Publishing Trends

Anyone who saw (or was) an adult reading Harry Potter on the subway knows that the line between books for grownups and books for children has become increasingly blurred. And despite time devoted to the discussion (see the recent New York Times Book Review essay “I’m Y.A. and I’m O.K”) and celebrity authors writing the text for picture books, the move by credentialed adult authors into the tween and teen market is a newer trend. Why are they wooing this underage set?

For one thing, kids tend to get more excited about books than adults do, and their enthusiasm “far surpasses anything most adults can muster,” says Alison Morris, Children’s Book Buyer for Wellesley Booksmith and former author of the Publishers Weekly blog “Shelftalker.” “The desire to get a piece of that excitement is pretty irresistible.”

Authors can also write for kids in ways they wouldn’t for adults. “It’s a very appealing market,” says Nancy Stauffer, the Connecticut-based agent who represents Sherman Alexie. “YA novels tend to be more plot-driven and narrative-driven, but they have sophisticated themes and writing.” Jessica Stockton, Events Coordinator at McNally Jackson Books, adds that the genre is “fertile ground for fantasy, adventure, dramatic emotions, and satisfying everything-wrapped-up happy endings.”

Some authors still feel like teens themselves. “My agent suggested it, because she realizes that in my head I’m seventeen years old,” says Michele Jaffe, who’s written historical novels and thrillers for adults as well as the Bad Kitty YA series. “The voice in my YA books is closer to the voice I write in and speak in normally. When I write my adult fiction, I feel as though I have to put on a fake mustache and knit my brows and be very serious.”

Finally, some ideas are deemed universally appealing, so why not extend the franchise if you can? “I talked to John Grogan about doing children’s books just when Marley & Me was taking off,” says Maria Modugno, VP and Editorial Director at Harper Children’s. “John told me that entire families would show up for his readings. Every family has a dog story; we thought we should be doing books for everybody who came to those signings. And because John was a newspaper columnist, I knew I could say to him, ‘You have a finite number of pages. What you have to say has to be said very economically,’ and I knew I would get a picture book text that was a picture book text and not a novella.” Now, along with a picture book, there’s another Marley adaptation for middle-grade readers.

Nobody recommends crossing over to juvenile simply for the money. “I certainly make more money writing for adults,” says Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of several adult and YA novels. Amy Berkower, President of Writers House, says that although advances for children’s books have increased over the past ten years, with more “auctions and six-figure-and-up deals,” advances paid on children’s books are still lower. However, she says, “There is a buoyancy in the kids’ market that we don’t feel in the adult market”—another reason more authors may want to jump on board. Children’s books also have the potential to backlist for longer, so authors may continue to receive royalty payments over the years.

Raw enthusiasm, fake mustaches, and general buoyancy aside, the mere desire to write for a younger crowd does not guarantee success. “A lot of writers want to write books for kids, but few understand the market or have the talent,” says Peter McGuigan of Foundry Literary & Media, who recently sold comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s new kids’ book, Silly Street, to Modugno at Harper. Booksmith’s Morris says she’s “tired of seeing poorly written or non-kid-friendly books appear in the children’s section simply because they sport names by big authors.”

“Writing for children is a very different thing from writing for adults,” says Dara LaPorte, Children’s Manager at the Washington, D.C. Politics & Prose Bookstore. “Adult writers who have children of their own [often] feel that they are now ready to write a children’s book. That’s rarely successful. An example is Adam Gopnik’s book of stories he told to his son [The King in the Window]. I’m sure they were wonderful bedtime stories, but it’s less interesting than other children’s books. We had [him] in here, and mostly it was adult fans who came in for that.”

McGuigan says that crossing from adult to YA is a “much easier transition” than crossing from adult to children’s, and those we spoke with agreed. “When adult authors try to write picture books for children, I think that’s less successful,” says Elizabeth Law, VP and Publisher of Egmont USA. “Picture books are deceptively simple to write. It’s a different craft.” LaPorte says that celebrities are especially prone to write picture books. “Some have beautiful illustrations, but the text is just terrible. They are shallow, they have nothing to say, or they are very, very message-driven. Very few of those are successful.” McGuigan says publishers have become “leery” about signing such books up. “With Jeff’s book, we obviously marketed it as ‘Jeff Foxworthy’s children’s book,’” he says, “but what we looked for in a publisher was someone who understood Jeff ’s message.”

Part of the problem is that big names don’t automatically translate into success, and it can be difficult to figure out the winning formula. “We haven’t done as well with James Patterson’s Maximum Ride series,” says Stockton. “It smacks a bit of trying to exploit a new market with his formula for adult novels.”

