Among the places I went yesterday, I went to a Barnes and Noble that relocated to my local mall. Since the novel I’m editing is a young adult novel, I decided to take a look at what was currently selling in that area besides the much despised Twilight series.
Vampires, vampires everywhere greeted me as I walked toward the young adult section. I decided to look at the books for more than their vampiric value or lack thereof and saw an overall trend of fantasy novels covering all the shelves surrounding the young adult section. I looked for non-fantasy novels and found just a few on the display, most of them looking like trashy reads of questionable value. Judging a book by its cover doesn’t often end well, but these books were flashy and screamed, “I have no real value in me!”
Since I don’t write fantasy, this is slightly troubling. On the other hand, maybe the obsession with vampires is just a fad. Let’s hope.