‘We are an industry steeped in failure.’

This isn’t an encouraging thing for a publishing hopeful to hear about their dream job. It sounded especially counterintuitive when Dominique Raccah, CEO of Sourcebooks said this during a discussion titled ‘Why this is the best time for children’s books’ at the Bookseller Children’s Conference on October 2. However, while the children’s market has had an exceptionally strong year so far, Raccah’s daunting statement prompts some interesting discussions about publishing.

While the children’s publishing sector is having a successful year, it is indeed difficult on an individual level to succeed in making sales and profit. Publishers are facing tough conditions, with increasing material and production costs and inflation – children’s books are particularly expensive to produce. In the current economic conditions, families also have a limited capacity to spend money on books. (IBISWorld 2023)

The publishing industry relies on blockbusters for much of its success: certain titles and authors perform exceedingly well but a much larger proportion falls through the cracks. In the US, only 1.2% of titles published in 2022 sold over 10 000 copies.

In September 2022, social media debates were set off by the claim that 50% of titles published sold fewer than 12 books, prompted by the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Penguin Random House’s attempt to acquire Simon & Schuster in the US. The actual figure is around 15% – still a worryingly large proportion achieving such low sales. However, this is a vague statistic which only accounts for sales tracked by Bookscan and include books published in a wide variety of ways.

It’s alarming that so few titles achieve significant sales, but this is how the publishing industry currently functions – blockbusters and backlists bolster the other releases. Perhaps this model should be challenged. When so few titles achieve success, authors suffer. Sourcebooks has managed to achieve double the average proportion of titles with over 10 000 sales, but Raccah aims to go further.

Raccah’s responses to The Bookseller’s Philip Jones’ questions were sometimes difficult to follow, but I was struck by one particular idea: the industry is ‘publishing too much for parents and not enough for children’. In her keynote on the power of fandom, Raccah highlighted today’s parent: the Millennial, but in the Q&A, she warned against prioritising parents over children. As children’s reading enjoyment falls, it’s essential that we tap into what young readers really want, which in turn leads to sales.

The changing nature of publishing and the relationship between fandoms and authors opens up new ways to publish a wider range of books and reach audiences who get excited about them. I wouldn’t have guessed that Quantum Physics for Babies would be a huge success, but Chris Ferrie’s Baby University series, published by Sourcebooks, satisfied parents’ and children’s demands.  

Also, I myself struggle with it, but failure isn’t necessarily always something to be feared. Raccah herself said in an interview with The Bookseller, ‘I would probably tell my younger self to reframe “failure” – what are those posters in elementary school classrooms? F.A.I.L. = “First Attempt In Learning”?’

Ultimately, breaking out of the extremely low success rate in publishing comes down to engaging closely with the audience and responding to what they really want and need. Well, at least I think that’s what Raccah meant.   

References:

IBISWorld (2023) Children’s Book Publishing in the UK. Available at: https://www.ibisworld.com/united-kingdom/market-research-reports/childrens-book-publishing-industry/ (Accessed: 13 October 2023)

Jones, P. and Raccah, D. (2023) The new age of discovery: How authors and fan communities are driving book culture, and what that means for booksellers and publishers. The Bookseller Children’s Conference. Available at: https://www.thebookseller.com/broadcast/event-streams/watch-the-childrens-conference-live-stream-here-2023 (Accessed: 02 October 2023).

Michel, L. (2022) ‘No, Most Books Don’t Sell Only a Dozen Copies,’ Counter Craft, 4 September. https://countercraft.substack.com/p/no-most-books-dont-sell-only-a-dozen (Accessed: 15 October, 2023)

Raccah, D. (2023) Why this is the best time for children’s books. [Lecture] The Bookseller Children’s Conference. Available at: https://www.thebookseller.com/broadcast/event-streams/watch-the-childrens-conference-live-stream-here-2023 (Accessed: 02 October 2023).

Image credits:

Dziedzic, Michael. text. 29 Mar. 2021. Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/photos/fTdnRCpRTdE. Accessed 15 Oct. 2023.