New Adult Marked for Deletion on Wikipedia

The New Adult category has been marked for deletion on Wikipedia.

But don't worry, lots of people have come in to protest and comment and tell Wikipedia what's what! You can go leave your comments if you want to make your voice heard. I'm pretty sure NA is here to stay, in spite of Wikipedia's control issues. 

Wikipedia clearly thinks NA is a fad, a made-up marketing ploy designed to suck us all in so we can be St. Martin's buying zombies.

To Wikipedia, NA seems like the hula hoops of the 50s.

(Are these two girls or Siamese twins?)

Or the mini skirts of the 60s.  

(Psst! Fashion designers everywere - my ass is begging you not to bring these back!)

Or the pet rock of the 70's.

(Care and training of... heyyyy, wait a minute...)

Or the Gremlins of the 80's.

 

(First page of Google, folks!)

 (Not to be confused with this Gremlin...) 

(Will never be cool. Ever.)

Or Tamagatchi's of the 90's.

(To be thereafter thrown in every kid's face when asking for a puppy, as in: "You couldn't even keep your Tamagotchi alive!")

Or the Furbys of 2000. 

(Not cute, just creepy.)

And again in 2012...

(Beyond creepy, now their eyes glow, they talk to each other and I'm pretty sure they're planning world domination...)

But Wikipedia was wrong! NA isn't a fad!

 So people were all like:

AND

AND

AND

AND

And Wikipedia was like:

And that, my friends, was that. 

New Adult Category on Amazon - But What About the Indies?

So there's good news and there's bad news.

Amazon has a new category: "New Adult & College Romance."YAY for readers! Now we can find more of the books we're looking for! That's always a good thing, when things are classified well and readers can find them. 

The bad news?

Apparently, it's only for the traditionally published, or for the "uber-super-mega selling" indie authors who clearly have some pull or clout with Amazon.

Folks, something smells bad here...

Maybe I'm just being crazy or paranoid. But so far, on Amazon's KDP platform, there is no way to choose this new category for self-pubbed authors. I looked, I checked, I searched, I hunted. I scoured the category listing in my KDP dashboard. There is no access for indies to this awesome new category. Which makes this "new adult & college romance category" a little bit of a coup for traditional publishing, does it not?

Let's just hope I'm jumping the gun here, and Amazon just hasn't programmed it into their KDP platform... yet. Although to give to traditional publishing with one hand, while withholding from self-publishing with the other, seems quite unfair and a little hypocritical, especially given the fact that most of the names on the New Adult & College Romance bestseller list were once actually self-published...

So what's the deal Amazon? Are you just slow in implementing your new category (that's bad enough, really) or are you going to withhold this indefinitely from indie authors?

Either way, it seems like a little bit of #amazonfail to me. 

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