Authors voice alarm after sharp drop in sales of YA fiction

Figures last year were the lowest for 11 years, with an overcrowded market and focus on ‘worthy’ books among the factors blamed

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.

Figures from the Bookseller magazine show YA sales fell by £6.2m to £22.5m last year, the lowest point in 11 years, with volume down by 26.1% to 3.3m books sold. The decline follows a series of boom years earlier this decade, fuelled by film adaptations of bestsellers including Suzanne Collins’s dystopian Hunger Games trilogy, John Green’s love story The Fault in Our Stars and Veronica Roth’s Divergent series.

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