Earlier this month I shook off my summer inertia, hopped a Metro-North train, and hied myself to NYC to attend a jam-packed, standing-room only panel discussion on “What’s Hot and What’s Not: Trends in Children’s Book Publishing,” sponsored by the Children’s Book Committee of the Authors Guild.

The panel was made up of : Kim Brown, Barnes and Noble VP for Merchandise in the Children’s Department; Lisa Desimini, picture-book author/illustrator; David Levithan, editorial director/VP at Scholastic; and Marcia Wernick, children’s book literary agent with many years’ experience and numerous big-name authors on her client list.

The event got off to a rocky start when Ms. Brown of Barnes and Noble announced that “What’s Hot” in her world is “anything pink, purple, gold, or sparkly.”  Or maybe she said “anything pink, purple, gold and sparkly.” She may have intended this remark to be funny, but it was greeted with thunderous silence.  Perhaps realizing that few in the audience had ever written, or aspired to write, anything PPG&S, she moved on hurriedly to add that B&N was noticing customer price resistance for young/toddler picture books priced at $18.99, and that teenagers were exercising a lot of buying power, especially for vampire books.  Good news for YA authors, although I wondered how much longer teen buying power, also known as large allowances, will last as the recession drags on and parents become more budget-conscious.  Also, according to Ms. Brown, the thirst for vampire blood may have peaked, so that half-finished manuscript on your desk should probably stay that way, unless you can figure out a way to de-fang your characters while keeping them as seductively dangerous as they were when undead. All the panelists agreed, in fact, that chasing a hot trend is generally a waste of time, because it will be dust and ashes before you get there.

On the other hand, if you stay alert, ask questions and pay attention to the answers, you may stumble into a toasty-warm little niche market, as Ms. Desimini did with her book Dot the Fire Dog. Written in response to a request from a parent (or librarian, I forget which), its unexpectedly good sales have perked along for eight years.  Apparently lots of children yearn to know all about fire dogs. Who knew?   Other genres that she has found to perform well have been books of poetry and poetry anthologies.

Mr. Levithan was the first to mention the elephant in the room: the Internet, which is here to stay, and which is most certainly Hot.  The trouble is, no one yet knows what form its hotness will take, as it pertains to books and print media in general.  I was especially interested to hear what Mr. Levithan had to say because he’s an author as well as an editor, and therefore surely would understand this new, strange anxiety that has been added to the traditional writerly ones, as if we didn’t have enough of them already.  But his remarks were scarcely calculated to quieten anyone’s fears.  The Internet is bringing about a “sea change” in publishing, said he, just as it has done in the music industry – but we should consider that this will make for an exciting time, not a scary one.  We must start to think of ourselves as “tellers of stories, not just book writers,” ready to leap nimbly onto whatever platform emerges as the medium of choice.  Oh, and by the way, it will probably take about ten years for all these changes to be ironed out.  In the meantime, “we’ll all just have to muddle through together.”

Ten years! Ten years is a long time to sit quietly, watching royalty statements dwindle, while the electronics industry decides what, how, when and why children will read. And how, or indeed whether, writers should be paid for their efforts.  It was disheartening to realize that the publishing industry is not pursuing an active partnership with Internet movers and shakers in shaping the future of children’s books.  Neither the bookseller, the editor, nor the agent on the panel offered much in the way of concrete information or knowledgeable predictions.  Mr. Levithan declared that picture books will be less affected than books for older readers – definitely! for sure!  Then a minute later, after an audience member mentioned that four-color technology for e-readers has recently been introduced , he admitted that yeah, well, he might be wrong about that.  Marcia Wernick said, “Publishers are afraid, cautious,” and are responding by shrinking lists and staffs.  Ms. Brown of Barnes and Noble asserted that author self-promotion can help boost sales: online publicity through websites, Facebook, and blogs.  But she offered no hard numbers, nor any examples of how authors can make these things work for them.

From time to time, as though uneasily aware of the fog of indefinite asseverations they had created, the panelists would burst out with one or another of the old, familiar pieces of Advice to Authors: Write what you know.  Write about what you love.  Take a class!  Stretch yourself!  Write the best darn book you can.  It was strange how that evening, when the uncertain future was so urgently present in our minds, those well-worn mantras sounded hollow, almost irrelevant, the residue of more idealistic times.

But I guess hanging on to ideals is the best we can do, for now.  That, or coming up with something irresistibly pink, purple, gold and sparkly.

Tags: advice Authors Guild Barnes and Noble e-book future of childrens books Internet print media trends vampires

Posted by kate on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 11:57 am under Miscellaneous and tagged: advice, Authors Guild, Barnes and Noble, e-book, future of childrens books, Internet, print media, trends, vampires. Comment RSS 2.0 feed. Comment, or trackback.