Discussion: what differences have I found between the French and English YA markets?

Hi Everyone!

It's been a while since I've done a discussion, so today I wanted to settle down to write a post that's been in the back of my mind for a while, about the differences between YA in England and in France.

Firstly, for a little context, I am half French and bilingual. I live in England but regularly go to France to visit my family. I therefore have a very balanced view of young adult literature in both countries and I wanted to share some thoughts with you all. Of course these are only my opinions so please bear that in mind!

Although there is a lot of American influence and literature in England, I have found the YA sections to be filled with fantastic reads and such a huge variety, from realistic, dramatic fiction, to historical fiction to fantasy....the choice is extensive! 

However, I do not find the same thing when I go into French bookshops. There, the YA section is often a forgotten shelf among the children's section with mainly fantasy, and frustratingly for me, mainly translated fiction. 

I do believe that the French YA market is much less developed in England. I often find myself thinking "What would I read if I couldn't read English?". I am not a huge fantasy reader at all, as you can probably tell by the books that I review on my blog, but in England this is not an issue, there are hundreds of contemporary, realistic YA books that I can enjoy, from Holly Bourne to Lucy Powrie and Yasmin Rahman and I just don't see the same representation in France. That's not to say that YA is nonexistent, it is a genre that is present but much less promoted and championed as in England. 

On the other hand, much of the UK's bookshops stock a lot of American YA too, such as Karen .M .McManus, which is such an advantage of the English language. This is not the same for the French language and so maybe we get a larger selection of books because of this.

There is also the influence of the online book community in England, which is so present, and there are so many influencers, especially in the BookTok space who promote YA books and encourage a wider audience to appreciate them. I don't believe this is as established in France, and definitely the blogging community over the last 10 or so years I know has helped YA become more recognised in England. 

As to the differences between the YA markets, in England we see little translated fiction. There are some, sure, but by far not as many as in France. I think this is actually a negative and that a bit of translated fiction is a good thing to discover new stories that are different to what we would otherwise read.

However, in France, I've found it SO hard to find books which were not originally written in English. As an English speaker, I don't want to read books which I can read in the original language, especially when the translations are not the best.

The main difference for me, though is the amount of choice we have in England. You go into almost any bookshop and you have at least one set of shelves dedicated and clearly marked YA. And this counts for the independents too, whereas in France, I have mainly found these sorts of ranges in the Waterstones equivalents!

I have also spoken to two of my lovely French friends about this topic, as I wanted to get their opinions. One of them said she thought there was a similar amount of translated books as books written in French, and the other said she thought the English YA market was definitely more developed than the French one. She said that there were a lot of children's / 9-12 books and adult books but the category in between wasn't really a big thing. It was really helpful to get their opinions, which were quite similar to mine, and I definitely want to look into the translated fiction in France side more at some point!!

Thank you so much to them both for answering my questions!!

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post, I hope it was interesting and informative and hopefully made you think about a new topic! Happy reading!

Do you have an opinion on this topic? Had you ever thought about this before? How do you think the English YA market has evolved?

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p.s. casual magic of the day:

(If you are new here and have no idea what I'm on about, click here to find out more)

I did my DofE expedition and cooked Halloumi for my team. In the end half the camp was begging me for some as they had taken the easy route and had boil in the bag food! Halloumi is one of my favourite foods and it was really cool to share it with people!

also today on the bus on the way back from school, one of my classmates told me a halloumi joke so i shall now share the halloumi joke:

What did the cheese say when he looked in the mirror?

Halloumi!!

(get it? Hello me.....Halloumi.....)

It's the little conversations that mean the most sometimes <33