A tiny little thing that I find annoying is the misnomer that is Young Adult fiction. Last time I looked, an adult is someone who is over the age of 18. Therefore, a “Young Adult” is someone who is only just over 18 but is still learning, discovering and transitioning from being a teenager to the full blown adult responsibilities of a mortgage, a child or gaol.
Ben Elton back in the 1980’s took the mickey out of the term “Young Adults”
Which brings me to the baffling world of books and publishers. Just like any other retail company, publishers have staff/contractors (authors/content providers) developing products (books) targeting specific market segments. In publishing terms the YA market is aged between 13-17. This is out of sync with market segments followed by the rest of the retail world.
In the real world, this age group is called TEENAGE. And there is nothing wrong whatsoever with branding books aimed at this readership as Teenage. Just saying.
Shallowreader 
It gets a little confusing and I’m sometimes not sure where to direct my 13 year old niece. Wish there were some agreement between booksellers and publishers and libraries when it came to categorising books by age range.
Garth Nix makes a good point about YA fiction here (in the comments): http://www.jonathanstrahan.com.au/wp/2010/10/02/episode-20-live-with-gary-k-wolfe/
My favourite bit: “YA is a subset of adult fiction, not of children’s fiction, and should be considered as having an entry reading age rather than an age *range*. The entry level is probably 13 or 14, but there is no upper level because the books are also for adults.”
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Kat, Vassiliki Veros. Vassiliki Veros said: @awritingjourney @BookThingo You might find this an interesting take on the YA debate http://bit.ly/enDQKH […]