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There’s a new genre in town and it’s Boomer Lit

Okay now, be honest. Do you remember wearing a scrunchie and leg warmers? Did you play Chutes and Ladders? Was Gilligan’s Island and reruns of I Love Lucy playing on your TV when you were a kid? Then you might just be a baby boomer. Good news, so are about 79 million other folks in America. Born between the years of 1946 and 1964, you know who you are. The flood of peeps wearing parrot heads to Jimmy Buffet concerts.

So Boomers, what are you reading? More good news. There’s a new genre of books in town and it’s called Boomer Lit. The boom in books read by us Baby Boomers is reshaping the book market. These books are targeted to the likes, tastes and trends of our generation. We Baby Boomers inaugurated the Young Adult (YA) market during the 1970s. But alas, we have grown up.

Our tastes’ have changed. Can anyone say they haven’t read 50 Shades of Gray? If our generation cottons onto a trend, the purchasing power of our immense numbers moves mountains. Why do you think Oprah’s Bookclub turns obscure novels into Best Sellers? We know what we like.

So what make a Boomer Lit novel successful? There’s something within its pages that resonates. Something that we remember from our youth. Those feel good memories that take us back down the lane. Just look at what we’ve done to Facebook? But Boomer Lit doesn’t always focus on our past, sometimes it targets an emotion or issue that we’re coping with today. During the 90s, as we approached the dreaded forties, many of us were still dating – hence the popularity of Sex and the City.

In other works, Boomer Lit challenges the norm. 50 Shades wasn’t about anything new. S and M has been around for years. But it had never quite made it out of the French Quarter or the bowels of society. It certainly had never been in the hands of middle class Baby Boomers at the salon. Although not well written, it didn’t matter. The sheer salaciousness of the material made it just naughty enough to shock. Thus, the power of the Baby Boomer grapevine kept us giggling and talking about it for months. It was number one on USA Today‘s best-selling books list for twenty weeks in a row. Our sheer numbers shot that book to the fastest selling paperback of all time!

Boomers are always looking for answers and solutions. Validation that the choices we make in our dilemmas are valid. It helps to see someone else messing it up. We laugh about it. We joke about it. We read about it. Boomers spend more time on Facebook than the college kids who started it.

So where can you find Boomer Lit? The hot genre has its own Facebook and Goodreads page. Blogs promoting Boomer Lit books abound. The two prime promoters of Boomer Lit, Claude Nougat and Shelley Lieber, are convinced Boomer Lit will continue to shake up the market. So settle back Boomers. There’s plenty of Boomer Books to go around. A margarita in Margaritaville anyone?

Jeanette’s award winning Boomer Lit novels FLYING SOLO and SOLO VIETNAM can be found at AgeView Press, Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Jeanette Vaughan

Jeanette Vaughan is an award winning writer and story teller. Not only is she published in the periodicals and professional journals of nursing, but also in the genre of fiction. Out on her sheep farm, she has written several novels and scripts. Her screenplay “Angel of Mercy” won the outstanding nursing research award from Texas Tech University Health Science Center. In addition, she was named Distinguished Alumni for the school of nursing in 2001 for her written work and volunteerism for the Sydney Olympic Games. Her debut novel FLYING SOLO won fourth place

in the 2013 Reader’s Favorite International Book Awards for southern fiction. FLYING SOLO also was a Historical Fiction finalist in the Beverly Hills Book Awards. Her second novel, SOLO VIETNAM was just awarded the silver medal for historical fiction by the Military Writer’s Society. Jeanette has practiced nursing in the fields of critical care and trauma. She is the mother of four children, including two Navy pilots. She lives in a Victorian farmhouse out in the pastures of northeast Texas with her sheep, chickens, donkeys and sheep dogs.