Oct-Dec 2014

write it, publish it, sell it

Self-PublishingKit Berry: How to build a community around your books

Publishing Careers SUZANNE COLLIER

Writing Workshop TOM EVANS

Room to Write NICOLA MORGAN #ptmag

How to:• Succeed as a children’s

book illustrator• Market your book

with Pinterest • Manage blog

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www.publishingtalk.eu

“We still need far more diversity in the voices of those published, and in the publishing industry.”

Malorie Blackman

Issue 6

Children’s Publishing• Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman’s path to publication and writing tips• Lucy Coats: The way to write for children• Children’s publishing: industry analysis

Digital

Kate Wilson: Making apps for children

Ask An Agent

Hilary Delamare: What does an agent actually do?

publishing company Print On Demand Global sees new frontiers for the emerging children’s market in China and India - and she has some impressive figures to back that up. “There is huge appetite for English content in both those countries,” she tells me, “and in China there are 390 million under-16s, which is more than the entire population of the USA.” Cultural shifts mean that grandparents are now looking after kids, and learning to speak and read English alongside them. Children’s literature is in high demand, content from the West is perceived as superior, and buyers will pay a premium for that, with ‘book kiosks’ proliferating in schools. India has a population of 1.2 billion, with 74% literacy, and within three weeks of the 2013 New Delhi World Bookfair, 5,000 titles had been added to flipkart.com. Self-publishing is currently perceived as prestigious, and the Indian ebook market is right at the beginning, so readers are hungry for content there too. Together, the Indian and Chinese markets - if tackled right - can provide a potential reader base of 2.4 billion people at the click of a mouse. “Now is the time”, Kait says, though she sees the future of bookselling as more micro than macro. “We need curated lists created by experts. Readers are battered by information overload, so we need those book experts to guide us through it.”

Children’s Publishing: Healthy or Horrifying?

Lucy Coats takes the pulse of the children’s book publishing industry.

@publishingtalk | www.publishingtalk.eu16

Children’s and Young Adult titles form one of the fastest-growing fiction sectors in the book industry, in both traditional and self-publishing; and the UK’s children’s publishing market is up by 10% in 2014 according to Nielsen BookScan.

Yet a July 2014 author earnings report by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) revealed that most writers earn below the national subsistence level.

So what is the real state of the children’s publishing nation worldwide? Is it healthy, or is it horrifying? What do those in the industry really think?

Analysis

@lucycoats

When asked to describe children’s publishing today, Barry Cunningham, MD of the highly successful Chicken House imprint says it’s “a cross between gambling and librarianship.”

Just now, his job is all about making international connections and producing books which will have cross-platform appeal, so that the stories he publishes “can live around the world”. That means thinking about extra content - apps, movies, audio, games and other add-ons - as well as great characters and plot. Asked to name his biggest challenge, without hesitation he told me that it was working with what he calls “the wonderful gatekeepers” to make sure that books and content are suitable at the same time as communicating directly with teen and young adult (YA) readers. He is adamant that, in this time of social media, it is vital for both writers and publishers to have this kind of dialogue with the people the books are meant for. He flags up the US Scholastic ThisisTeen.com site as an example of a functioning forum for authors to recommend books, and teens to react to that, and says that this direct interaction affects sales in a positive way.

Kait Neese, Vice-President at the US