YA by YA

This morning's Publishers Weekly email digest included an article on Medallion Press who just launched a new imprint Ya-Ya. Their new imprint will produce YA novels and nonfiction written by young adults. The press has announced that they are currently accepting submissions, but has not announced when they expect their first title to launch.

It will be interesting to see how the imprint does; if they are able to find teen authors who are able to create books that can stand next to the current high-quality YA written by adults. Will this spur other publishers on to create their own teen author imprints?

HarperCollins created inkpop.com as an online teen publishing community in 2009. Teens join the site post their writing, other teens comment and offer advice, the teens vote on the best five pieces and a group of HarperCollins editors review and comment on the work. HarperCollins has a similar site for adults through which it has found an author and published one of his books. Are they planning to do the same with teens?

YA is so very popular at the moment that I think publishers are doing whatever they can to find new, fresh authors and draw in a larger audience. We'll just have to wait and see if creating teen authors is the "next big thing" in YA.