‘When you write children’s books, who is your customer?’ An article by author Abie Longstaff

Renowned children’s author Abie Longstaff has written 60 (!) books, so it’s safe to say she knows her stuff. That’s why, when we spotted her article on Substack, we knew we had to share it with you all. Read on for some golden advice from Abie.

This article was first published on Substack. All credit belongs to Abie Longstaff. See more from the author at abielongstaff.substack.com 

As children’s authors/illustrators, it’s easy to think that our customer is the CHILD. We imagine a three-year-old picking up our picture book, or a 12-year-old racing through our middle grade adventure. 

But, in traditionally published books, the purchasing process is actually a lot messier than that. There are a number of gatekeepers, thus a huge range of ‘customers’ that are not in fact children. 

Let’s look at the chain: 

You send your manuscript to an agent – the agent is your first customer 

The agent decides whether a publisher will buy it – the publisher becomes the second customer 

The publisher assesses whether shops will buy it – the bookshops are the third customer 

The bookshops decide whether parents will buy it – the parents/schools/libraries are the fourth customer 

The parent/school/library assesses whether a child might like it – the child is the fifth customer 

The ‘real’ customer – the child – is a long way down the chain. And those grown-up gatekeepers have a lot of say. 

Agents and publishers are hampered by a whole set of competing concerns. Firstly, due to how long publishing takes, they are guessing what children might want in TWO YEARS time. They use trend forecasting, looking at what films are coming out in future years, what world events are happening eg the Olympics or a space mission. A publisher is also weighing up other authors competing in the space, their own lists and whether your book fits in terms of what they want to achieve as a publishing business. 

They don’t always get it right. A lot can change in the space of two years (hello, global pandemic) and future five-year-olds might want a completely different thing from current five-year-olds. Publishers can’t accurately predict what might catch a child’s interest and they are often led by what is selling right now, which is why when a trend does break through (eg graphic novels and comics) you see publishers who dismissed this genre frantically playing catch-up. 

The publisher has a lot of clout with large bookshop chains. They can offer the bookshop discounts, they can buy ‘best-seller’ placement. If they want to, they can push your book hard. So, ‘the bookshop’ is an odd customer. They are hugely influenced by the publisher and the deal. I’m sure they think about their customer (the parent) but there’s a lot of wangling going on behind the scenes. 

Schools are weighing up competing interests too, and they are (rightly) curating their library to have a variety of books. If you’ve written a book on bees, a library might already have enough books on that topic. School libraries are (unfortunately) not always stocked by qualified librarians who are up to date with contemporary books, so even if your book is doing well, you won’t necessarily find it in a school library. 

Moreover, some school libraries are not neutral spaces. In recent years, censorship has increased in schools, with librarians under pressure to remove books deemed ‘not age-appropriate’. It’s mainly happening in the US but there have been reports of it happening in the UK too. The Authors Guild in the US has spoken out against this, along with many UK organisations including the Society of Authors and the Schools Library Association . 

Then … parents. You might think that parents would just let their child pick the book they want to read but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes the parent picks a classic book they loved as a child (which is why most chain bookshops still have entire tables devoted to Blyton, Dahl, Hodgson Burnett etc). Sometimes they are looking for a book to increase their child’s reading – even though we all know the best way to increase reading is to let children read what they love. The reading for pleasure message isn’t getting through to all parents and many a time I’ve seen parents persuading the children away from books in a shop or library saying that’s ‘too young for you’ ‘too girly for you’ (omg yes this has happened lots of times with my Fairytale Hairdresser series) ‘too hard for you’ ‘too grown up for you’ ‘too easy for you’. It’s frustrating but the parent (or grandparent) is the one handing over the cash or the library card so they get a large portion of the say in what is bought and borrowed. (And that’s in the lucky households that have books and access to a local library). 

There are so many interventions, so many gatekeepers, before we get to the person we might see as the customer: the child. Children love all kinds of mad stuff we can’t predict. They have their own obsessions, their own weirdness and quirks. There is a danger that, if we authors think too much about gatekeepers we can lose the original spark or soul or quirkiness in our work that might appeal to our proper customer. Worse, if the publishing decisions are being made by the same group of people, we can end up with books that do not reflect the diversity of children’s interests. 

I can’t help thinking that elements of the reading for pleasure crisis link to this; to adults deciding two years in advance what children might like, to grown-ups not letting children read what they want to read. 

What’s the solution for those of us trying to sell in traditional publishing? I don’t know. But I do feel that we can’t write for the gatekeepers. 

We have to keep writing for the child – even if that’s the child inside us. 

We have to keep listening to children – our own, our nieces and nephews, our friends’ kids, the ones we meet on school visits. 

We have to follow the thread of the weird or sparky or original idea that made us want to write the story in the first place. If we think too much about the agent, the publisher, the parents, the school, we’ll freeze. 

There’s something hopeful about children being unpredictable and uncontrollable. It means that trends change. And that, even if the gatekeepers turn down your book now, there might be a home for it in years to come. 

So, write your weird thing. You never know, a future child might LOVE it.