My Problem With YA Fantasy - PT. 1 (History/Context) 

I do want to point out I have lumped in Middle Grade with YA. That was intentional and will be addressed in Pt2. Before reacting too strongly one way or the other, please wait for the video where I break down my actual "Problem"

Man really loved Harry Potter so much he put on an invisibility shirt

That green screen shirt effect is killing it.

I never understood the term "Young Adult". To me, that means something like 18-25. To be a "young adult", you still have to be an adult.

My problem with YA fantasy is mostly because of how so many of those books do romance. It’s 2020. We need to stop telling girls that the asshole they’re crushing on will change for them and become a wonderful person.

Without YA books, I wouldn’t even read books at all. Now I read anything fantasy from middle grade to adult. Also: Thank you for including 6-7 Rick Riordan books in the thumbnail 😂

I still love Percy Jackson, Percy Jackson is what got me into reading and gave me a place to go to whenever I had problems or something was going on, I will forever love it.

"It's not really a genre" As a YA writer, I agree with that. I've tried to look up the requirements so many times, because I'm trying to figure out how to brand myself - literally all I can find is "main protagonist must be a teenager or young adult". There are no other major genre restrictions, that I can find.

It's funny how the covers of the books in the children's section in Barnes & Noble tend to be bright & colorful. Then you walk to the other side of the store, where readers are several years older, and books in the YA section have dark and dramatic covers, lots of black and red colors.

I’m 40 and still read some”YA”. If it’s well written, it doesn’t matter to me if it’s marketed to high school and college kids

Hey where did you buy a shirt that makes you invisible.

Percy Jackson and the Rangers Apprentice books are still my shit.

Man, Harry Potter release days where somethin else, never have I seen that many ppl desperate for a book. Specially for the final book, stores everywhere around me opened early so people could go to the bookstores, there would be police at the line up spot and at cash register. People where terrified of the book stores selling out before they got a copy. I'll never forget walking through a dark mall at 6 something in the morning, surrounded by a huuuge group of ppl of all ages wearing wizard robes, all beyond excited. All for one single book.

It's really annoying to see books marketed as YA when they should be NA. I love Six of Crows but those characters should not have been 17

I think a large problem with YA is marketing. Books that really should be marked as Adult (Sarah J. Maas I'm looking at you) are given to teens. But at the same time books are put into YA that are really more middle grade! The fact that the YA age range is considered 12-18 is insane. YA has improved greatly imo but I'm not as well read in it anymore tho.

As the YA genre becomes more A than ever to meet the desires of its grown readers, something odd is happening, where the themes, dialogues, and personalities no longer match the 12-18 age gap. You showed Six of Crows on the background, which clearly only kept the ages of the characters bellow 20 for the book to be marketed as YA, when actually all of them read as above 20 (ok, Wylan could be 18). Fans make some mental gymnastics to explain they behave maturely because of the world they grow up, but in reality, it just reads more mature than YA was meant to. Similar issue with A Court of Thorns and Roses, where explicit sex is included in every book of the series, yet, given the young female lead and focus on romance over usual fantasy themes (magic system, world-building, etc), it was basically forced to be marketed as YA, because there is no in-between genre or better, age group. I personally believe that a better rating system should be implemented, there were short-lived efforts to star a New Adult rating in traditional publishing, which did not ultimately work, I believe bc New Adult is often confused with erotica. So perhaps a similar system to movie ratings? However, YA has come to mean more than the age-group it targets, we know that a YA fantasy, compared to adult fantasy, won't just be more "clean", it will also be likely more focused on character over plot, a smaller cast of characters, focus on friendships, romance, first experiences, etc. So I guess the challenge remains on how to still direct the audience to the books they wish to read if the YA label isn't attached to it.

I just read 2 YA books and understood the pattern. An almost 17 year old-ish girl suddenly gets to know she is special and her world turns upside down and everything depends on her, she gotta save the world

The original Percy Jackson pentalogy will always be my favorite series. That franchise could have been the next Harry Potter if the movies were better and if the book releases were more staggered so as to build up hype.

I wish I had been able to get on board the Harry Potter hype train when I was a kid. But my parents wouldn't let me read or watch it cause they thought it glorified witchcraft and satanism.

