State of the Children's Book Market

Kathy Temean posted on her blog an insightful look at the number and type of children's book contracts that the top 15 children's book publishers signed between June 2013 and June 2014 vs June 2012 and June 2013. The following are a few key takeaways that interested me most.

• Overall, Harper Collins and Scholastic held the number 1 and 2 spot for signing the most contracts (58 & 45)
• Sky Pony Press, a fairly new imprint not only rose to the number 6 overall position, but also signed the most picture book contracts (26) of the other publishers.
• Scholastic signed the most middle grade contracts (26)
• The report doesn't show who holds the top YA spot, which means that spot must be held by a publisher not in the top 15.

The full reports can be found on Kathy's site by visiting these links: Part 1,  Part 2 and Part 3.

What About Early Readers?

Librarian extraordinaire Travis Jonker always has insightful posts at SLJ's 100 Scope Notes. I especially like his post today where he talks about the constant demand he gets from grade school students asking for more early reader books like Tedd Arnold's Fly Guy. Travis talks about how insanely popular Fly Guy is among his young patrons and wonders why there aren't more new books like it.

I often have that same question. The truth is that early readers are a hard sell to most children's book publishers. Not many pursue them. Of the handful of publishers that do, most don't seem to have the desire to expand their line beyond what they call their "current properties". Translation: movie tie-ins or proven best sellers. You can't expect many new early reader lines from publishers with that kind of strategy.

But a few publishers get it. In fact, I recently had a publisher ask me to submit a series proposal on an early reader I submitted to them. It went a couple of rounds through their acquisition committee, with some editors very excited about it, but ultimately they decided to pass on it. However, they invited me to submit some other early reader book manuscripts and proposals. We'll see what happens. But I applaud publishers like that who aggressively seek to publish early readers, not only their current line of books, but new and exciting fresh ones too.

As Travis Jonker states in his post, "The world needs more early readers with very basic vocab and an attention-grabbing main character. I know it ain’t an easy order, but there are some eager young readers out there."

I agree with Travis and I hope there end up being a few more publishers that do too.

Author Platform: Friend or Foe?

Over the past few weeks I’ve read a number of articles that talk about the importance of author platforms for increasing book sales. One of the main concepts of the author platform is to create an instant audience for your books through those who follow you via social media, whether it’s your web site, blog, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever. Consulting editor, Alan Rinzler has a great article on The “New Author” Platform – What You Need to Know . Along those same lines, children’s author and SCBWI regional adviser, Kathleen Temean has some great ideas on her blog post today on how to drive traffic to your web site. Additionally, well-known blogger and literary agent, Rachelle Gardner talks in her blog today about why author platforms are so important to agents and publishers.

These are just a few examples of great articles on the how-to’s and importance of the author platform, and I will definitely continually refer to them as try to build up my own platform. But as I read these and so many other articles like them, it makes me wonder if publishers and agents are slowly putting themselves out of business with the increasing emphasis that they place on authors creating their own audience and promoting themselves. It’s obvious that the days are long gone when an author could sit in seclusion, cranking out new books and then passing them off to their agent or publisher to market and sell. But if more and more of the marketing and promotion responsibility falls to the author, what role does that leave for the publisher and agent?

I have long been an advocate of going the traditional publishing route versus the self-publishing route. One of the main reasons for that has been that I’m not an expert in book distribution, promotion and sales. While I enjoy speaking at conferences and doing school visits, I want to be a full time author, not a full time marketer. But if traditional publishing continues down its current path, that might be exactly what I need to do to be a successful author.

Of course, another important role for the traditional publisher and agent is to be the gatekeeper, to make sure only the highest quality books make it to market. But with the exponential rise of epublishing, are they really needed as gatekeepers anymore? Word of mouth and social interchanges of discerning readers have the ability to determine which books are worth reading or not. In many ways, traditional publishers and agents are being seen by many authors as road blocks to publication rather than vehicles to publication.

It reminds me of an interchange I had with an author friend about a year ago, in which I was suggesting that she steer clear of the self-publishing route and go with a traditional publisher. She basically said, “Been there, done that. It was a financial fiasco.” She then told me that due to the publisher’s standard royalty rate that she didn’t make nearly as much money as she thought she could. Inwardly I thought, well that’s just the way it is; the publisher gets their cut, the distributor gets their cut, and retail gets their cut. That’s life. But then she told me about her author platform of more than 30,000 dedicated followers who would instantly buy her new book whether or not it came from a traditional publisher. She built up her author platform so well that she really didn’t need any more of what the publisher had to offer her.

Along similar lines, an article two days ago in the New York Times talks about how Amazon’s vision of end-to-end publishing services has publishers running scared because it leaves them completely out of the publishing loop. For authors that have built up a popular marketing platform, Amazon offers a compelling and more profitable option than the traditional route.

Although, I’m still an avid proponent of the role that traditional publishers and agents can play in regard to author success, as the ebook industry evolves and as publishers and agents shift more and more of what used to be their responsibility to the author I have to wonder what role they will leave for themselves, if any.

What are your thoughts about the growing emphasis on the author platform and self-promotion?

How do you see that increased emphasis affecting the role of publishers and agents?