Event Information

Children’s publishing – a success story

Date: 22 November 2007   Drinks: 18:30   Talk Starts: 19:30 OPuS Event

Review - Post Event

The event was chaired by Angus Phillips, Director of the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies.

Liz Cross began by describing the shift in popular opinion regarding children’s books. Over the last 10 years children’s fiction, with authors such as Jacqueline Wilson, Philip Pullman, and J. K. Rowling, has developed into today’s highly popular genre, appealing to adults as well as children. Celebrities and established adult fiction writers are now trying their hand at writing books for children. The phenomenon of ‘branding’ of the best-known children’s authors and their fictional characters was a theme to which Catherine Clarke and Julia Golding were to return. Liz Cross also outlined how, from an editor’s point of view, the acquisition of new titles in a much more commercial market has become highly competitive. She warned of the dangers of a narrowing market due to the impact of recent children’s bestsellers, which obliges publishers to focus their marketing more tightly on fewer titles, and leaves them unable to give equal attention to all their books. The question was raised of whether good quality books which do not necessarily have an eye-catching commercial hook will find their proper place in this altered market, and she mentioned the methods used to maintain interest in OUP’s strong backlist through regularly renewed marketing campaigns.

Catherine Clarke highlighted the shift in the market for children’s books, with the sale of rights now involving not only translation but also cross-media factors such as the film industry. However, she pointed out that not all types of children’s book have been lifted by the same wave and that picture books have suffered from the market changes, to the extent that some retailers have largely withdrawn their support for illustrated children’s titles. She also outlined her view on the triangular agent-author-editor relationship, in which she believes that the author-editor dynamic still remains foremost, and that her role as agent is simply to obtain what is best for her authors.

Julia Golding gave an enticing description of her self-designed marketing techniques, which include a website, blog and visits to classrooms. Indeed, the audience enjoyed a live demonstration of her publicity methods, which exploit the idea of the character as a brand and, through the use of class involvement and a wide variety of props, draw the children into the fantastical or historical worlds she creates in her books.

All three speakers mentioned the fact that, as with all aspects of publishing, digital technology has had a great impact on how children’s fiction is marketed and made accessible to children and adults alike.

The audience obviously enjoyed the three different and complementary approaches to this highly topical subject.

By Helen Swain, Master’s in Publishing student at Oxford Brookes University.

Description

Catherine Clarke, Felicity Bryan Agency

Liz Cross, Oxford University Press

Julia Golding, author of The Diamond of Drury Lane

Children’s publishing has matured in recent years into a flourishing sector of the publishing industry. Once seen as the poor relation of adult trade publishing, it is now a vibrant sector with exciting new books and authors. An author, agent and publisher examine the reasons for its success and take a view as to how it will continue to develop.

The speakers will discuss topics such as:

* Working closely with retailers

* The marketing of children’s books

* International markets

* The development of author brands

* The trend towards series

* Books and the film industry

Catherine Clarke was Publishing Director of the Trade Books Department at OUP for several years before she joined Felicity Bryan as an agent in 2001. She represents a broad range of writers of serious non-fiction, including biography, memoir, philosophy, and history, as well as literary novelists. She has a growing and highly successful list of writers for children.

Liz Cross started work in 1993 as assistant to David Fickling at Scholastic Children's Books and worked up to Joint Head of Fiction there over a period of seven years, with a short foray to Walker Books. She is now Children's Publisher for fiction, picture books and poetry at Oxford University Press and has been fortunate enough to work on a wide range of books from Goosebumps and the Babysitters Club to Mortal Engines, Peter Pan in Scarlet and Philip Pullman's brilliant His Dark Materials trilogy.

Julia Golding read English at Cambridge, then joined the Foreign Office and served in Poland. Her work as a diplomat took her from the high point of town twinning in the Tatra Mountains to the low of inspecting the bottom of a Silesian coal mine. On leaving Poland, Julia exchanged diplomacy for academia and took a doctorate in the literature of the English Romantic Period at Oxford. She then joined Oxfam as a lobbyist on conflict issues, campaigning at the UN and with governments to lessen the impact of conflict on civilians living in war zones. Her first novel, 'The Diamond of Drury Lane', won the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize 2006 and the Nestle Children's Book Prize 2006 (formerly known as the Smarties Prize). She was also chosen by Waterstone's in 2007 as one of their 'Twenty-five authors for the future' (see www.juliagolding.co.uk).