My issue is that things that were labeled as YA that had more mature themes were still marketed towards young teens/preteens. When I was in grade 5/6 I read books that had really mature themes that I wasn't ready for, but I didn't know going in because they were in my middle school library. It's not a problem that YA is growing up, but grown up YA should be marketed to high school and college students, not preteens.

This man wields the green screen maliciously like a weapon and I love him for it

I read both YA and adult fantasy and I find that both have their pros and cons. As an adult I find myself generally enjoying adult fantasy more, but there are gems within YA that outshine even most adult fantasy(imo).

I exist in a superposition of thinking YA has no merit yet also reading it constantly

Omg 😂 people driving around shouting HP spoilers out loud haha that makes me laugh

I remember when HP 5 came out, I think I was 15 or 16. I went to the bookstore straight out of school to pick up my pre-order. I had never ordered anything before. I read all afternoon and after dinner, and halfway into the night, until I finished it. Completely failed my exam in school the next day due to not having studied and barely had any sleep 😂

I think a lot of the transition YA went through (female protag, more mature themes) might have come from Twilight’s boom.

For every book after The Sorcerers Stone my mom had to go out at midnight and get three copies, and the next day my sister my dad and I would lock our doors until we were done. My dad was such a nerd that when the first movie came out he convinced a drug rep (he was a doctor) to buy out a theater so we could see it a few hours before it came out. One of my best childhood memories.

I remember when "The Son Of Neptune" by Rick Riordon came out and it was everywhere in school! I thought it was so cool, but I was also sad cause I had to wait till Christmas to read it haha

So personally- I am 19 and I am female. Logically, a lot of what I have read has been YA because I mean, when I was in high school our library was filled with it. I started branching out into adult books in high school as well and that's when I noticed the differences. When I was just 15 I couldn't explain this well but my reaction to picking up a lot of adult fantasy was summed up with, "This is a great but like...where are all the women?". I don't want this comment to be pegged as hate. There are plenty of books I love that do not have a lot of female characters or really well written ones. To be completely real, I relate to female characters easier- there are just a lot of struggles that as a woman I relate to more then what a man goes through. I don't hold it against a guy at all if he relates to a man easier, there is nothing wrong with that. But I think their needs to be a a bigger discussion on how (from my perspective at least) a lot of adult fantasy (that is targeted towards men) is taken more seriously overall as a narrative then what's targeted towards women. Like, I think it speaks volumes that New Adult spawned, just to essentially lump in even more female driven narratives so they didn't have to market it as Adult. Not a big fan of this book series but The Court of Thorns and Roses Series is a excellent example of this.

to be brutally honest, every ya book i know falls into one of three categories: -the harry potter wagon, with percy jackson, eragon, his dark materials -tho this came a lil before - , artemis fowl, lemomy snicket, miss peregrine's etc -the twilight wagon, with mortal instruments, vampire academy, beautiful creatures, fallen, hush hush, house of night, shiver etc -and of course the hunger games wagon, with divergent, maze runner, uglies, legend, delirium, matched, selection etc ☕☕☕ i mean literally....fight me for all i care

Leigh bardugo's ninth house was a phenomenal book, shadow and bone didnt cut the mark for me and I totally loved six of crows, but I do agree with people who are saying that the characters shouldn't have been 17.

Me: Ooh cool. This looks like a promising fantasy Ya novel. [cheesy and toxic romance] Ight imma head out

You really can't have a discussion about how the YA target demographic transcended into the more 'older teen' audience we're accustomed to seeing without mentioning Stephenie Meyer's Twilight.

I read Percy Jackson when I'm ten. Those times it really warmed me up to the fantasy genre moreover it was really fun and exiciting story to read. I don't know If I read now I can feel the same things for the PJ but for beginners this kind of books makes really good beginning for the new fantasy readers.

Yo, I read Redwall when I got detention once. That shit was dope.

Man I grew up on the Redwall books such a legendary series. RIP Brian Jaques... I remember being twelve years old when Sorcerer's Stone released and our school library gave all the 6th grade classes a free copy. Considering I had just read The Hobbit for the first time that same year I always look back on that time in my life fondly.

