With more than 21,000 members representing published and aspiring creators, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators eagerly awaits market forecasts. Author and consultant Deborah Halverson, a former Harcourt Children’s Books editor who shares writing advice at DearEditor.com, regularly updates information on trends and imprints in SCBWI’s member benefit publication, The Essential Guide to Publishing for Children. On September 28, after an introduction from SCBWI executive director Sarah Baker, Halverson gave a virtual workshop on the “State of the Children’s Publishing Market.”
Citing Circana and PW’s reporting, as well as her interviews with editors and agents, Halverson suggested how SCBWI’s audience of writers and artists should direct their energies. She sees potential in authentic connections to diverse identities. “The agents and editors I talked to are all saying that representation remains of high interest,” in terms of characters, subjects, and authorship. Public enthusiasm for bookstores and reading, innovative bookselling spaces including pop-ups and hybrid events, and a dynamic playing field involving Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org, also leave her optimistic for the future of creative work.
Although sales in the children’s market are down, along with print book sales in general, Halverson doesn’t see this as cause for alarm. She agrees with NPD Books industry analyst Kristen McLean’s assessment that “2023 will be a year of transition for publishing” after the rollercoaster seasons of 2020–2022. Halverson acknowledged that trade frontlist is down compared to backlist, which she attributed to BookTok’s influence (despite promotional efforts, “you can’t manufacture virality”) as well as “the impact of algorithmic searches. Algorithms tend to fish up the well-known, established books, usually because there is a track record” for backlist titles.
Affordability and convenience may be pushing this trend too, since trade paperbacks are cheaper, “downloadable audio is not seeing any slowdown,” and ebooks are increasing in popularity. These realities have led to conversations (but no action yet) on trade paper originals for YA and middle grade titles, Halverson said, and “the trickiest part for us is that the royalties for the creator tend to be lower.”
Fresh Takes on the Familiar
Halverson addressed promising directions across picture books, middle grade, chapter books, and YA. Despite lofty price points on picture books, her sources say picture book prospects are stable. “Amazing picture books are being published, and I’m hearing strong editor and agent interest in signing up new ones,” Halverson said. “It remains a competitive category for acquisitions.”
Despite this, “submission responses from editors are taking longer” due to staff restructures, imprints closing, and the increased costs of production supplies. In response, Halverson recommends creators take cues from sites like Manuscript Wish List and submit strategically. “Picture book writers can be incredibly prolific. Ask yourself on every project, ‘Is this one really my best?’” This is doubly important because agents are “making sure they don’t swamp any one particular editor and taking extra time to work with clients” on revisions.
As for hot topics, mindfulness books like My Heart by Corinna Luyken are appreciated by young readers, but “editors are saying it’s getting harder to break them out in the crowd,” Halverson explained. “Quieter observational pieces are having a harder time,” and “I’m told there are a lot of grandparent books in the pipeline.”
That means it’s vital to find a fresh take on familiar topics, Halverson said, “something extra that makes it more than just a fun read.” She detects an appetite for funny, character-based picture books like Mr. S by Monica Arnaldo—in which young students wonder whether the sandwich on their teacher’s desk is, in fact, their teacher—and 100 Mighty Dragons All Named Broccoli by David LaRochelle, illustrated by Lian Cho, “a silly romp that works in math skills as readers count down from 100 dragons to only one.”
Nonfiction authors need not be discouraged either, because “nonfiction picture books continue to resonate with agents and editors in their submissions and in the marketplace.” Halverson named the 2023 titles Spark, Shine, Glow! What a Light Show by Lola Schaefer, illustrated by James Yang, What’s Inside a Caterpillar Cocoon? by Rachel Ignotofsky, and What a Map Can Do by Gabrielle Balkan, illustrated by Alberto Lot. She gave two cautions: “I’m hearing that there is a move away from wanting books that focus on a culture’s food,” she said, and picture book biography “is a very saturated space.”
Evergreen Issues and Genre Blending
In the middle grade category, “agents and editors are still craving those mainstays of fantasy and adventure,” Halverson said, but they also want humor and “contemporary realism that digs into the social and physical changes of that time of life.” There’s also “increasing cultural, gender, and neurodiversity representation” in characters, content, and creators. Graphic narratives like K. O’Neill’s fantasy The Moth Keeper, Akim Aliu’s memoir Dreamer, and Dan Santat’s memoir A First Time for Everything are making waves, although graphic narratives can be a hard sell because they are so time-consuming to produce. Above all, Halverson said, “nailing the very distinct middle grade voice and sensibility” is key.
Halverson recommended Code Red by Joy McCullough, a middle grade read about menstrual equity, for its “evergreen growing-up issues,” and later pointed to McCullough’s YA novel-in-verse Enter the Body—about Shakespeare’s doomed heroines—as another title to watch. Middle graders love “age-appropriate scares,” she said, naming such “horror lite” titles as Brian Thomas Schmidt and Henry Herz’s The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie. And for “hard topics gently handled,” she nodded to Aniana Del Mar Jumps In by Jasminne Mendez and Ruptured by Joanne Rossmassler Fritz.
“For all these great books, it’s true we have some cold, hard data” that middle grade is down, she said. Yet “the market is wide open for us to tell our stories in as many ways as we can think of. The breadth and depth of middle grade really does excite me, even when I’m looking at numbers like that. Maybe we will be going to more middle grade paperback originals. But print middle grade is not going away. It’s not going to be all digital.”
Similarly, in the “deliciously varied category” of chapter books, acquisition can be “a tight squeeze” for authors pitching a series. “A series requires a significant publisher commitment,” Halverson reminded the audience. “Most of the ones that reach contracts offer something that publishers can highlight as a standout angle or hook,” like Rick Stromoski’s Schnozzer & Tatertoes, Kirby Larson and Shinji Fujioka’s Shermy & Shake, and Jarvis’s Bear and Bird.
Moving on to YA, Halverson said that “standout angles” and manuscripts that “shine in craft” were essential. In the YA space, she notices books with “easily promoted hooks, high concepts, or some genre blending,” and as an example she pointed to PW’s reporting on “romantasy” as an area of growth right now.
Macmillan’s Remixed Classics books, including Teach the Torches to Burn: A Romeo & Juliet Remix by Caleb Roehrig and My Dear Henry: A Jekyll & Hyde Remix by Kalynn Bayron, serve as effective combos of hook, concept, and spin. So do Krystal Marquis’s Black historical romance The Davenports, Vincent Tirado’s fantasy-horror set in the 1970s Bronx, Burn Down Rise Up, and Aisha Saeed’s magical realist tale Forty Words for Love, which Halverson said “ticks off the literary storytelling box too.”
Thrillers and mysteries have legs—Tyler Schwanke’s Breaking In is “a contemporary heist with film noir throwback flavor”—and graphic narratives attract readers. Halverson highlighted Rey Terciero and Bre Indigo’s graphic novel about a queer Latino youth, Northranger; Wendy Xu’s science fiction graphic novel The Infinity Particle; and journalist Don Brown’s 83 Days in Mariupol: A War Diary, which helps readers comprehend the war in Ukraine.
Halverson conveyed that YA is a strong bet for SCBWI creators. The category gets a boost from “big blockbuster moments or influences, but when it settles down in the year after the bump, it tends to stay pretty solid,” she said. “It’s not a category that drops in interest. So in the long run, it’s essentially a good space.”
Despite a few caveats—industry downturns, pandemic readjustments, and the threat of book bans—Halverson concluded on an encouraging note. “My mantra is perseverance,” she said, and inevitable disruptions are to be met with imagination. “To me, it all sounds like opportunity.”
