This morning, my Twitter feed is full of links to an NYT story titled “Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children,” alongside lots of sad and outraged commentary about it. I suppose I would be sad and outraged, too, if I actually believed picture books were endangered, but I see absolutely nothing in this article that suggests I need to worry.
In fact, here is what this article tells me:
1) There’s, like, a recession on or something?
2) A lot of books that get published don’t sell. Not exactly breaking news, folks. (And that alarming opening about books languishing on shelves and being returned to publishers unsold? That’s just how it works. Stores take books on consignment, and ship ‘em back to the publishers if they don’t move. There are plenty of reasons to deplore this practice, particularly if you are a publisher or an author [see Awlbiste's comment; it sucks all around], but it is in no way new or unusual. If it’s happening more often these days, well, see point 1. And point 3, actually.)
3) “[M]any publishers have gradually reduced the number of picture books they produce for a market that had seen a glut of them…” That line is pretty well buried in the middle of the article, but I strongly suspect it’s the most accurate summary of the situation. Too many similar products at one time flooded the market, after which the people manufacturing those similar products decided to release fewer of them. “Gradually.” During a recession. WHOA.
4) If at least three upper middle class parents in the New York area have been observed behaving ridiculously, it’s national news. Of course, that in itself is not news: stories about entitled, blinkered parents trying to prime their children for Harvard from the womb forward are just as common as ones about the death of publishing (/reading for pleasure/literacy/coherent English/proper spelling/western civilization).
Look, as a writer, an avid reader and a former editor, I am always bummed to hear about books not selling — whether it’s because of a recession, or a realization that the market is saturated with XYZ type of book, or the fact that most books never sell especially well, relative to the money and labor that go into them (which is why someone writes an article predicting the death of the entire industry about every fifteen minutes). I am also bummed out about the economy, and totally bummed out by the idea of hyper-competitive parents forcing chapter books on their pre-schoolers to better prepare them for the real world where NO ONE’S GONNA DRAW YOU A PICTURE JUST BECAUSE YOUR TINY BRAIN IS STILL DEVELOPING, MAGGOT or something. But I remain utterly unconvinced that that last one is a real trend, much less that it’s eventually going to make picture books go the way of Jarts.
And if you remove that threat from the article, all you’re really left with is, “[M]any publishers have gradually reduced the number of picture books they produce for a market that had seen a glut of them…” During a recession.
I think it’s going to be OK, you guys. I really do.
ETA: You should also check out this perspective from an indie bookseller.
Ha! Love this post. And I agree 100% with Point #4, which needs to be restated in a lot of places.
Re: point 2-
As a former bookseller (worked for an independent bookstore for a number of years) it totally and completely sucks to have to return books. It sucks the book didn’t sell well, it sucks we lost money, it sucks all around really. As a result we end up ordering less of a title to avoid having to send back. We always made special orders for customers however, and that’s how we justified not being able to order 50 copies of a book we weren’t sure about.
We do still lose money on the sending things back to the publisher/distributor though. It’s not like we’re all la dee da just order 900 of this and we’ll send 899 back! (Well I don’t know, maybe some stores do that, but they won’t be in business for long–indies anyway).
And sometimes we’ll order a shitton of a title because an author is coming in do to a talk/signing/reading but that author comes across as bored/disinterested/un-engaging and nobody wants to buy their book because the author is well… kind of a dick.
And there have been a TON of picture books as of late.
Good points, all — thanks for making them. I’m mostly familiar with how much it sucks from the author and publisher’s perspective, but of course what you’re saying makes perfect sense.
If picture books go the way of Jarts, does that mean they’ll only be read by drunk fraternity boys attending SEC colleges?
Wait, drunk frat boys can still get their hands on Jarts? That actually makes me want to meet some.
I think the cost vs. entertainment value that Aaron’s mentions is a big part of it. If you’re going to spent $12-18 bucks on a book that might entertain a kid for, a day, you’re likely to go with a classic–Dr. Seuss or the Serendipity books or a fairy tale–versus something unknown. Or for kids at the age to read both, you might choose a couple cheaper chapter books that will keep them entertained longer.
I’m guessing that, long-term, picture books will be an area where traditional books will win out over e-books in a big way. Not only because readers (at least the Kindle, which I have) don’t do as well with pictures, but what sane person is going to hand their $200 ebook reader to a four-year-old?
Well, I’m constantly amazed at how many sane parents hand their iPhones to 4-year-olds.
And speaking of which, even though the Kindle sucks for picture books, the iPad is actually great for them. (People who illustrate or design them might disagree, but to a layperson like myself, the quality of images on the iPad seems pretty damn good.) So I can see e-books taking up a bigger share of the kid-book market in the future — but they might very well be picture e-books. (I mean, I don’t think paper picture books are going anywhere in the near future, for the reasons you point out. But even if e-books do eventually shove paper books aside, it still doesn’t mean picture books are doomed.)
I think you’re somewhat mistaken about how much entertainment time a kid can get out of a good picture book. For example, when we bought The Sleepy Little Alphabet for my two-year-old, we read it about twenty times in the first two days. But it also was a staple bedtime book, requested every single night, for several months.
The biggest problem, implicit in what Kate said, is that there are so many picture books out there that are just not that good. Kids may still love them (and in fact, my experience is that my kids love all books, no matter how awful they seem to me), but my rule of thumb is never to buy a picture book that I’m not willing to read twenty times in the first two days, and at least once a day for months thereafter. There’s very few books that make that cut.
I hate the idea that I may be seen as one of those hyper-competitive parents, though. My six-year-old is in fact reading chapter books and long books regularly. But she also reads picture books and graphic novels. I don’t see why it has to be either-or.
my rule of thumb is never to buy a picture book that I’m not willing to read twenty times in the first two days, and at least once a day for months thereafter. There’s very few books that make that cut.
OMG this. I worked in a day care center in college, and dang if I didn’t have How The Grinch Stole Christmas! memorized by New Year’s.
I also developed 2 very different voices for Green Eggs and Ham for the 2 characters.
I can’t speak from a bookseller’s perspective, but as a children’s librarian — this is news to me. If no one wants picture books, how come the picture book section is where a) a huge percentage of our circulation comes from and b) a mess every damn day?
B-b-but I LIKE picture books!(Runs away crying.)
If they are endangered, I’m going to adopt one and hopefully I’ll get monthly updates on it’s progress.
Yep. Cost. That was my initial reaction to the article: Have you *seen* how much those things cost?
I love books, and I’m happy for my son to have ridiculous numbers of them. (I certainly do, and so does my husband.) But I’m not willing to spend more than $10 for something he might not even want to read more than once.
Here’s how I decide what picture books to buy my son:
I check out lots at the public library. The ones that I end up renewing two or three or four or five times, that he insists tearfully are “MINE MINE MINE” when it’s time to return them finally–those are the ones I buy.
I probably buy one book for every 50 or more that we read at the library or borrow.
Kate, I feel like you’re underpanicking. Have you considered panicking more?
My god! I’m part of the growing epidemic of Americans who DON’T PANIC ENOUGH.