Why children's books are underpriced

It's interesting that we expect to pay less for things for children. On Wednesday mornings I go to exercise class with Miles, my ten year old, and we only pay for one. I realised this morning I just expect that. Cinema tickets for children are cheaper, and there's of course student discounts on public transport. And so it is with children's books - we expect to pay less for them than for adult books, even though they cost no less for the publisher to produce. Given the importancy of literacy and a readiness to read to a healthy prosperous society, you might think we'd be willing to pay more, which means there's a lot of unpriced social benefits in children's books.

Short history - only two and a half years

twitter history

Twitter excitement

A catalytic moment that news of Michael Jackson's death circulated first by twitter.

Then people went to the newspapers for more information. (There's only so much you can say in 140 characters.)

Radio didn't disappear when television came along. Reports of the death of paper media have been much exaggerated. But the business models are changing. Newspapers can no longer expect to be subsidized by advertising, or at least classified advertising.

It's an exciting time to be in the media.

interesting:

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=4782

‘Why do children love them [my characters] ? Because I believe in them. Mine aren’t made up. They are real...I don’t sit down to write a story, they come.’

Joshua Gans wrong-headed in the Age

Joshua Gans wrote in the Opinion pages of the Age yesterday: "Here is a curious fact, as an Australian, I cannot buy my own book." In fact, he can buy his own book and he's lucky to be able to buy it in two editions, the Australian edition published by New South or the US edition published by MIT Press. What he's concerned about is that he is unable to buy the Kindle edition for $12.59.

He believes that somehow the removal of the parallel import restrictions, or territorial copyright provisions, would make his book more available to the Austraian reader, and available on Kindle here in Australia What Mr Gans is not appreciating is that this removal would increase the likelihood of his book not being available at all or maybe just in an Australian edition, if he was lucky. The removal of the PIRs would mean there was less incentive for his Australian publisher to sell his rights overseas. It would also mean that his Australian publisher would have greater difficulty publishing his book at all. He could of course go direct to a US publisher but without the incentive of a successful Australian edition his chances would be much reduced of finding a US publisher.

Would his US publisher make the book available here? There's a good chance they would not. And if they did, it wouldn't receive the support an Australian based publisher would give it. There's a good chance as an Australian author Mr Gans would not find his book in his own land.

Amazon has chosen not to make the Kindle available here as yet. That's why he can't buy the Kindle version of his book not because 'publishers [intellectual monopoly holders] have not done the deals to make it possible'.

ban the ebook

The Book Fair in Madrid has banned ebooks - "solo papel". If I'm understanding "Soybits" correctly (with my almost non-existent  Spanish), ebook companies are not allowed to have stands.

Odd. but the Spanish can be such fierce traditionalists.

Aggregators

In the new world of ebooks, the booksellers are called aggregators. Not an elegant and inspiring term. Functional.

The differences

The differences between Australian and US publishing sneak up on me, and startle me. I have a hard time getting my head around the Spring/Fall system of seasonal publishing. US publishers are surprised that we don't publish in season but by month - continuously. The seasonal system does iron out some monthly ups and downs, and makes catalogue production a whole lot easier. 

There's also a love of imprints over here. They proliferate. Some branded with an editor's name. I guess its a response to having a much bigger market. 

And there's the distinction between hardback and paperback imprints. And comes across as quite a gap. Upstairs, downstairs.

And there's no half-way house of the trade paperback.

BEA 2009

We've had a good BEA - maybe that first-time honeymoon experience. But the mood has been glum. Attendances down. Sales in bookshops shrinking. Fear of that "iTunes moment" devastating the printed book industry. Newspapers and magazines - the other print media - closing down.  I can see the "Streamline Moderne" magnificence of  McGraw Hill building as I walk to and from the fair. A testament to the past?

McGraw Hill now makes the bulk of its profits from the rating agency Standard & Poor. Maybe book publishing is about to become a rust belt industry. But I think reports of its death are overstated. Everybody enjoys a moment of mourning (NY Times yesterday article: "Declining sales cast gloom at an expo") but e-books are still a tiny percentage of book sales - $100 million out $25 billion. 

The e-books side of things is exciting and seductive, but I'm thinking it will happen more slowly than the fears of the last few days.

Carnegie and Kate Greenaway award shortlist links

Carnegie

The unifying theme of this year's list is "The complicated business of growing up, particularly as experienced by teenage boys".

And most of the writers are men, maybe unsurprisingly if that's the theme. Is that narrow for such an award?

BOYCE, FRANK COTTRELL COSMIC
Macmillan (Age range: 8+)
ISBN: 9781405054645

BROOKS, KEVIN BLACK RABBIT SUMMER
Puffin (Age range: 14+)
ISBN: 9780141381459

COLFER, EOIN AIRMAN
Puffin (Age range: 9+)
ISBN: 9780141383354

DOWD, SIOBHAN BOG CHILD 
David Fickling Books (Age range: 12+)
ISBN: 9780385614269

GRAY, KEITH OSTRICH BOYS
Definitions (Age range: 12+)
ISBN: 9780099456575

NESS, PATRICK THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO
Walker (Age range: 14+)
ISBN: 9781406310252

THOMPSON, KATE CREATURE OF THE NIGHT
Bodley Head (Age range: 14+)
ISBN: 9780370329291

Greenaway

"The shortlist for the 2009 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal, announced today, demonstrates that picture books are not just for the youngest children but can entertain and enchant all age-groups."

It's interesting to see Bob Graham listed in both the CBCA and the Greenaway.

The CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal Shortlist 2009

BARRETT, ANGELA (text by Paul Gallico) THE SNOW GOOSE
Hutchinson (Age range: 10+)
9780091893828

CRASTE, MARC (text by Helen Ward) VARMINTS
Templar (Age range: 7+)
9781840113235

DOCHERTY, THOMAS LITTLE BOAT
Templar (Age range: 3+)
9781840118261

GRAHAM, BOB HOW TO HEAL A BROKEN WING
Walker (Age range: 3+)
9781406307160

JEFFERS, OLIVER THE WAY BACK HOME
Harper Collins (Age range: 3+)
9780007182282

MCKEAN, DAVE (text by David Almond) THE SAVAGE
Walker (Age range: 10+)
9781406308150

RAYNER, CATHERINE HARRIS FINDS HIS FEET
Little Tiger Press (Age range: 3+)
9781845065898

WORMELL, CHRIS MOLLY AND THE NIGHT MONSTER
Jonathan Cape (Age range: 3+)
9780224070737

a typographic moment at the Wall Street Journal

link

"local books endangered"

Mem Fox has put it neatly in a letter to The Australian that the government earns more from her writing than she does (10% GST v 5% picture book royalty for the author) and with the repeal of PIRs "quintessentially Australian children's books will disappear from our culture and our children will grow up American. End of story."

also worth a look

I'm ploughing my way through the PC submissions. It's educational but masochistic for an Easter Monday - the revised submissions are due in on Friday though. I'd recommend reading Kate Grenville's submission.

Shows you what a dog can do

especially an Australian dog

more independent Australian children's publishers

I forgot Ford Street and I'll go back and correct the post.

Passion

I'm just back from the Productivity Commission roundtable. I was impressed by what a passionate lot we are in the book industry - authors, publishers (small and big) and printers. And how little we are understood outside our industry, and what a bad job we do of communicating what we do, how we do it, and what we are doing for the greater good — until we are pushed.

Australia's contribution to works in the English language

According to Peter Donoughue, Australia contributes 2% of the number of works in the English language; and according to my rough calculations we make up 0.5% of English first language speakers. So we're punching well above our weight. 

"authorship will be everywhere and nowhere"

link

This triggered thoughts about what's going to happen to long-form narrative (aka the book) and to the unique author's voice that comes out of effort and time invested in writing.

A useful list of independent Australian children's pubishers

With the help of the Productivity Commission I've come up with this list of independent Australian publishers as I wanted a picture of this particular slice of our industry.

Black dog (of course) and now in no particular order:

Working Title Press (Jane Covnerton) - gorgeous picture books

Little Hare - broad list but stronger at the picture book end - 50 books a year and six staff.

Wilkins Farago (Andrew Wilkins) - focused on translated picture books as a foundation but Andrew's added a rich diversity on top of that. (1 1/2 staff)

New Frontier - strong focus on picture books and best known for Zen tales series  (two short-listings in the Crichton Award this year)

Brolly Books (Emma Borghesi and Andrew Adam) - strong focus creating books for international markets.

Koala Books  - the core of the list is rights purchasing from overseas.

Era (Rod Martin) - strongly education but also some superb picture books.

Ford Street (Paul Collins) - newer than most with an interesting focus on YA.

And then  a few that are harder to categorize:

Omnibus (Dyan Blacklock) - part of a larger group, but independent in spirit.

Walker Books - a magnificently global independent. 26 staff, and $11 million in turnover, and published 28 Australian created books in 2008. (Sebastian Walker's bio is definitely worth a read.)

Allen & Unwin - too big to be classified as an independent?

Hardie Grant Egmont - part of a larger group, and with a relationship to Egmont UK. Quite focussed publishing, with Go Girls and Zac Power.

Fremantle Arts Centre Press - ngo but independent in spirit.

Magabala Press - ngo and unique.

UQP - ngo, and I'm not sure where they're placing their emphasis in terms of the their children's publishing

Woolshed (Leonie Tyle) - owned by a multinational, but with an independent spirit.

Text - YA focus, part-owned offshore, and with a strong emphasis on rights buying.

I'm less familiar with New Zealand but Longacre and Gecko spring to mind.

I'm sure I've forgotten someone - so apologies, but let me know and I can expand the list.  It struck me what a short but rich list it is. 

book industry figures

Here's a quick snapshot of the book industry courtesy of the Productivity Commisssion Discussion Paper:

The industry is worth $2.5 billion in consumer dollars. or $1.8 billion in what the publishers earn. Foreign rights(and stock) account for $220 million of the that. Direct sales by publishers are estimated to be 15% of the market (I'm assuming of publishers' revenue) or $270 million. 

Education is 40% of the pie, and trade is 60%, which surprised me given that education is everything-but-trade. Trade books are the sort of books you buy in a bookshop, and education includes, primary, secondary, tertiary, scholarly and reference. 

9% of the market is trade children's, which is an understatement as children's books are sold to a lot of schools, so maybe 12%. Adult trade fiction is 15% of the market and adult trade non-fiction is 36% of the market. Adult trade non-fiction includes narrative non-fiction as well as self-help and say cookery (a form of self-help?)

Dividing up the bookselling market by type of bookseller: the chains have 55% and independents 20% and the DDSs (Target, Kmart, Woolworths) 25%. The DDS share has grown sharply in the last 10 years. 

Online sales are estimated to be $100m or 5% of the market. 

What's interesting is how much the figures bounced around when I tried to nail them down.