Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Pep Talk Week: Things May Not Be As Bad


I don't know if anyone is still reeling over the stock market dive yesterday, but I wanted to share an article that outlines several reasons for optimism in the juvenile book market.

Excerpt:

Children’s Books are Still Selling Strongly. According to Publishers Weekly, children’s books “proved to be one of the most recession resistant segments of the book business” throughout the 2008 holiday season. Sales were strong across age groups. Many stores reported increased sales numbers over 2007.

Children’s Books are Outselling Adult Books. As we write this, the top five overall best-sellers in America, according to USA Today, are children’s/YA books. The Last Straw, the latest installment of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, is number one. The Twilight series claims slots two through five.


If you don't know Jon and Laura from the Children's Book Insider, you should check them out. At a recent writing retreat, the Big Sur at the Rockies, run by Andrea Brown, I had the privilege of being in a critique group led by Laura, and found her to be a superhero.

So, writers, especially of children's and YA lit, keep those words coming.

3 comments:

Douglas Florian said...

Yay Yat-Yee! Thanks for the good news! We need it!
My word verification: pro boks

Yat-Yee said...

See, even the word verification program knows you're a pro at books (not too good at spelling, though.)

I am so caught up with trying to break into publishing that I forget published authors are affected as well.

Chris Barton said...

Another bit of good news -- I heard from a friend recently who's on the non-children's side of a major publishing house that the most stable part of their company, by far, is the children's side. Hooray for that.