Children’s Book Writing Trends
Here’s what the picture book, chapter book, and early reader publishing trends look like for Fall 2021.
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Children’s Book Writing Trends Video Transcript
Hello, my name is Mary Kole. This is Good Story Company, our YouTube channel. I like to check in with trends every once in a while, especially for these fun YouTube videos where I can sort of rattle off what's going on. This is children's book writing trends and this is being recorded in kinda early fall 2021. So, it's a little bit more of a timely video but the big picture, the best practices of children's book writing haven't really changed in the 10 years since I've been in the industry. So, take it with a grain of salt if you find this video sometime later. A lot of it will still be relevant. So, I'm gonna zip through the children's book market.
Now if that sentence confuses you and you have a lot to learn about how children's book publishing operates, welcome. You are in the right place. There are several categories. I don't call them genres. They're categories or audiences within the children's book market as far as publishing goes. The reason that children's books are so segmented is that children go through various developmental stages very, very quickly and there are kind of a lot of them as they work their way up to independent reading and sort of devouring an entire novel which tends to happen a little bit later in their teens. Before we even get there, there are several buckets that we can put our work into. So, I'm happy to break those down. We have board books which are kind of zero to two, the things that you chew on, board format. They can sort of...picture books can go into board or you can do standalone board. We'll talk about that in just a second. Picture books, anywhere from three to five to five to seven are the two main categories of picture books. You've seen them, these beautifully illustrated 32-page, maybe up to 64-page for kind of nonfiction books for our elementary school readers. Big, big market there.
Then a tiny, tiny category called early readers. A lot of licenses here. So, we have "Dora the Explorer" number 79. Not a lot of original content so I'm not gonna spend a lot of time there. Safe to say they are for sort of building that bridge to independent reading for maybe five- to eight-year-olds depending on an individual child's reading acumen. Then we get into chapter books. These are truly a bridge to independent reading of entire novels. They have short chapters. They're maybe for ages seven to nine. Again, depending...you know, your mileage will vary depending on the reader.
So, these are really short chapters. Think your "Judy Moody", "Ramona." All of these books in those categories, they do tend to run in series. Then we get middle grade and there's a segmentation there for kind of younger and a little bit older. I would say 9 to 11 is your age group on the younger and then 11 to 13 on the older, maybe even into 14. And then 13-plus is young adults. And that can be 13-plus on the younger side, 15-plus, 16-plus for some of those older, very, very independent, kinda longer, more mature young adult. Again, within each category there is a lot of variation from publisher to publisher, from kind of story idea to story idea where it goes specifically. So, there are subcategories within the categories. That was your breathless little introduction to children's books.
So, some people...when I was an agent, I would get queries. You know, "I've written a children's book." That is incorrect to say because there are so many different categories within children's books. So, when we talk about children's books, we're actually talking about a lot of different things. But maybe that's not why you're here. Maybe you know those categories already and you are just looking to hear some trends which I am happy to do.
So, board books, it's still really tough to go original into board. A lot of picture books are sold into board and also published into board as a companion. Boards tend to be a shorter number of pages and so there are some changes that happen to some of our favorite books when they go into board. Being acquired debut as a board book is very, very rare. It really depends on the publisher. It depends on a lot of different factors, stars aligning. The tough thing is board books exist to teach primarily very rudimentary concepts like colors, numbers, the ABCs, you know, farm animals, all of that stuff. And a lot of them have kind of fun things going for them like interactive elements, lift the flap. Those are expensive. Board books are expensive. And so, publishers are very reluctant to sort of, you know...why are you writing the ABCs whereas we could develop a board book of the ABCs in-house and not have to pay an outside creator? So, these are some of the barriers to entry in board.
If you dream of being the next Sandra Boynton and building a board book empire, honestly, my route to success there would be to sell into picture book, have that picture book go into board, get an editor for the board side of things, develop that relationship and then launch there. It is very, very difficult to sort of do a straight shot to debuting in board.
Picture book is a huge market. Lot of opportunities there for standalone books. Series are a little bit more tricky to launch. And I see a lot of picture book writers concepting a series for their picture book debut with a character like the "Fancy Nancy," the "Skippyjon Jones" but what they're not thinking about is launching with a really strong debut book...their first books are usually just like, "This is my character. This is why they're special. Buy my series." A book needs to stand alone for picture book. It is so competitive right now. The art bar has really, really risen. And so, you want to be operating at the absolute top of your game to debut in picture book. And what that means is telling a great story, a whole story, a satisfying story rather than just introducing your character that you intend for a series. That's a little bit cynical and readers aren't gonna flock to it unless that character also goes on an amazing adventure or does something really heartfelt.
