children's & YA recommendations on the go
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via Come and work for Nosy Crow – we’re hiring a Sales and Publicity Assistant :: Blog :: Nosy Crow.
Strange that this piece should not suggest a possible relationship between the two things…
Might it be the decline in school library provision that is helping the upsurge in children’s books sales by encouraging wealthier parents to buy more independently owned books for their children, leaving children from homes in which money is tight more and more disadvantaged…
Thoughts?
Sales of children’s books are at an all-time high, yet it is harder for publishers to reach young readers, says the owner of a literary agency that represents more than 200 children’s illustrators and writers.
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Vicki Willden-Lebrecht, founder of London-based The Bright Group, said funding cuts at schools and libraries has meant there are fewer books than ever on display, making it harder to reach families that do not normally buy books.
“The saddest thing is often there isn’t a showroom for books, because of a shortage of space and a lack of funding," she said. "Schools and libraries need higher budgets to acquire more books. Children aren’t exposed to enough books. Lack of discovery is probably the biggest challenge in children’s publishing.”
Sales of children’s books in the UK – including e-books and other digital formats – increased to £349m in 2014, a rise of 11pc on the previous year, according to recent figures from the Publishers Association. That contrasted with a 2pc decline in overall book sales.
via Boom time for children’s books as sales soar, but where are readers? – Telegraph.
As reported in The Bookseller:
Egmont Book Publishing has reported soaring sales and profits at Egmont UK, thanks partly to the success of Minecraft.
The company’s financial report for the year ending 31st December 2014 put Egmont UK sales at £60.1m, a 31.2% increase from £45.8m in 2013. Profit before taxation surged to £6.6m, up from £575,000 the year before. The company said the results reflected “strong trading in books”, especially the Minecraft titles, and the magazine based on Disney’s "Frozen", as well as fewer one-time charges.
Editors, agents and booksellers have told The Bookseller they worry that authors are failing to reap the benefits of growth in the children’s book market.
With 2014 being a record year for children’s books—sales of which grew 9.1% year on year to a value of £336.5m, according to Nielsen BookScan—a large number of new imprints and agencies have been created. Some publishers, such as Janetta Otter Barry, formerly of Quarto, are setting up their own companies and many in the industry are launching their own literary agencies.
However, Imogen Cooper, freelance editor at Chicken House and director of the Golden Egg Academy, said although the recent increase in the number of children’s imprints and agents “may seem to some like a great thing”, for authors there may be a downside.
“It’s a tough market, and the danger is that too many books are published, many badly edited and of poor quality,” she said. “As we all know, if an author’s first book fails, it’s very difficult to build a career. Are we in danger of strings of one-book wonders because authors are accepted too early, without the skills they need to have acquired? Manuscripts and authors need time and a great deal of editorial support, together with marketing know-how and industry contacts, to launch a career.”
Cooper pointed out that even if the number of children’s books being printed increases there are only “so many” book suppliers and “getting a book into Waterstones or Amazon is a tough business, even if you have the big guns of the tried and tested publishers”.
full article via Trade wary of children’s market boom | The Bookseller.
Over the weekend YA author Anthony McGowan questioned the effectiveness of bloggers in terms of sales, and wondered why publishing publicists held them (in his experience) in such high esteem.
In the context of McGowan’s original tweet – which brewed up a flurry of vitriol (to call it trolling is too strong, but there was a fair bit of naive and perhaps wilful misreading of where he was coming from) – Scott Pack has published this informed and balanced blog-post on the “reviewing spectrum”.
I’m glad it’s changed McGowan’s mind “somewhat’ on the contribution of bloggers.
And then Twitter kicked off with lots of people, many of them book bloggers, up in arms that anyone would have the audacity to say such a thing. As is often the case with social media some of the comments were quite personal and insulting. The book world can be a shitty place when people disagree with you.
I have first-hand experience of this but, perhaps fortunately, from before the days of social media. I wrote a column for The Bookseller in which I pointed out that newspaper reviews didn’t really have much impact on book sales any more. I was being deliberately provocative but my piece was based on empirical evidence. At the time I was buying manager of the country’s biggest book retailer and I saw the stats on a daily basis. Of course a rave review in the Times/Observer/Telegraph/wherever would sell some books, just not enough to make much difference. As I recall the book that received the lead review in the Observer the week I wrote the piece sold one copy the week after. Yes, one single copy. In the whole of the country.
http://meandmybigmouth.typepad.com/scottpack/2015/04/the-pointlessness-of-book-reviewing.html
N.B. As of the time of posting, Anthony McGowan’s Twitter account is no longer active.
The Bookseller reports:
Waterstones’ flagship Piccadilly store is expanding its children’s section after a sales increase of 20%.
London regional manager Luke Taylor said the company decided to re-think the space after “the recent explosion in children’s sales”, driven by reference, games and educational related products.
The children’s area will take up two-thirds of the second floor and will include a bigger picture book and board book range, a new YA space with crossover titles like Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, and an area for related products such as party packs and toys.
via Waterstones Piccadilly expands children’s section | The Bookseller.
Livs Mead (Sales & PR at Hot Key) is an infectious enthusiast and a seriously good presenter!
…and speaks out very well indeed:
Curham noted that she “did have some issues with how the project was managed”, and that it would be “really healthy to have a broader debate about transparency in celebrity publishing”. “But please don’t blame Zoe personally for a practice that has been going on for years,” she wrote, pointing out that the huge sales of the novel, which is 2014’s fastest-selling book and which is sitting on top of the UK Official Top 50 for the second straight week, meant that “bookstores such as Waterstones are ending the year on healthy profits”, and that “Penguin, and many other publishers around the world, are now able to afford to offer more unknown writers book deals”.
“Whether you like it or not, this is the financial reality of today’s publishing industry,” wrote Curham, asking readers to focus instead on the issues such as bullying, mental health and homophobia at the heart of Girl Online. “Surely statistics such as these are what we should all be getting outraged about?” she ended.
via Zoella’s ghostwriter Siobhan Curham speaks out over controversy | Books | The Guardian.
Zoella, the YouTube star otherwise known as Zoe Sugg, has scored the highest first-week sales for a debut author since records began.
Her novel Girl Online sold 78,109 copies last week – more than JK Rowling, Dan Brown or EL James achieved with their first books.
The sales record is the highest since Nielsen BookScan began compiling data in 1998, according to The Bookseller.
Wow! Julia Donaldson outsells all other bestselling authors and sets a new 5-year record:
Julia Donaldson has bested fellow bestsellers J K Rowling, Jamie Oliver and Dan Brown to become the only author to record annual sales of over £10m in five consecutive years.
The Gruffalo creator sold almost £239,000 last week through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market, to bring her tally for 2014 to £10.02m on just under 2.09 million units.
Donaldson is now the only author to record five years in a row of eight-digit revenue since BookScan records began.
via Donaldson hits £10m for a record-breaking fifth straight year | The Bookseller.
