Targeting YA Teens, Hooking Adult Readers: The True Audience for The Long Walk Home: When the Power Dies

Who did I write The Long Walk: When the Power Dies for? The short answer: the young adult market—readers aged 13 to 18, likely skewing 60% boys and 40% girls at launch. With the short story I’m crafting as a reader magnet, I hope to nudge that toward a more even 55/45 split. But here’s the twist: I fully expect adults to dominate the readership. Industry data backs this up. A 2012 Bowker Market Research study pegged adult YA buyers at 55%, a figure echoed in a 2017 Atlantic analysis. More recently, a 2024 HarperCollins/Nielsen report in the UK clocked it even higher, at 74% of YA readers being adults. Those aren’t my bullseye demographics, but they don’t faze me. If anything, they excite me—proof that great stories don’t age out.

As I’ve shared in past posts, YA does sneak into my recreational reading stack. It doesn’t eclipse the “adult” heavyweights, but it’s far from insignificant—maybe 30-40% on a good month. Why do adults like me devour “kids’ books”? Is it the much-maligned “kidult” epidemic splashed across YouTube rants, X threads, blog takedowns, and glossy magazines? Partly, sure. We’re swimming in an ocean of unprecedented ease and leisure. Sure, folks gripe about grind culture (I’ve clocked 80-100-hour weeks myself in different career roles), but society’s workload has lightened dramatically. Rewards? Sky-high. We’ve traded backbreaking toil for algorithms and air conditioning.

For perspective, crack open Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906), O.E. Rölvaag’s Giants in the Earth (1927), or Vilhelm Moberg’s The Emigrants (1949-1959) tetralogy. These paint visceral portraits of immigrant grit and pioneer hardship. But for our screen-addled brains, nothing hits like visual time machines: the early-2000s British Channel 4/PBS series The 1900 House and The 1940s House. Families plunked into era-accurate homes reveal the sheer drudgery—chopping wood, hand-washing linens, rationing scraps. Even the 1940s setup, amid wartime resolve, demanded far more muscle than our Keurig-fueled mornings. Daily thriving was a full-time job.

Thorstein Veblen nailed this shift over a century ago in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), skewering conspicuous consumption as the idle rich’s badge of honor. He targeted the elite, but today? That ethos has trickled down like cheap fast fashion. In first-world bubbles—and to a lesser extent, even beyond—we flaunt vacations on Instagram, hoard gadgets, or curate feeds for likes. With our reference points frozen in high school or college (where we’ve normalized extended adolescence), we chase shiny distractions. Socially, we’ve dialed back maturity milestones: delayed marriages, perpetual “emerging adulthood.” The result? A kidult culture, where 30-somethings binge cartoon reboots and adults hoard Funko Pops.

Yet pinning adult YA love solely on immaturity misses the mark. Critics sneer at it as “arrested development,” but fans—and data—push back: YA’s unapologetic optimism is an antidote to grown-up cynicism. Sure, some readers are full-on kidults, but I suspect most chase a cocktail of nostalgia, psychological balm, cultural hooks, and sheer practicality. YA thrives on universal beats: coming-of-age reckonings, pulse-pounding quests, raw emotional dives. These land lighter than doorstoppers like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings or Frank Herbert’s Dune, yet echo their epic chords—identity forged in fire, worlds remade by one plucky soul. My daughter and I dub them “mind candy”: sweet, satisfying, and sneakily nourishing.

Take the classics that blurred those lines early. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951) bottled teen alienation so potently it hooked generations of adults, sales estimates showing 60-70% crossover today. John Knowles’s A Separate Peace (1959) dissected prep-school betrayal with WWII shadows, drawing 40-50% adult readers for its quiet psychological punch. Then there’s Robert A. Heinlein’s juveniles (1947-1958)—a dozen Scribner’s sci-fi yarns like Have Space Suit—Will Travel, marketed as “boy’s books” brimming with interstellar competence and ethical grit. (Count Starship Troopers as a 13th? It got nixed for violence.) These resonated with boys and grown-ups alike, blending adventure with big ideas that age like fine whiskey.

Girls’ counterparts from the era flipped the script toward inner fortitude over conquest, yet snagged equal adult devotion. Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960) stranded a Native girl in raw survival, its sparse poetry pulling 35-45% adult fans for cathartic resilience. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time (1962) hurled a brainy teen across dimensions on a love-fueled quest, clocking 50-60% adults who revisit for its cosmic heart. And don’t sleep on the Nancy Drew mysteries (1930s-1960s, by “Carolyn Keene”): that sleuthing teen’s pluck sold 80 million copies, with nostalgia-fueled collectors keeping half the readership over 18.

In The Long Walk: When the Power Dies, I aim to thread that needle—reaching boys, girls, and adults without pandering to all. It’s no scattershot grab; think buffet, not slop: diverse flavors from a core feast. A blackout apocalypse tests teen survivors’ grit, weaving high-stakes thrills for YA pulses with layered reflections on loss and leadership for wiser eyes. The characters’ raw humanity—flawed, fierce, hopeful—should buoy everyone along. In a world starved for light, isn’t that the real power? If it sparks even one “mind candy” binge, mission accomplished.

_{Portions of this post, including YA readership insights and book analyses, were informed and adapted from conversations with Grok, an AI built by xAI.}