t bother to look in YA. Even worse, when older books are reissued, they suddenly end up on the YA shelves, even though those books were not originally intended to be YA.
Finally, it seems to me as if YA, which was originally something you read between approx. 12 and 15, until you got bored of yet another highschool romance or problem novel and moved on to the adult shelves, is gradually becoming a sort of safe space that some readers are reluctant to move out of. I stopped reading explicit teen books labeled as such somewhere around the age of 14, was left adrift and experimenting for about a year or two, until I found SF at 16. All the way through my twenties you couldn’t have paid me to read a YA novel and I was usually angry if I accidentally picked one up. It wasn’t until one of those accidents brought me a Sarah Dessen novel that I thought, “You know, teen fiction has really gotten a lot better.” But now you have plenty of people in their 20s and 30s not just occasionally reading YA, but reading nothing else. And now that the first wave of exclusive YA readers is growing out of YA, a tag like “new adult” has been invented to give them another walled genre garden to move into. And I wonder why.
It’s a big reading world out there and reading only books about people like you and your age becomes limiting fast. People who are no longer young or new adults still remember what it was like and will enjoy reading about characters that age, too, though they will probably prefer it if it wasn’t segregated on a separate shelf. Meanwhile, it can also be interesting to read about people who are older and in a different life situation than yourself. So why limit everything according to age range?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVZo1Jjfshw
NSFW and definitely offensive
I first heard New Adult as a subset of romance, from the Dear Author twitter…
Two years ago St. Martin’s Press was publicly scouting for what they called ‘New Adult’ titles. It’s not a brand-new term.
It was to me, because I don’t really care what publishers are scouting for.
I write Mature YA as well but what makes me different is I write for gay and trans gender so I guess that puts me into yet another niche.
They need to break it down further. I’m tired of reading fiction for 34 year-olds who just don’t understand my problems, but I’m WAY too mature for the fiction 32 year-olds read.
And I’m sick to death of learning about people outside my demographic!
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I’m actually happy to see this subgenre emerge. I’m assuming it’s a romance subgenre? I imagine that’s the issue, because adult romances have a strict requirement for a HEA–”happily ever after.” The characters will be in a committed relationship at the end of the novel. This usually means a wedding or at least a marriage proposal.
But YA romances only require a HFN–”happy for now.” The characters will be in a relationship at the end, but there is no assumption that the relationship will ultimately lead to marriage.
This puts authors in a bind who want to write about the college years. Their characters are too old for YA, but not everyone who wants to write about college-aged characters wants their characters to get married. They may want to write a HFN ending rather than a HEA, but without a HEA they cannot sell into the adult romance market.