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RA For All: Horror: 31 Days of Horror Project

MonsterLibrarian.com was pleased to be included in Becky Siegel Spratford’s project 31 Days of Horror over at her blog RA for All: Horror. Becky is the expert in reader’s advisory in the horror genre, so if you haven’t heard of her and are looking for a great resource go check her blog out!

The post went up a couple of days ago. Click here to go directly to our guest post there. I hope you’ll also take some time to see who else is featured over there this month– so far, it’s been interesting! Or, if you would rather just keep reading, I’ll include what I wrote below, although none of the links that I included there are active. But you really should go check RA for All: Horror out.

 

TRENDS IN THE HORROR GENRE
By Kirsten Kowalewski

Many of the trends in horror fiction right now reflect trends in publishing and reading in general. Anyone who follows books at all, or has been to the bookstore recently, will note an overwhelming number of YA titles devoted to the supernatural, as well as dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction. So results of a recent study by Bowker Market Research, that show that 55% of YA books (targeted at ages 12-17) are purchased by adults reflect a notable trend not just in general but for the horror genre. The trend towards adults reading YA books is now so strong that popular writers of adult horror, such as Jonathan Maberry are now writing YA titles, and publishers of adult horror are now starting YA imprints–ChiZine Publications recently announced that it will introduce a new imprint, ChiTeen, in 2014.

Something to remember as you consider these numbers is that teens also read a lot of adult fiction. In her book Shelf Discovery, Lizzie Skurnick touches on this, as she recalls reading adult books like Jaws and raiding her parents’ bookshelves , in addition to reading contemporary YA fiction (and as Becky noted in this blog post, as teens are new to the genre, introducing them to these more mature titles is a great way to circulate your backlist). Many, many people start reading Stephen King and other adult horror novels as teens. What young adults read isn’t necessarily fiction targeted at young adults, any more than what adults read is targeted to them.

At MonsterLibrarian.com, we’ve reviewed books with monsters in them that fall all along the spectrum, and the most popular searches for book lists are for YA vampire books and paranormal romances. These are so popular that we started a blog, Reading Bites, just for this audience. However, there seems to be agreement between horror readers and librarians that the vampire novel, for the most part, has lost its bite; as one middle school librarian noted to me recently, middle school girls aren’t scared by a vampire who will take them to the prom. As vampires bleed into the genres of romance and mystery, hardcore horror readers, who prefer their monsters to be monstrous, have started to turn away from this subgenre. Make sure you know what a reader wants when he or she asks for a vampire book.

The trend in YA fiction towards dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, influenced by The Hunger Games, also seems to frequently take on a romantic angle, and often portrays the main characters as catalysts for societal change. Post-apocalyptic fiction seems to be mainly reflected in adult horror in the subgenre of zombie fiction, where the focus is usually on the survivors of a post-apocalyptic event doing their best to survive a zombie invasion. Lovers of this subgenre are sometimes content to read the same kind of story over and over—they like the fast-paced action and gore and aren’t necessarily interested in character development—but in recent years there have been some fresh takes on a genre that, while popular, was starting to get a bit stale (you can see what I mean by checking out our list of zombie titles). Mad science is also taking off in interesting directions, with plague viruses, technology gone mad, genetic manipulation, and man-made monsters showing up with frequency in both YA and adult fiction. One of the scariest books I’ve read in the past twelve months was Kenneth Oppell’s This Dark Endeavor (reviewed here), a prequel to Mary Shelley’s classic horror story Frankenstein. Both Oppell’s short novel and Shelley’s original appeared together in the same ebook. Now that’s a hook! The Frankenstein story takes a totally different turn in Neal Shusterman’s UnWholly, due out later this month. And these days many zombie books start with some kind of virus or plague, with the search for a cure a significant storyline.

Another trend in publishing and reading that is affecting horror fiction is the popularity of ebooks and self-publishing. At the time that we started MonsterLibrarian.com, horror fiction had more or less lost its home in mainstream publishing and migrated to small presses that often specialized in printing collector’s editions—beautiful, but expensive, and not easily available to the average consumer. Some of them, like Cemetery Dance and Bad Moon Books have done very well, but many times books from small presses are only available by direct order, which makes them hard to find.

As ebooks and self-publishing have exploded, horror fiction of all kinds has become much more readily available. Short pieces that weren’t exactly what a publisher was looking for, or were by unknown authors, could be (and are) presented in ebook format, and find an audience. This is great for horror readers who are loyal to a subgenre that isn’t being promoted in mainstream publishing , like werewolf fiction. There is a strong minority of readers who love werewolf horror (enough that we hosted a Werewolf Month for several years), but there are few current werewolf horror books (here’s our list of werewolf titles). A search for “werewolf horror” on Amazon.com brings up over 1,000 titles, mostly self-published ebooks. It’s hard to know what the quality of a self-published book will be before you read it, but many ebooks are very low-priced. Some authors are now publishing serials, with an attempt to hook an audience with episodes of a continuing story. Authors whose rights have reverted to them can introduce their books to a new audience. Small presses sell books in ebook format as well as collector’s editions, making those available to a wider audience. And current mainstream authors (like Stephen King) are finding a demand for shorter pieces . The ways that ebooks are changing publishing in general and horror in particular are many, and it’s very exciting. Unfortunately for libraries and their readers, most of these won’t be easily available through a service like Overdrive. The conundrum of how libraries can help horror readers connect more easily with ebooks doesn’t seem like one that can be solved easily.