“The ploy of putting a big name on a book is a tactic used to sell to parents, not children,” says Morris. (Once kids have their own money and make their own purchasing decisions at the bookstore, this ploy may become less successful.) “There have now been enough of these books coming through the pipeline that our customers regard them with some degree of skepticism. They will ask booksellers if, in fact, the book is actually any good, suggesting that they’ve tried other children’s or teen books written by adult authors and have been unimpressed. Or maybe they’re aware that what works for them won’t work for their children, or that reading a children’s book by their favorite adult author probably isn’t going to feel the same as reading that person’s book for adults. Whatever the case, we aren’t seeing books by big-name or celebrity authors blowing out the door simply because of the name on the cover.”

Send in the Swag!

Authors who cross over often need to be introduced to new buyers, librarians, and ways of marketing. “When I first started agenting children’s books over twenty-five years ago, 80% of all children’s books were sold through schools and libraries and 20% were sold through the trade,” says Berkower. “Now those numbers have reversed,” but the library market remains important, and adult authors making the switch to kids’ are often unfamiliar with key players. “Booksellers and librarians who work in the children’s field certainly read adult books, but they may not have met these authors,” says Joanna Cotler, recently named Editor-at-Large at HarperCollins. She arranged a dinner for children’s buyers with Clive Barker when he released The Thief of Always.

It’s also key to “make sure you are reaching the author’s adult fans in addition to reaching new teen readers,” says Andrew Smith, VP Marketing & Associate Publisher at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. Little, Brown gave Sherman Alexie chapter samplers of his first YA novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian , to distribute on his adult tour; the company also advertised the book in adult venues like the New Yorker. “As well as visiting high schools throughout his national tour, we scheduled evening bookstore events for Sherman in all of his tour markets,” says Smith, “where he was able to discuss Diary with his adult fan base.”

A particular challenge for authors accustomed to writing for adults is finding a realistic voice when they write for teens. Though “YA readers are really very open to librarians and teachers introducing a book to them,” says Sandra Payne, Coordinator of Young Adult Services at the New York Public Library, “they do sniff out voices that are not authentic or real.” Mitchard finds that “some books are more about adults’ fears for teenagers than they are about teenagers’ actual lives. I don’t want to write about ‘An Issue’ because teenagers are too smart and they resent that.”

“There’s a tendency to try to make a book sound more hip or current by throwing in contemporary references to TV shows and to Facebook,” says Law. “I see that a lot in manuscripts I’ve been turning down. Those kinds of references date a book so quickly.”

“My readers are very astute at detecting the inauthentic, so it’s difficult to market to them,” says Jaffe, but acknowledges that this group’s Web savvy also allows for creative marketing opportunities: “I do a Podcast and I’ve been making my own book trailers, [though] you have to be smart about it because teenagers don’t want to feel like they’re being specifically marketed toward.” Jaffe and Mitchard both operate separate Web sites for their teen fans. [Jaffe: Adult YA Mitchard: Adult YA] “I believe I owe my teen readers the honor, if you will, of giving them a separate space,” says Mitchard. She’s also found that some Web-based efforts that work for adults don’t work for teens. “The writing process, [especially] about one’s family life as a writer, is fascinating to adults. Young adults could not care less about that, so the daily journal-type blogs are successful with adults but not so much with young adults. Stuff is better with young adults—T-shirts and things. Scarcely a book is published now without a sweepstakes or contest or some kind of swag attached to it.”

“I can almost always tell when the cover of a book, the catalog copy, and sometimes even the content of the book itself were produced by adult publishers who typically don’t edit or market or publish books for kids or teens,” says Morris. “They invariably misgauge their audience on some level or use stock themes or excessive enthusiasm. If you’re an adult author wanting to write for kids, for goodness sake, try to sell your book to a children’s publisher or at least the children’s division of your usual house.”

But agents and publishers hold out for the chance of finding another Stephenie Meyer. “Adults are reading Twilight [Meyer’s YA series] and young adults are reading The Host,” says Berkower. “That kind of crossover is hard to achieve, but when it happens, it’s like winning the Triple Crown.”

Ultimately, the journey to children’s is challenging but worthwhile. “To me, kids’ books are like a weird secret society,” says McGuigan. “[But] at the end of the day, it’s better for an agent to learn more about the business, even if it means meeting a new set of editors or handling a project or genre they’re less familiar with.”

“I like teenagers because of their enormous passion and their peeled-back emotional quality,” says Mitchard, “and I think you only feel that way during that window in your life. But it’s also the period at which people start to form the habit of being a reader for life. I don’t just want to set the hook for myself. But I do want to set the hook.”