We can spread the word about others’ new books on social media, and promote our new titles.Ĭhildren’s book sales are cyclical. Publishers are contributing more money and materials to those efforts and trying to leverage social media (that’s a whole other topic). Bookstores are trying to increase in-store traffic to get more eyes on new books, expanding events and promotions. Good for popular older titles not so good for new books, which is what those now-closed imprints were churning out. According to Bookscan, frontlist children’s hardcovers have declined far more than backlist, falling more than 20 percent last year.” (Emphasis mine.)Īlgorithms favor backlist discovery at the expense of frontlist. While overall trade sales in 2022 were strong, comprising the second best year recorded, children’s hardcover sales were already below their levels from 2020 ($995 million) and 2019 ($944 million). Hardcovers sold $929 million, a 12.5 percent decline, while paperbacks held up much better, at $1.16 billion, down 1.9 percent. In 2022, children’s books sales totaled $2.619 billion, according to the AAP’s stats. “The main weakness looks to be in children’s hardcovers - down 9%, or $37 million, so far this year. (B&N denies this.) Check out this sales update on Publishers Lunch last week: Hence Barnes & Nobel’s complaint that it is returning to publishers “up to 80 percent of middle grade hardcovers” that they stocked but didn’t sell. Hence, in turn, the industry’s concerns that B&N has sharply stifled their frontlist MG buys. So, when a reader searches for a “good middle grade mystery” online, or looks at an MG mystery book in an e-retailer site and sees “You’d also like these books…”, the algorithms serve them up books that are proven sellers. That hurts discovery of NEW (“frontlist”) books, which are primarily hardcover. The algorithms behind online book searches and e-retailer recommendations favor books with a sales history-that is, BACKLIST books, which are primarily paperback. A big factor in what’s happening with their “decline” is… ALGORITHMS. The prompt seems to be HarperCollins abruptly shuttering its MG/YA imprint Inkyard Press, which comes on the heels of Penguin Children’s dissolving its MG/YA imprint Razorbill and folding those titles and staff into the Putnam Children’s imprint.Īt issue are Middle Grade and Young Adult sales. Other writers have asked me similar questions this past week.
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