The online book world is full of acronyms. There are acronyms for not finishing a book (DNF), for your list of books to read (TBR), and even widely used acronyms as shorthand for popular book series (ACOTAR, TOG, FBAA, etc. ad infinitum). 

But a new one cropped up somewhat recently: NA – otherwise known as New Adult. 

To understand this newfangled lingo, let’s first explore a little about age categories in books. 

For a long time, these age categories have broken up literature into appropriate groups according to the reading level and the content of a book. Once tiny humans start reading, the age categories tend to look something like this: 

• Early Readers: ages 5-8
• Middle Grade: ages 8-12
• Young Adult: ages 12-17
• Adult: ages 18+

These distinctions are pretty clear, and for the most part have served readers, educators, and booksellers well over the years. These categories make it easier to stock school libraries with appropriate books and help publishers market to the right audiences. 

However, the water has always been a little murky on the older end of the teen years. 

Young Adult (YA) books have had a chokehold on the market, not just for teens but for adults too. 

YA books have remained popular (and hugely profitable) for the last two decades. The rise of paranormal romance like Twilight and dystopian fantasy like The Hunger Games and Divergent led to an explosion for the category that has barely waned since. 

Many of those teen readers have grown up with a taste for books with similar pacing, structure, themes, and action – and want more. 

Now as books like A Court of Thorns and Roses gain steam, which are adult books and contain more explicit sexual and violent content accordingly, but whose main characters are still in the 18-20ish age range, the online book world has begun clamoring for a new way to define these books. 

And so the term “New Adult” rises from the ether. 

While the actual phrase “new adult” was used at least as far back as 2009 by St. Martin’s Press, NA has recently risen to the forefront online amongst readers and reviewers as a way to define books that target an audience typically aged 18-25. Since the target audience is legal adults, these books can have more graphic content while still featuring character types, themes, and tropes that are so loved in YA. 

I want to be clear: “New Adult” is not yet officially in use by publishers or booksellers. As useful as it would be for marketing, this is mostly an online term for now. Hopefully it gets some traction in the near future. 

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