There was a scandal today, Enthusiasts. A fun one instead of the type we’ve been getting lately, which are generally more of the “buy guns and gold” variety. No, this one has blatant crockery and digital foolishness and shenanigans of the Hollywood d-list. Doesn’t that already sound better than, you know, Nazis running people over on sidewalks and the president thinking it was funny?
Anyway, the teens are no longer teens, at least not in the publishing world: they are Young Adults, and they have a whole arm of Big Book dedicated to servicing their needs. This is not new–I remember devouring The Great Brain series and all of Gordon Korman and Judy Blume’s books as a kid, not to mention Encyclopedia Brown–but the is much larger and more frenzied now since the Harry Potter and Twilight properties made everyone involved stinking rich. The culture and technology have also changed. Books marketed to teens used to invariably be about white boys who were smarter than everyone else, or white girls getting their periods; themes now revolve around diversity and wokeness, and also draculas. Plus, there’s YA Twitter, which is just as irritating as every other Twitter, but with better spelling.
So, this book about something-or-other was number one on the Times best-seller list for six months. This week, a book called Handbook For Mortals knocked it off. Only problem being that no one had ever heard of this book, it wasn’t available on Amazon, and no one could produce a physical copy of it. Besides that, everything seemed kosher.
Turns out a gaggle of half-bright Hollywood hangers-on gamed the system in the same way that conservative publishers have been doing for years–ghost-ordering books themselves from shops that reported to the Times–but they were a little too blatant about it and also included someone from Blues Traveler in the plan. This whole plan stinks of Blues Traveler, actually.
But at least we learned a lesson.
What is it?
The system can be gamed.
Of course that’s what you took away from this.
Enthusiasts, this is a wake-up call for TotD. I have been wasting my talents–vast as they are–on whatever the fuck it is I’m doing with my life. I will now concentrate entirely on novels for the YA market.
Here are my ideas so far:
Wonderful Night for a Moondance Unless Yancy Spatula can get someone to ask her to the prom, the Spatula family curse will turn her into a werewolf. She’s also dealing with her parents’ divorce and a best friend who had something traumatic happen to her. (Car crash, face burned off, something like that.)
The Diary of a DREAMer I pretend to be a Guatemalan author brought to the country at the age of two by my parents. Michelle Obama appears to me in visions, and my best friend had something traumatic happen to him. (Personal avalanche, spontaneous denippling, that sort of thing.)
You’re Special But Don’t Know It The lead character is a wizard or a shape-shifter or a superhero or a magic gynecologist but they don’t know it until one night some weirdo shows up. Then there’s a whole world with all sorts of bullshit and rules and side characters. Is there a prophecy? Fuck, yeah, there’s a prophecy.
Eclipse Of Love’s Fang Its Twilight, but–wait for it–the girl is the dracula. There is also divorce and inclusion.
Anyone wishing to invest in my new venture may do so,
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