A final trend that I see affecting the way people experience horror fiction is the way it is sweeping the media. Television shows like The Walking Dead (originally based on a series of graphic novels) have made zombies more mainstream. Movies such as Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods draw in reluctant viewers (see what blogger Barbara Vey wrote here). Apps allow you to take the experience along with you. The brand-new book Horrible Hauntings by Shirin Yim Bridges uses augmented reality technology to extend the reading experience; ghosts leap out at the reader when you point your cell phone camera at the pictures! Horror is such a visual genre that the way other media are giving readers to experience it is nothing short of amazing.

Getting the horror reader in the door can be a challenge. But the real challenge is this: with so much horror outside mainstream publishing, once you get the reader in the door, how are you going to manage to give them what they’re looking for?

Interview with Ellen Archer, CEO of Hyperion

Digital Book World just presented an interview with Ellen Archer, the CEO of Hyperion. For those who don’t know, Hyperion is a publisher that is part of  Disney. We’ve received many excellent books for review from Hyperion Teen, including the stellar Generation Dead, and several books they sent us ended up on our  2011 Top Picks list for Young Adults, including Mercy by Rebecca Lim and the Near Witch by Victoria Schwab.

That they sent us these books doesn’t really have anything to do with why I’m sharing this interview with you, though. Here’s the deal: in spite of the fact that Hyperion is not one of the Big Six publishers we hear about and write about so much of the time, it is a reasonably good-sized publisher that puts out some really quality books, and it’s also part of a major media empire. Disney is about a lot more than princesses, and it has an impressive marketing machine. Hyperion, as part of that media empire, has the opportunity to produce transmedia experiences that will really stand out.  I wrote about transmedia over the summer last year (and while I continue to be fascinated by it, I still favor physical books for children, which seems to be true for many parents, even those addicted to ebooks themselves), and I can see from this interview that Archer is headed in this direction (in a much more complex way than I described) from what she says here:

 

Maybe we have to drop “books” from the way we think. I think that’s keeping us from not thinking as big and broadly as we need to.

I have authors come in and I suggest we start with e-books and then have a print companion later on and they say, “what about the ‘book’ book?”

What I see Hyperion as is a producer of great reading experiences in the form that someone enjoys.

I continue to see debates about the value of ebooks vs. physical books. I think it’s pretty clear now that in order for publishers to survive that debate has to be reframed. There are going to be ebooks, physical books, and media of all kinds in play. And it’s not just going to be about how we consume media, but how our experiences of a variety of media bring us together. Have the Big Six publishers recognized this? They seem to be moving tentatively into this sphere, but if other publishers, like Hyperion, move faster, I think we’ll see the structure of the publishing industry change considerably. For those of us who are used to categorizing media into discrete areas (like some librarians and many, many digital immigrants) it won’t be an easy transition. But it’s coming, and, if Archer’s ideas about the future of publishing are on target, it’s coming sooner than we think.

Penguin Throws Libraries a Rotten Egg

You can add Penguin to the list of “Big Six” publishers refusing to sell digital copies of their books to libraries.

Penguin announced on Monday that it will no longer sell digital books for new titles, and has disabled the ability to download ebooks in Kindle format in ALL of its titles. This is so frustrating to me! One of my big gripes with the Kindle was always that it used a proprietary format and that Amazon wouldn’t allow Kindle books to be lent in libraries. As of September 21, that changed, and it was HUGE for both libraries and library users who owned Kindles. Circulation statistics for ebooks went way up, and libraries spent a big chunk of money buying Kindle books. Now that Penguin has disabled Kindle functionality, I hope it also plans to refund some money and offer an apology for leaving libraries to deal with huge numbers of irate library patrons. Further, now Random House is “actively reviewing” its policy- although it’s hard to know what that actually means.

So here’s where we are with the “Big Six” publishers. Macmillan and Simon and Schuster refuse to sell ebooks to libraries at all. Hachette, and now Penguin, decline to sell frontlist titles in digital format, Penguin has disabled Kindle functionality, and HarperCollins requires libraries to re-license an ebook after 26 circulations (although that’s apparently under discussion). Who exactly are the winners in this situation?

Frankly, this stinks for pretty much everyone. Surely, publishers, authors, libraries, and readers can come up with something workable? Even if there are compromises that need to be made, it would be nice to find a way to make things come out with the sunny side up.