Recently I’ve been bombarded with emails from people who apparently are keen to promote or market one or other of my children’s books. A few appear to have actually read a book of mine and to know the name of the characters, others clearly haven’t. What they all have in common is that the book in question was published some years ago. A favourite seems to be The Very Snowy Christmas, a picture book published in 2020. Carmen would like to make sure it’s ‘cherished, shared and remembered in the conversation of parents, educators and readers’. It’s ‘about legacy’, she says. Sarah seeks to connect my book to ‘curated reading groups, parent-child clubs, seasonal reading circles’. Martin wants to make sure my story doesn’t ‘just sell but echoes, lives, endures’. Ah so!
Actually, the message I’m really getting from these enthusiastic promoters is that, as a children’s writer, I’m past it. I mean, I doubt any of them are emailing J.K. Rowling, Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Morpurgo or Julia Donaldson. No, they are looking for us lesser mortals – once-popular children’s writers, now gone to seed.
During the eighties and nineties, some of the books I wrote for children were very successful. One won a Whitbread Award. Another was shortlisted for a Costa. Christmas in Exeter Street has been selling for 30 years, was turned into a play this year and featured in Oxfam’s annual carol concert. The Very Noisy Night, a picture book story I suspect I just knocked off, has been dramatised, translated into umpteen languages and has earned me more in royalties than anything I’ve written.
But I have gone off the boil, you might say. The truth is that while I much enjoyed writing for children, poetry was my passion. And then too, I liked dabbling in other genres – short stories, essays, a little journalism, whatever. It’s a mistake in the children’s book world to take your eye off the ball. These days, if I attempt a picture-book text I’m told it’s too gentle, or it doesn’t have a ‘hook’. Truth is, at 83 either I’ve forgotten what children are like or children have changed, or both.
Of the 40 or more children’s books which I wrote while my own children were growing up, my favourite is Why Father Christmas Was Late for Hartlepool. It’s my version of Waiting for Godot. (Yes, of course Godot/Father Christmas arrives – I’m all for happy endings.) I doubt I’d get it published these days. Its characters, four toys abandoned in an attic – a rag doll, a one-eyed penguin, a mixed-race china doll in need of new legs and a knitted owl in need of new stuffing – would all be regarded as disabled. Maybe that would be a plus. I’m past knowing.
Anyway, I don’t think I’m going to respond to one woman, who has recently discovered my junior novel, You Can’t Kiss It Better (2002), and wants to ‘identify comparable novels’ and ‘how they connect with book clubs, educators, and advocacy communities’. She’s very nice about my book. Knows the characters, knows something of the plot, says ‘compassion and imagination shine through every page’. I’m almost won. But I don’t want to ask what she charges for a ‘market research deep dive’ or a ‘comprehensive book audit’.
Truth is, at 83 either I’ve forgotten what children are like or children have changed, or both
A poet friend of mine, of comparable age, has been receiving emails much like mine. He thinks they’re all scams, generated by AI. He’s probably right.
Instead of replying to this woman, I google book-marketing services. And then I feel that I’ve been incredibly naive. There’s a host! The ability to self-publish has created a huge market of marketers. All too soon I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole. One website promises I will ‘step closer to literary greatness with the UK’s premier book marketer’. Did you ever? By contrast, another marketer doesn’t seem to deal with self-publishing, but specialises in the sales and marketing of children’s books. The 40 publishers on their list includes Little Tiger Press, who published both The Very Noisy Night and The Very Snowy Christmas. Well, I’m very surprised.
Like many writers I’ve often had neurotic notions about the publicity and/or rights departments of the publishers I’ve worked for. Have they forgotten me? So soon? What new up-and-coming writer is getting all their attention? For a goodly number of years, Penguin Random House looked after my trio of books about Harvey Angell (magician/electrician) very well. But sales and interest dropped, and so I decided to ask for the rights. The consequence, for quite a few years, was a box of Harvey Angell books under my bed.
But now, all of a sudden, the Mexican publisher Fondo de Cultura Económica has asked to renew the rights on their Spanish translations. For five years! Not dead yet, then.
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