''part 1'' Oh dear time to buckle up, this is gonna be interesting.

YA books originally got me into reading when I was younger and I think sometimes YA is put down simply for being targeted towards younger people. Things that teenagers and especially teenage girls like are being seen as lesser to adults interests which in my opinion is not good. We all need and are interested in different things at different times in our lives.

My dad worked for FedEx during the Harry Potter mania and he had people following him while delivering around bookstores at some point they had to have special deliveries so people wouldn’t try to rob the delivery drivers.

I'm from 1978 and I remember when Harry Potter craze hit. To me it was mostly exhausting, because I could hear from the buzz that the books were just not my cup of tea, and I started getting a bit snarky on the subject, but a friend of mine who studied literary history at the time said: "These books get people who would never pick up a book, reading! It's an amazing feat, just think about it!" and I had to agree. I never boarded the HP hype train, but I started smiling and waving as it drove by me, because I focused on how many more people might also get to ready my favourite books, compared to before HP. I was not aware of the YA genre even existed when I was "YA age", but looking back I have read some. It's just that I've been reading adult literature too from I was like, ten. I've recently read the YA books surrounding Sword of Kaigen, and the Binti trilogy, and tbh I wish they were there when I was a nine or ten yo kid. I would have loved them for sure. They'd have slottet in fine next to McCaffrey's Pern stuff. I know at least one author who writes fiction that gets labelled YA, but who is actually not strictly writing with young people in mind. My understanding is that she's writing for adults who would just like to read something cool while feeling safe knowing that no PTSD symptoms or other nastiness will be induced. I think that is a very worthy cause and I love that there is a space for it. I don't enjoy a lot of YA myself (I am one of those masochistic Malazan fans! It can't get too grim for me!) but I really, really appreciate that those books are there for other people to grab them and seek thrills and comfort from.

To be honest, I think that you can classify a book as good or bad. And that's it. I've read YA books that are so much better than adults ones. That have better plots, characters and even writing. So I dont get whats this whole thing about YA. There are good and bad books. Just like with every genre/ age category

I really like YA fantasy/sci-fi, as long as it isn't dumbed down. In my opinion, YA fiction is much more willing to approach the emotional sides of life directly than a lot of other fiction is, which though not always done amazingly, I appreciate.

YA is still booming in the USA, but not so much in other countries. In the UK and especially in The Netherlands (where i'm from) the 'genre' is plummeting in sales and in NL the books are even being marketed towards adults in hopes to get more sales out of them.

I've noticed some YA authors tend to be quite rude when it comes to responding to bad reviews, even to the extend of cyberbullying.

If GRRM ever finishes The Winds of Winter it might create a line or two.

I'm around the same age as you, so the explosion of YA is what got me into reading (Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games) so I really respect the genre and I think it creates a safe space for teens to get into reading. BUT I also hate that it really is just a marketing technique that places restrictions on a lot of books that are harmful to the story (like you argued with Scythe) and i find it really frustrating a lot of the time, because so many things are marketed wrongly as YA or adult and chunks of audiences miss out on it, or people refuse to picks things up because its YA. Personally, it's a genre/section of the book shop that my tates don't really align with anymore, but it's still one I'll always respect

Oh YA, as a past bookstore employee and writer I find this category well extremely interesting. In one way it is the bridge between childrens and adults books, but in another way a kind of no no section for some younger people. I have said this before bookstore employees are often required to say that some YA books contain strong trigger points for young adults that may be upsetting. Yeah I know many people with in this age range are mature enough to handle the content, but let's be honest some arn't quite ready for it. Now where YA really interests me is that it allows a book series to last a long time as characters can grow and age with its target audience or fans. For many authors that becomes such a benefit as one allows them to fulfil their dreams as a published author and two to keep them economically stable so they can support themselves and their families. Let's face it not all authors are in the same position as J. K. Rowling; many are scrapping at the bottom of the piggy bank to survive or working other jobs to keep a roof over their head. Truely many many book could be in YA category but publishers have motives to keep them in normal categories to avoid the YA stigma, but others jump at the chance to be known as YA. Some books are even weirder like Harry Potter these days often found in childrens, YA and its own shelves or display for both the original books and the illustrated versions, acting if it has transcend being in any category or genre. Anyways good vid and theories Dan I look forward to your ponderings in part two.

