Who's buying and reading YA-books?

In september I read an article about adults buying teen books in The Christian Science Monitor. The results showed in this article are based on a study from Bowker Market Research. It shows that 55 % percent of the buyers of YA-literature are 18 or over and they say this is a trend that's only been increasing over the years. The majority of the buyers in the 18+-group are actually 30-44 years old (I am one of those:-) Of course this group could be buying the books for their kids or other teenagers, but according to the survey 78% of the adult buyers reported that they were buying the books for themselves. The popularity of series as The Hunger Games, Twilight and Harry Potter can take some of the blame but not most of it. More than 70% of the readers reported to read a variety of titles. This is good news for the publishers Bowker says because these book's readers are among the most loyal, socially active and committed you can find. So why do adults like to read books meant for a younger crowd?

Why do I like to read YA?
I can only speak for myself since I am one of those adults who like to read YA-literature. I started to read YA-books because of my job as a school librarian but now I really enjoy them and also buy some for myself. The article in The Christian Science Monitor claims one of the reasons for this could be that YA-books are often written in a less complicated matter than many books for adults an therefore may offer more of a literary escape. The genres of dystopia and fantasy that are very popular in YA-literature are both genres that appeals to me. I agree that many times these books are less complicated and first of all easier to stomach (less graphic) than in many of the adult books, which is fine by me. But I also think a reader could find literary escape in adult literature just as easy and many do but maybe the issues and the thematics doesn't appeal to everyone in the less complicated literature for adults.

                                                   (Photo: copyright: Flickr/Ben Sutherland)

Also the line between YA-literature and the adult literature is sometimes very thin. There's great diversity in YA and some of it is an easy read and some of it is not. One of the few similarities seems to be that it's about young people and issues that they are concerned about. So, the YA-literature appeals to me for many reasons but one of them  is about that last thing, that you can read about a persons period of life that is maybe the most vulnerable, exciting and where so many of your experiences are new and fresh. I think we all like to feel like that again. I also think this is one of the most important periods of life when a person is between childhood and adulthood. This is when you struggle to find out who you are and who you want to be. A lot of great literature has been written about this but maybe not been called YA. I think it's about time that this literature is discovered by a larger group of readers. And this leads to me ending this with the most important reason for me starting to read YA; I didn't know I could find so many fun, exciting and good books among them before I started to read them.

This leads me to another thing. In Norway we don't have a YA-category. Some books are called crossover-books but this is not really working in the marketing process because these books have a problem finding their way to the right readers. Therefore neither the young adults nor the adults read them a lot. This is hopefully going to change now that they are given more attention. How is this in you country?