Publishers Weekly is reporting that Harlequin is launching a new line of books aimed at the YA market. Harlequin Teen will publish trade paperbacks, hardcovers, and ebooks encompassing “a spectrum of genres including fantasy, contemporary, historical, science fiction, and—no surprise—romance,” aimed at a target audience of girls 12-18 years old. The imprint will debut in August with My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent (the first installment of the Soul Screamers series). It will be followed in September by Gena Showalter‘s Intertwined.
Margaret O’Neill Marbury is Harlequin’s editorial director of single title imprints. She said “We feel that now is the right time to start a YA program. We view younger women as a natural extension of our core readership and we felt that offering a broad range of teen stories, not strictly romance, was the best way to approach the YA audience.” She recognizes the competition for the demographic, but notes that YA readers are constantly aging out and being replaced by new readers, extending the shelf life of books. “We observed that many YA fiction titles, including some I remember enjoying as a teen, have remained in the marketplace much longer than we would have expected.”
Harlequin Teen Senior Editor Natashya Wilson is the acquiring editor for the line. Most of the books she’s accepted have been agented, but according to PW, “she also considers proposals submitted directly by authors.” Wilson said “We are building a terrific, fun young author base. We’re seeing a lot of submissions from younger authors, who tend to be most in touch with how the YA voice sounds.” Wilson also commented on their expected demographic of 12-18 year-old girls, saying “We may look at expanding the age range in the future and perhaps publish some books geared toward boys. And of course we are aiming to publish books that have strong crossover potential, since Harlequin has such a huge audience of women fiction readers.”
Wilson plans to release only the two books in 2009, growing the line slowly. She expects to publish 12-14 books in 2010, 18 in 2011, and get up to full speed with 24 books in 2012.
Harlequin Teen already has a web site, through which they’ve signed up a panel of more than 250 teens who offer input on story ideas, cover concepts, logos, and more. “Through this site,” Wilson said, “we are able to generate discussion about what teens like to read and keep in touch with what our audience is interested in, which is obviously very important to us.”