I was hired as security for a bookstore back in '07 for the final Harry Potter release at midnight. I was 22 at the time but still a fan. The bookstore was nice enough to let me buy a copy after all the pre orders were picked up. I did go home and read the whole thing to prevent spoilers. Good times.

I noticed young ya is actually more about male protagonist and older ya is more with female protagonists. In Harry Potter, The Ranger’s Apprentice and Percy Jackson, the main character is 11/12 years old in the first book. Then in ya for girls the protagonist is 16/17 years old (Hunger Games, Twilight, Lunar Chronicles, TFiOS etc.) Is it because girls want to read about a protagonist older than themselves and boys about a protagonist the same age as themselves? Or is it because of other reasons? It’s interesting Edit: I just noticed female protagonists tend to be older than the popular male ones. Of course any gender can enjoy any book they want.

Daniel is just a floating head and hands. Change my mind.

I'm an English teacher so i'm Hyped. YA is doing exactly what it should be doing. it is introducing young people to books. Also a lot of author's are making a living so win-win.

The books that got me into reading were The Wheel of Time, The Dark is Rising, Alana The Lioness, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Golden Compass, and others of that quality. My mom gave me The Sorcerer's Stone when it first came out and told me it was, supposedly, really popular. I honestly don't remember if I made it through the first chapter. I did eventually cave and read the whole series a couple years after the last book came out and I remember liking it but nothing about the actual plot or characters were particularly memorable.

*Shows the front cover of Redwall* *Nostaliga intensifies*

I think it’s interesting how the concept of YA altered the level of sophistication in vocabulary and writing style in books for young readers. I grew up in the ‘80s, and back then there were kids’ novels, and there were adult novels, and nothing to bridge the two. That’s what led to me reading A Wrinkle in Time at age 8 and Stephen King’s IT at age 13. But today, you go back and read something like A Wrinkle in Time, or Island of the Blue Dolphins or Hatchet, and you realize how sophisticated the writing was. They were written for kids, but they were written with the assumption that kids were very, very intelligent. This then set a high bar, which kids had to strive to reach. It pushed their bounds. I don’t see much in the YA category today that does that. It’s hard to say, though, if that’s because it’s more about making money than putting out good literature, or if writers of books for younger audiences simply aren’t as talented anymore, or if there is an assumed need to set a low bar for kids today, or whether publishing houses are just so focused on money that they want the packaging more than the content. Or, in all likelihood, if it’s a combination of all those factors.

Just wanted to say that I really love your new styled videos. Really sets your content apart from the other book-review (or whatever genre may be called) channels. Keep it coming!

At my library the Harry Potter series and all of Rick riordans mythical series are in the children’s (it’s sort of a middle school kids age) section and YA is back in a far corner with things like divergent, hunger games and twilight. So I never classified Harry Potter or riordan books as YA. it’s interesting to me to see how Harry Potter actually started this genre.

YA is perfect for a certain type of audience, it's just not for me.

i think your research focused a lot more on mainstream YA, which is not necessarily bad. but the state of YA today, like the popular releases everyone is talking about, deserve a bit more of a nuanced conversation. YA is focusing a lot more on diversity, and non medieval europe fantasy settings, which i think is very important to discuss too.

This is a great mini-series, looking forward to part two! :)

I just discovered your channel. I absolutely love your content - I've never seen anything like it. It's very unique and refreshing. Thank you!

