10 Million Ways to Die (Choose One): The Appeal of YA Dystopian Novels

There’s an interesting piece, “Fresh Hell” by Laura Miller, in the current New Yorker that examines the increasing appeal of dystopian novels and stories to the young adult (YA) demographic. As she sees it, there are a couple of fundamental differences between adult vs. YA dystopian novels: the former posit futures that might come to pass (1984) while the latter are metaphors for the world in which teenagers find themselves today (The Hunger Games); for adults the ending is inevitably pessimistic (and are usually stand-alone titles) while for younger readers it is either openly upbeat—or as much as a dystopian story can be “upbeat”—or decidedly ambiguous to drive its readers to the next book in the series.

Finalized 20 Years Later Cover Design

It took longer than I would have liked—due to being bogged down on my end and no fault at all on the part of the book cover designers—but the cover design for Emma Newman’s forthcoming 20 Years Later has been completed and finalized. (Click on the thumbnail at the left to see a larger version.) The interior pages are with the book designer and so—once again, more slowly than I would have liked—the whole book should be put together by the end of June. Then, those files can be walked over to my local printer to get a proof copy ginned up. After that, there are some last odds and ends of details—assigning an ISBN, generating a Bookland EAN barcode, dropping in the P-CIP data block, adding some glowing blurbs on the back—and we’re good to go.

But first, a few words about the cover design itself.

Dystopia Press to Publish Emma Newman’s 20 Years Later

On the public front, things have been quiet at Dystopia Press the last couple of months. Behind the scenes, however, things continue apace: busily (although not busily enough) reading manuscripts, ongoing discussions about various contract proposals out and about, and just generally plotting small press world publishing domination.

On a happier—and more public!—note, I can say that we have signed our first author to Dystopia Press, Emma Newman, to publish her novel 20 Years Later.