–Picture books are in freefall” was one headline. –The market is dire and has taken a battering,” says Children's Publisher Fiona Kennedy at Orion. –The colour publishing market has changed, both here and abroad,” says Random House Children's MD Philippa Dickinson. "The market for 32-page hardback picture books is not what it was.”
She was explaining the decision to make redundant Caroline Roberts, the Publisher of Hutchinson's children's list. Roberts came to talk at a CWIG meeting at the Society of Authors, after receiving her congţ and members were most appreciative of her pluck in honouring the speaking commitment.
She emphasised that trends in children's books go in cycles and that at one time it was fiction that sold badly. Fiona Kennedy agrees. –We haven't abandoned picture books, they'll come back because everything is cyclical.” This is a popular image. –This wheel will turn,” says Dickinson.
The real problem, apart from the collapse of co-edition sales, comes from chains like Waterstones making central buying decisions so that they take only 350 picture book titles at a time. If yours is not on that list, it won't sell well ® a situation which can only get worse if Waterstones (HMV) buys Ottakar's (see news).
Random House is abandoning some planned titles and putting some others straight into paperback. Caroline Roberts said that their overall output for picture books were being reduced from forty to about a dozen.
Meanwhile, RH is paying large money to a schoolgirl, Catherine Banner, for a fantasy trilogy she started when she was fourteen. Fiction alive and well, then but a bleak future for illustrators ® and writers of picture book texts. Unless you believe in wheels of course.
~ Mary Hoffman
[Sources: The Bookseller and Publishing News]