The thing I love most about YA is the abundance of female characters. The only reason why I have trouble getting into "normal" fantasy books aimed towards adults is that most heroes are male, all their sidekicks are male and the few female characters are badly written and flat. To me, it's honestly off-putting to read books that centre solely around just men. Don't get me wrong, I can still enjoy those books. Identifying with a character is not limited to their gender after all. But it saddens me to see that authors still have trouble creating female characters with substance that aren't just pawns. For example, I loved the gentleman bastards, but come on! Why not have at least one female garrista? Why can't Locke be friends with a female (that's present in the story and not just mentioned once in a while)? The same with Stormlight Archives books: can I please have a strong female character that isn't a pawn or just a love interest? (Edit: I know Shallan and Jasnah eventually evolve to great characters with actual importance to the overall story line. But in my opinion especially the beginning of the stormlight archives series was very much dominated by men. I just used this book series as an example because it's so well known.) More often then not I find myself reading adult fantasy (especially epic fantasy) and want to confront authors with questions like: How about two female characters that actively contribute to a story? Or, if an author is extremely daring, how about a 1/3 ratio of women to men? You said YA is a marketing tool. So why are the protagonists often female? Because a lot of girls like reading (too). I simply don't get why the industry hasn't picked up on the fact that women might also enjoy fantasy and would love to see themselves as the heroes of the story. I won't dismiss the faults of Sarah J Maas books, but creating nuanced female protagonists that er badass but still very much feminine and get the freedoms of modern women within an interesting fantasy setting is a smart move. She showed that creating female characters in such a setting (even a court-based medieval-inspired setting) without squashing the rights of women (like real history did) is very much possible. Of course, girls and women will be drawn to that. I honestly can't figure out why epic fantasy chooses to keep the role of their women small. It's either damsel in distress, whore, badass bitch (who has forsaken all things feminine) or mother.

I was in secundary school when Harry Potter began, but I read it in university I think. I loved it, tho it was geared at a younger age, but at that time, I loved epic fantasy more. But it was something this nerd could read and discuss with even the people in my dorm who didn't like to read. We all read Harry Potter, heck we all had nicknames in our messenger referring to Harry Potter. I do like some of the newer YA books now, and I'm way to old to be the intended age group. Really enjoyed the Leigh Bardugo books I read, and many others. I don't care about the label, I care about the story.

I was finishing high school when Deathly Hallows came out. Good times.

Just found out that Daniel is 4 years younger than me. I feel so old.

I am worried were you are going with this in part two, because you left out the gender aspect and the fact that basically 80% of readers in this genre are females over the age of 20. That basically there was a "second rate" fantasy genre created for the female millenial generation, because there were not enough books or a market in the regular fantasy shelf for woman. That's why it's such a problem if you discredit YA, because it's a female genre and everything with mostly females is second rate and not worth it. It's a very very hot topic to talk about and address

Nice! I had been waiting for this one! Also, love the shirt, haha

So awesome that this is the first time I'm watching one of his videos. Cause this was really great. Already subscribed, and going to watch that part 2

Really glad you're doing this video series (though I hope it'll be more than 2 videos). I pick up ya and adult fantasy about equally and I love them both for what each offers that the other doesn't.

Sometimes I feel like YA needs to be split into two genres Teenage Fantasy, or teenage horror ect, and then have Teenage romance. lots of the hate towards YA is valid, it is just Teenage Romance with fantasy elements, and most of the time it’s done badly with horrendous male characters who growl every three seconds, but that’s a personal gripe. Honestly I can’t remember a YA Fantasy where the central conflict was actually a protagonist vs antagonist situation, the romance is instead always in the foreground and that’s what gives YA a bad name. Also it’s generally a lot softer that adult fantasy. I’ve read YA series that are seven books long with ten POV characters, three of them are Mary-Sues, and they end the last book with a 200 pages battle sequence where EVERYONE lives! And has a boyfriend! I don’t hate YA I just think it has lower standards for fantasy because it appeals to a younger audience I guess? But there are still some amazing gems in YA Fantasy, I’m looking at you Six of Crows.

I was one of those parents who was very involved with what my kids were reading/watching/listening to. I had picked up Sorcerer's Stone for my oldest, who was 9 at the time, because he had really enjoyed other fantasy type books I had read to him or that he read. It turned into a nightly reading aloud to all of my kids very quickly (this was in 1998 so there were only two books...they were read A LOT). We were all enjoying the story so much that as each subsequent book was released, it turned into an event! We went to the midnight book releases, and had HP parties with my BFF and her three kids. I would buy one copy on release night which I read in one sitting, then it went to each child in order of age. No one said anything about the book at all until everyone was finished, and then there was a family discussion. I still have all of those books on my shelf. They are some of my most treasured items. And yes, I still love HP. When my husband and I decided we wanted to get married in 2015, we chose between a Harry Potter theme and a Middle Earth theme. In the end ME won out, but it was very close.

loving this quarantine content cause every episode has a hint of insanity. great work dan

This was excellent Dan. I loved this! As a new author in the YA sci-fi genre - I am very glad that my book will have a very GOOD market. I also grew up reading these books. I started out with the Inheritance Series and THEN read through the Harry Potter series - so I was a late comer but I still remembered that whole craze.

