Authors Ransom Riggs (Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children), Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor and Park) and more wrapped up San Diego Comic-Con today with a panel on hot YA trends.

There has been a lot of news on the book-to-film adaptation front, but it was nice to sit down with these bestselling authors and talk about books themselves.

In addition to Riggs and Rowell, the ‘What’s Hot in Young Adult Fiction’ panel featured Rachel Cohn (Beta), Mark Frost (The Paladin Prophecy), Rachel Hawkins (Hex Hall), Rachel Hawkins (Hex Hal series), Tahereh Mafi (Unravel Me), Chelsea Pitcher (The S Word), and Veronica Rossi (Through the Ever Night).

The panel centred on a general discussion of the different authors’ experiences of the Young Adult world, and was lead by moderator Nathan Bransford (Jacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp).

Rachel Hawkins cited Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty as the first YA book she read. In a surprisingly hilarious anecdote, she recounted how both she and her husbands quit their teaching jobs, and how her first novel became a “life raft” in an otherwise dark time.

The inevitable discussion of dystopian and science-fiction YA trends was quick to be introduced. Tehereh Mafi noted that, “It’s foolish to anticipate the trend, and write to it,” and that people should write what they love and what moves them.

Most of the panelists agreed that they had not made a conscious decision to write for teenagers, but that they had instead been told by a publisher that their work fit into a YA market.

Mafi was the only exception, who said that she set out to write a YA novel because it allowed her to rediscover the passion for literature that she had as a teenager. Her favourite books? Judy Blume and Harry Potter.

In a discussion on YA book covers, Ransom Riggs noted that the covers for his Miss Peregrine books are all photographs that he already owns, which means his publisher simply asks him for the photo options and the cover is chosen from there.

Yes – that means the sequel, Hollow City (set for January 14, 2014 release), will feature the same photographic style.

Rainbow Rowell added that the book cover process differed greatly between authors and publishers, and that on her first book she had no say, “Or, I had a say, but no one cared.”

Each of the authors took time at the beginning of the panel to introduce their works, and we are certainly adding a lot of these YA books to our (always long) ‘to read’ list.

If you’re interested, you can find them online (we have linked to the first book in the series, for convinience):

Beta by Rachel Cohn
The Paladin Prophecy by Mark Frost
Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins
Shatter Me by Tehereh Mafi
The S Word by Chelsea Pitcher
Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow by Nathan Bransford

For more great quotes from these authors, head over to our @BookHype twitter, where we live-tweeted the event.