Readers have long embraced novellas within the YA category, with the short format allowing authors to offer dedicated fans new perspectives, backstories, and additional lore for tales they already know and love. This fall, a slate of novellas ranging from holiday follow-ups to illustrated guides and series conclusions is hitting shelves, giving readers the gift of more time in their favorite universes. We spoke with authors and editors about the contemporary novella and the future of the format.

Home for the Holidays

Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick will make their novella debut this month with Joy to the Girls (S&S), a holiday-themed spin-off of their 2022 YA novel She Gets the Girl. Following the success of the sapphic rom-com, which blew up on TikTok and hit the New York Times bestseller list, the married couple and collaborators weren’t sure of how best to continue Molly and Alex’s journey.

Derrick told PW that they’d regretted not having an epilogue in the novel and planned for an adult sequel, but found that that “wasn’t the best way to enter the adult world.” But they still wanted to find a way to send Alex and Molly off into the sunset. Joy to the Girls picks up three years after its origin story, following the central couple as they navigate what comes next in their relationship and prepare for the future.

A novella was ideal for this story as it allowed the authors to showcase the final stage of growth for the couple, as a format in between an epilogue and a full-blown standalone. “It seemed like [a matter of] how did they get from She Gets the Girl to how we were picturing them, and the trajectory of their lives together? And then going, ‘Let’s find a spot in between.’ ” Lippincott said.

The contemporary YA novella is a bit of a rarity, as novellas are most often seen in the fantasy space, but Alexa Pastor, the couple’s editor at S&S, thinks “it’s a really natural fit to see contemporary stories, particularly romance, joining fantasy in the novella [format]. Just like how a fantasy novella can give us a glimpse at a new piece of the world or expand on a beloved character that was on the sidelines in the main story, a romance novella can give us a glimpse into the couples’ world and the experience of being in love versus finding love, which can feel like an extra gift for readers,” Pastor said.

Adalyn Grace also gives a festive spin on her YA series Belladonna, with her forthcoming novella Holly (Little, Brown). The concept for a holiday novella had long been on Grace’s mind, but it wasn’t until she read Stephanie Garber’s Spectacular last year that she took the idea seriously. Grace cited Garber’s work as the “perfect thing to show my team and say, there is definitely interest in this.”

The author describes Holly as a “celebration of the series.” Even though the series closes with a happily ever after, the journey there was harrowing, and Grace believed “it would be super fun [to see what happens] after the characters went through all their hardships, and get a look at the soft side of things.”

Grace’s editor Deirdre Jones agrees that readers enjoy a peek into life post-resolution, especially after facing the life-or-death stakes typical of fantasy stories. “In this book, she’s trying to let the characters have some fun, while also doing all the things that her fans love in these Victorian-tinged Gothic mysteries. I do think fans are going to enjoy the silliness of some parts of it, and how all of their characters are together with the person that they’re meant to be with for eternity.”

In Holly, Belladonna stars Signa, Death, Blythe, and Fate are hoping to enjoy the holidays together but must investigate the ghostly residents of Wisteria Manor, the mansion featured in the main books. Novellas often come with exclusive bonus content that helps solidify the world in readers’ minds via artwork, which Grace wanted to feature in her own project. “People can see their favorite characters’ faces. They can see what the manor looks like. And I think that that’s rare to get to do in a book. Novellas leave a little bit more wiggle room for the publisher to be able to do cool things like that.”

An Editor’s Touch

As novellas pick up steam, editors are becoming more keen to add the bite-sized volumes to beloved series and are inviting authors to try their hand at the format. Sara Schonfeld, senior editor at HarperTeen, approached breakout author Ava Reid, creator of the A Study in Drowning duology, about expanding her series by writing a novella to contextualize the original story. An Archive of Romance, due out in December, features letters, diary entries, poetry, and maps that Reid had created for A Study in Drowning to enhance readers’ understanding of the world’s history and characters’ relationships.

“Many of the concepts for the content of Archive came from me as a reader, first and foremost, and a fan of the world of Study,” Schonfeld said. “I desperately wanted to see a map of Argant; I wanted to read Angharad, [the epic poem featured in the books]. Ava crafted a world that lingers with you long after the last page, and Archive is a ticket to revisit that world.”