I was in college when I heard about Harry Potter. The first 2 books were already out before I had even heard of it. I must have had my head under a rock! My boyfriend (now husband) and I read the first 2 books aloud to each other, and then we totally loved Harry and got to experience all the late-night release party craziness for the other books. So much fun and such great memories!

RL Stein was pretty big in the late 80’s early 90’s. His books featured teen sex. Then the Goosebumps series came along and that was for younger teens. Judy Blume was also big.

Thank you for this video! I generally like to read widely across genres and age brackets, and love YA historical fiction and fantasy as I do their adult counterparts (although I definitely don't read as much adult fantasy as I do YA). I really loved watching this video. It is really interesting to hear your perspective, as a primarily adult fantasy reader, on the YA "genre", and am looking forward to the next part where you talk about your gripes with it!!

i was initially hesitant to watch this video when i saw it recommended to me, then noticed Daughter of Gods & Monsters in the thumbnail and thought, “oh, maybe he knows what he’s talking about.” clicked on and immediately subbed. i mostly read YA (though i’ll read just about anything, since like you said, YA is more a marketing genre at this point) so sometimes seeing ~hot takes~ on the category from people i don’t automatically recognize leads to sometimes misinformed videos that focus on books that were previously popular rather than current marketing trends. but you’ve actually acknowledged those changes and even mentioned leigh bardugo!! anyway, all of this is to say that i’m so happy to see a video from someone who actually knows the trends and has a more “inside look” on everything, while still being able to provide information for those who are maybe less familiar with the topic.

"The Emperor's New Clothes" might hire you for live action so good luck :)

him: mentions john green me (without glasses): huh I thought he was john green

I love it that your talking about release events and showing so much video of HP and Goblet of Fire release. I was at a Borders for the midnight release of that book, and it was nuts!

I'm really looking forward to this series of videos, Daniel, because as someone who got into reading classics and more complex "adult" sci-fi and fantasy a bit earlier than a lot of my peers, I kind of missed the craze that was the YA marketing genre (a great way of putting it, btw) spawning out of Harry Potter. Part of that was also because I'm about five years older than you, so I was a bit older than the target audience at the time, but even then I distinctly remember when I was a college freshman back in 2007, making new friends with fellow readers on my dorm and in my classes, all of them the same age or older than me, and almost universally the response I got was surprise and shock whenever I admitted that I hadn't read the Harry Potter series. So even though I was not a part of its target audience at the time it released from a marketing perspective, I still feel like an anomaly in that I never got pulled into that craze, and to this day with very few exceptions I just do not read YA fantasy at all. But the bigger reason I'm interested in your perspective on YA fantasy is because you were the target audience at the time, and yet you seem to have avoided becoming one of the many people who never moved past the "marketing genre" that spawned out of it. I have a lot of friends my age who have very fond memories of the series, who will to this day defend it as some kind of storytelling masterpiece, and I'd never want to take away their love and nostalgia for that time of their lives. But by the same token, I don't know how to express the fact that I have zero interest or nostalgia in it myself, the fact that I was at that time reading at a level where I expected so much more out of my stories than Harry Potter could have delivered for me, without sounding like an elitist jerk. Harry Potter and YA fantasy in general, because of its target audience, does not and cannot explore the kinds of adult themes (I don't mean sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll, I mean examining truths of the human condition kind of things) or offer the kind of exquisite prose or complicated interwoven plots I have expected from the stories I've read for years. Obviously not everything I read hits all of those marks, nor should it, but I see no reason to go backwards to something that can't hit any of them without alienating the people it's trying to sell itself to, and yet...it's really difficult to express that in a way that doesn't make people see me as looking down at their beloved childhood memories. So all that to say, I'm really interested to see what you have to say about it, as someone that did grow up among its target audience, and has still managed to move on to greater things like WoT and the Cosmere, etc. Great job on the video, looking forward to the rest! (Also sorry for the jumbled wall of text, I woke up from a nap right before watching this and I'm still groggy, so I probably did a terrible job of expressing what I was trying to say)

