WOW! Call for Submissions: YA Issue

Young adult (YA) books are selling despite the economy. Adults and teens both seem to enjoy reading these books, which can be about many of the typical teen issues: suicide, peer pressure, dating, drugs, and cliques. Vampires and werewolves have practically taken over the YA section at the bookstores right now thanks to the Twilight series; and YA authors, like Ellen Hopkins author of Crank, are constantly on Twitter, Facebook, and their blogs, talking about censorship.

Angela has decided to dedicate March's WOW! issue to YA! She has also asked me to be a guest editor for the issue. I am thrilled and can't wait to work on this exciting issue about the YA market. I love YA!

Here are some ideas we had about topics for articles/interviews in the YA issue:

• Interviews with YA authors about the craft of writing and marketing YA.
• Interviews with YA editors or agents and what they’re looking for. What aren’t they getting?
• Should YA authors find an agent or editor or does it matter?
• YA authors and social networking/blogs: Do they target their teen fans or their writing colleagues or both? Special challenges of having teen fans.
• What makes a book YA? The difference from tween and middle grade.
• Edgy subjects in YA: are there any that are too edgy? What about language?
• The use of technology in YA books—when does it date your ms? Do you need to put in e-mail, texting, Twitter and so on in contemporary novels now? How does having cell phones change the plots of novels?
• YA non-fiction: What types of subjects are authors writing about now for teens? Is this an “easy” sale for authors and publishers?
• Trends: Is everybody writing about vampires? What’s the hot thing coming up? Should you write about trends?

We’re open to any ideas you may have for this issue. Please review our past children’s issues to check for YA topics we’ve already covered:

http://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/27-issue.html

http://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/14-issue.html

If you have an idea for an article or interview, please query us at submissions (at) wow-womenonwriting (dot) com.

Writer’s Guidelines: http://wow-womenonwriting.com/contact.php

Pay: $50 - $150 per article.

Looking forward to reading your queries,

Margo Dill

http://margodill.com/blog/