What is Middle Grade? What is Young Adult?

Leviathan is one of my favorite novels from recent years. It happens to be a young adult novel, but there's nothing childish or immature about it. Some of the best fiction written these days is written for the younger markets.

What is Young Adult? What is Middle Grade?

SFWA and Malinda Lo will tell you the difference between MG and YA fiction here.

Here's some of the top YA fiction of 2012.

Harry Potter started it. Twilight picked up the baton. The Hunger Games sealed the deal. You don't have to be a young adult to buy, read and love YA fiction any more.

But you do need to read today's YA and see what today's readers want in a novel.

This is true of any kind of novel, though. You must read the new material that's out there, the books written by new writers who don't sell books just because they are already popular writers.

You need to see what readers want to read today and then decide if that's what you want to write, can write. And believe me, there are a lot of wonderful new writers out there waiting for you to discover them.