The thing about going into school the day after Harry Potter came out and seeing it in EVERY. SINGLE. HAND. was also my experience and one of the few strange memories I've retained of second grade. This video was fascinating, looking forward to part 2! - Bree

The thing is, I consider a lot of the books you mentioned as Middle Grade (ie. Percy Jackson, Eragon, Narnia, and Harry Potter. Maybe, the latter half of the Harry Potter books fall into YA but the first few, not really).

This was a very educational video for sure. A lot of the stuff I read is probably lumped into 'YA' or the general area but it's really nice to see just where the terminology comes from, thank you for making this for us to learn.

Great job, man! You are getting better and better at this! Don't ever stop! That is all...

I love a lot of YA books and I’m a lot older. But you’re right it’s not a genre. It’s an age range with a lot of different themes.

I’m 25 and just now moving out of the YA section 😅 I found the adult fantasy section a bit daunting and most of the well known books had Male leads, there’s nothing wrong with that but obviously I’m going to connect more with a female lead so I stuck to YA where majority of the fantasy books had female leads.

Hey daniel, I just wanted to say thank you so much for making this video. It made me think of YA fiction i had read and loved as a child and youn man. iwanted to check when alan garner had begun his Weirdstone series. I was delighted to Discover that after a nearly fifty years pause he ahs written the final part to the trilogy. i wont say that I have worries about the fate of the charachters a lot since i first read these books 40 something years ago, but it has often been in my thoughts. So thank you for this fine video.

I have always read a lot, but when I hit puberty and discovered ya, my reading habit exploded! I read an enormous amount of books and it was amazing. I still have a soft spot for ya fantasy even though my reading tastes have matured. But i remember feeling that it was a hard transition into adult fiction, when I first started to venture out of the comfortable ya.

Man, I used to love Borders! They had a free membership program, and every week or so they would send out coupons for like 25% off books. I don't think in almost a decade I ever paid full price for a book at Borders-- and now I see why they shut down.

"It's a marketing genre" .... dang. You hit it right on the nose here. I'm at the point where I'm trying to publish and I'm not sure if I jump into the marketing genre simply because no one polices self-published authors and I could totally do that or if I actually go with the themes and content of my book and label it appropriately as New Adult. Honestly, the concept that I even have to concern myself with this at all, because it could effect my finances is ridiculous. Marketing genres need to go so I don't have to have an ethical debate with myself every single time I want to write something.

loved this video, looking forward to part 2 :)

This was a great video Daniel

Gooooooood I remember the Harry Potter Car Spoiler Fiasco perfectly 😂

out of pure curiosity i made a list comparing the blurbs of most of the popular YA 2017-2019 releases by new authors trying to figure out what wasn't working for me in YA anymore. i found are a few key words in almost every synopsis that try to make the book sound like a sarah j maas novel, or appeal to the romance readers, or readers looking for diversity and strong female characters. all blurbs started sounding the same to me because they all follow the same formula, like when we had the post hunger games dystopia craze

I love how much fun you're having Daniel Greene-screen

This is literally so well-researched, well-thought-out and well-produced (except maybe the choice of shirt, hahaha). It feels like it shouldn’t be free! Kudos, Daniel. 👌🏼

Daniel: Harry f**king ad plays: Joe Biden

I was a bit older, near twenty, when HP exploded. Had been reading adult fantasy for nearly a decade and it never caught my attention, it was just the next silly kids' hype. As a fantasy lover I liked the attention it brought to the genre, while at the same time being frustrated that bookstores often dedicated as much shelfspace to HP as *all* other fantasy. To this day I only ever read one book - by necessity - and watched some of the movies.

Awesome super high effort video! Please make more of these

Excellent Daniel. Very informative and delivered well.