There are a lot of trends right now, speaking of heartfelt, in terms of respecting the reader. A lot of social justice elements are going into picture book right now because we want to shape a better world than the one that we currently have and we do that by inspiring our young readers. So, we have a lot of kinda self-acceptance, others' acceptance, mental wellbeing, mindfulness. A lot of these kind of elements that may have been seen as kind of hippy or touchy-feely in kinda previous generations, they are really coming to the forefront now and I think that's an amazing thing.
That being said, any time there's a trend, there is also a saturation. And so that market is a little bit saturated. Do we need another "I am special" picture book? Do we need another "everyone is special" picture book? Do we need another "all the people around you" are special picture book? There has to be an angle or a slant there that you really want to take advantage of.
And so, it's teaching without outright teaching. That's also really, really important to remember. But just having the characters say, "I'm amazing. You're amazing too. Here's why everybody should think everybody is amazing," it's not really going to...we're sort of, like, in version 2.0 or even 3.0 of some of these concepts.
So, the picture books that are being acquired now, especially from diverse creators are very much welcomed but that being said, they also need to do something else. They need to tell a great story, they need to show us a slice of life that we haven't seen before, they need to feature a very interesting character. It can't just be, "Hi. Introduction to character and feel-good message." That is not cutting it anymore for picture books.
Early readers are also very difficult to debut and because a lot of them are licensed properties. And so, it costs nothing for a house to buy a...well, I mean, it costs money for them to buy the license but then to have somebody write that project in-house and we neatly have, you know, a dozen Dora the Explorer books all of a sudden. Early readers are also very, very specific in terms of vocabulary level, syntax style, Lexile score. All of these things come into play because early readers really are for those developing readers.
I would not recommend trying to debut there. And how a lot of writers end up there is we go into this, like, "Oh, this is too long for a picture book but I've heard that early readers can be up to 1,200 words so what if it's an early reader?" That almost never works because, again, you're not keeping in mind those considerations of vocabulary, sentence style, sentence structure, syntax, all of that that are requirements for early readers. Plus, early readers are this skinny. It's very, very difficult to sort of stand out with a spine that's skinny in a book store. With all of the licenses floating around, it's very difficult to sort of launch an independent character. So, a lot of the early reader...sort of stepped readers, you'll hear them called, those parts in a publishing house are basically not very welcoming to outside writers or debut creators or independent creators.
So, let's move on to chapter book. And then I think I'll save middle grade and young adult for a different video because this video's getting pretty long because I talk a lot. So, chapter books are a great opportunity to...if you've been trying to write middle grade but people keep saying like, "Oh, this seems really young." That's a cue that maybe chapter books are for you. That being said, it is still very, very difficult to debut in chapter book because they tend to be series-driven and every publisher already has one, two, three cornerstone chapter book series in place. And the thing with the series is your next publishing season, the next book in that series is coming out.
So maybe they have one slot for a chapter book in a specific season. Let's say fall 2021. And it's already filled with Judy Moody. So, if they have any slots to launch a chapter book, it's gonna be very competitive because there are a lot of writers, especially a lot of educators and parents of young children are very, very drawn to this space because it's such a fun and engaging space. They maybe have their own kids there. A lot of competition. If you want to excel in this space, you need a series concept. Fantasy works really well. Some kind of magic, magical realism, talking to creatures, that sort of thing can be a really fun thing to exploit a world like that for chapter book but the things that really spring from the page in chapter book are very quirky characters. So, they don't just have one thing that makes them unique. They are fully realized fleshed out characters. They have a specific way of talking, they're interested in a bunch of things, they have sibling relationships and interesting family dynamics usually because the chapter book world...if you look in a world for a nine-year-old kid, a seven- to nine-year-old kid, you think that their world is still pretty small. They may go on adventures and there are chapter book series like Geronimo Stilton where Geronimo Stilton travels all over the place, solves mysteries, blah, blah, blah. That's fine and good but for most of them, they are very family-based, sibling interactions, friend interactions, school interactions and that's kinda the world that a lot of chapter books live in because that's the world that a lot of kids in those age groups live in.
So, if you can find interesting twists on young friendship, best friendship, sibling relationships, family relationships, if you can bring in any diverse elements there, that would be a really great ingredient for a chapter book. But just like picture book, it can't just be an introduction to my series leading character for the first book. They have to go on a fully fleshed out, fully resolved adventure for their first book and then maybe an outline for some series follow-up titles.
So, it can be done and it's a really, really fun and engaging and just, like, delightful part of the marketplace to participate in but the opportunity is just less. The window is narrower to climb in as a debut. So just something to keep in mind. This has been a little runup of children's book trends and now we know not to just call them children's books. My name is Mary Kole with "Good Story Company." Here's to a good children's story.
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