Reid described An Archive of Romances as “an untraditional novella in that it’s partially an art book.” The novella is divided into three parts, and every page is full-color, with photographs, character illustrations, maps, secondary sources, and other ephemera from both books of the duology, closing with an epilogue to A Theory of Dreaming, and “the true conclusion to Effy and Preston’s story.” Reid said, “I thought that would be a cool way to convey information, because you’re living it and learning it alongside Effy and Preston. It’s quite immersive to have that experience.”

Ultimately, An Archive of Romance “gives readers a way to re-experience the duology, capturing those same feelings of reading Study and Theory for the first time. It’s familiar and new all at once,” Schonfeld said. “The new format especially lets readers step into the world, becoming academics in this dark academia.”


TikTok sensation Lauren Roberts, whose book Powerless was originally self-published, made her traditional debut with Simon & Schuster in 2023, and editor Nicole Ellul had already seen the vision for how novellas could help expand what would become one of the YA blockbusters of the following years. Ellul brought the idea of writing novellas to Roberts after the first book had been acquired, resulting in two novella installments, Powerful and the series sendoff out this fall, Fearful.

“We felt that there was more to explore from the first book that Lauren hadn’t been able to dig into,” Ellul said. “Lauren’s built a vast world and introduced readers to wonderful characters that fans and Lauren herself connected to in a profound way. We realized this fan-favorite character had a powerful story all her own.”

Fearful homes in on Mara, a popular side character with a mysterious backstory throughout the series. Now Mara stars in her own narrative as Death, and readers follow her as she spends time with Kitt Azer in the palace and questions whether her role as harbinger of everyone’s demise can be outweighed by the potential for love.

Closing out the story with a novella allowed Roberts to play with perception, circling back to a character who’d been there all along for a big reveal made in the final novel. “Now that the readers know that this story is about Death, and that Death was seen as a human being,” Roberts said, “readers have been diving back into the rest of the series and being like, ‘Oh my goodness, [it was] here the whole time, and we just didn’t know it.’ ”

With this installment, Roberts may be closing the door on the Powerless series, but she is leaving that door open a crack for future stories. “Even after Fearful, the readers are going to be left with more questions,” she said. “I definitely allude to some things that I haven’t answered quite yet, and that’s because I really am building a universe here.”

What’s Next for Novellas?

Though the novella is not a new format, editors predict that the shorter stories that have been cropping up across teen literature could have a bright future. “Novellas, like deluxe editions, have always existed, but I’ve greatly enjoyed the renewed excitement that we’re seeing these days,” Schonfeld said. “I grew up as a fan of reading and as a fan of fandoms—spin-off stories that follow secondary characters, fanfiction, prequels, and retellings from different perspectives.”

Ellul noted that as the children’s book industry leans more into YA, particularly romantasy, that’s a genre where readers are looking to deepen their investment in a single story or cast of characters. “I feel like it’s [about] wanting to get a little bit more from our characters,” Ellul said. “[That] is where a novella can come into play, to fill in those gaps, or this hunger for a little bit more about a supporting character, or other storylines, or other aspects of the world that just seems so interesting.”

When it comes to deciding which stories would lend themselves to the novella format, Pastor said the decision is made “the way we would make any acquisitions decision. Do we think that that fan base is large enough to support the sale? What are we seeing people talk about? What does this book have to offer?”

The novella still acts as an expansion of a previously established world, rarely as a solo project. Jones noted that “we don’t see a ton of standalones” and that these projects come only after “the series has proven itself.” This looks to be an accurate assessment: Ava Reid’s A Study in Drowning and A Theory of Dreaming were both instant bestsellers; She Gets the Girl was a New York Times and indie bestseller. Roberts’s Powerless series has been translated into 32 languages and has sold more than 5.5 million copies worldwide, and Grace’s Belladonna series has been sold in more than 15 territories.

Ultimately, it seems that the novella comes down to the dedication and commitment of the fans. Where the flock goes, a novella may likely follow. And it seems these authors will always be willing to give them more of what they love.

“This novella came from people wanting more,” Derrick said. “And it came from our desire to give the readers who showed up for our book and saw themselves in it just a little bit more, as like a thank-you. That’s really what it felt like.”