Our Paranormals Are Different

[naomi_jay]

Dear Author have a pretty interesting article about sales of Paranormal Romance, Urban Fantasy, and YA Paranormals here. It doesn't surprise me at all to see YA is booming, what with Twilight and all (although I find it hard to credit the boom to Smeyers alone, and there are lots of divergent factors involved, I guess you can't deny her impact). It does surprise me a little to see PR slipping, even if only slightly, since it seems like there's something new out every day. Same with UF.

When I first started reading UF about nine years ago, I really had to dig around for it. I had to order a copy of Dead Witch Walking in specially to my local Waterstones because they weren't stocking it. And I only found UF at all because a local odds-and-ends type shop had the first few Anita Blake novels on offer. It took me ages to build up a proper UF/PR bookshelf, and almost everything came from Amazon because our local bookshops just didn't have the authors in. High Fantasy and Sci-Fi was all over the place, but the only paranormal stuff was firmly in the Horror category, and a very different beast from the UF of today.

Today my Waterstones has about four entire bookcases dedicated to UF/PR (the section is called Lady and the Vamp, which always amuses me), and the YA section has a dedicated "If you like Twilight, you'll like..." section too. It seems like everyone is writing it. Authors who wrote in different genres for years are turning their hand to UF - I'll cite Charlaine Harris as an obvious example, because she wrote cosy mysterious for years before Sookie Stackhouse came along, but there are numerous others.

There are probably a lot of different reasons for the boom, and you can probably see similar rises and falls throughout history. Vampires were incredibly popular in the late 80s and early 90s when we were all worried about AIDs. Zombies are out in strength at the moment as we worry about global terrorism and swine flu. And of course, trends feed into one another: there's been a glut of paranormal films and TV series over the past decade or so which has probably influenced the growth in UF/PR books, and vice versa. There's definitely an argument that Buffy the Vampire Slayer paved the way for Anita Blake's mainstream success, and doubtless Anita Blake opened the doors for Harry Dresden and Sam and Dean Winchester, and so forth.

I'll be very interested to see what happens to the genres from here. Obviously my vote is always for more werewolves.

ETA: Reading the comments on the DA thread, it looks like a lot of people are hungry for sci-fi romance and futuristics, as well as UF that doesn't focus on vampires/werewolves/demons. Again, I'll be interested to see if this is reflected in the market over the next few months and years.

Comments

[dwg.livejournal.com]

*cough* there is now werewolfbigbang. I'm doing my best to sit on my hands and not sign up, but *squeaky noises* TEMPTING.

One of my local bookstores has a YA section just dedicated to vampire YA. My favourite book store, though, now has the paranormal romance section, but UF can show up there, or in scifi/fantasy clear on the other side of the store, or the meagre horror shelf just across the way. I'm starting to think that UF is becoming a je ne sais quoi, where stores aren't sure where to shelve them because they can easily bridge all three genres or stand as its own.

Interestingly, Anne Rice's Christ books are shelved with pride beside the Vampire Chronicles. Or maybe not, and the store just likes keeping the authors together regardless of what kinds of books that author may write. I mean, Dresden Files and Codex Alera are put together over in scifi/fantasy, all of Simon R Green's books are together etc. but Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse books are nowhere near her cosy little mystery books. So, I don't know. Every bookstore seems to be an adventure in itself, because they all shelve things differently.

[naomi-jay.livejournal.com]

Waterstones here keeps the Dresden Files with the Codex Alera in SF/F too, and Karen Chance tends to pop up everywhere (I like to believe it's because nobody knows what the hell to make of her books). Lilith Saintcrow's adult books tend to show up in horror.

*looks away from werewolfbigbang* I will not give in!

[nathreee.livejournal.com]

I'm still sitting on a UF story that has 1984 SF elements. It's not in a presentable stage yet, but I wonder what genre they're going to call it.

[naomi-jay.livejournal.com]

Speculative fiction often seems to the tag applied to cross-genre with SF elements.

[etaknosnhoj.livejournal.com]

I'm just impressed your Waterstones has PR at all. Mine has Old Skool SF/F, but it's definitely a boys shelf, with nothing girly or romantic on there. Romance is hidden away with general fiction, or occasionally shoved on the Erotica shelf. They did have a shelf with the Sookie Stackhouse books, but they were bookended by erotica and horror (perhaps so browsers could pretend to be looking at porn or gore instead of anything that might even have romantic elements).

I do most of my book buying online these days...

[naomi-jay.livejournal.com]

Yeah, our PR section is bookended by erotica and horror too. I take great pleasure in watching dirty old men sneak a look at the porn whilst pretending to be reading Stephen King.