David*Macinnis*Gill.com

As my friends know, I’ve spent much of the past two years–but espe­cially the past six months–lamenting the sud­den shift of focus in mar­ket­ing children’s lit­er­a­ture.  Gone are the days when a children’s book was given time to find its audi­ence, a time frame that can be sev­eral years since most children’s books are *still* sold through schools and libraries.  Now, the mar­ket­ing of children’s books has fol­lowed the thin, nar­row, and pre­cip­i­tous path of adult mar­ket­ing, the thought­less throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks method–Spaghetti Mar­ket­ing. I have my the­o­ries as to why this change sud­denly hap­pened, but cer­tainly the Big Box stores and a new gen­er­a­tion of mar­ket­ing tech­niques have aided it.

Folks, this is sui­cide mar­ket­ing.  Children’s books sell a lit­tle bit for a long time.  They are the pub­lish­ing gift that keeps on giv­ing.  The mega hits of Cat in the Hat and Harry Pot­ter are few and very, very far between.  For a children’s book (and I mean YA and MG here, too), to have legs, it has to find its audi­ence with librar­i­ans and schools.  Pub­lish­ing a book and stick­ing it on Big Box shelves for nine months is a ridicu­lously short-sighted strat­egy.  If you want to see the rapid decline of children’s pub­lish­ing, keep doing that.

An inter­view by Alma Fuller­ton with long-time agent Scott Treimel lends cre­dence to my argu­ment:

“Con­sumers have become the gate­keep­ers of children’s books, usurp­ing the
impor­tance of librar­i­ans and teach­ers; so children’s pub­lish­ers now pan­der to book­sellers the way
adult pub­lish­ers do. A book today is not given the chance, as in the old days, to do the best it can.
Keen for the mega– hit, pub­lish­ers will cut their loses on most titles quickly to fun­nel resources into
very few. This throw-it-out-and-see-what-sticks strat­egy puts extreme pres­sure on each book. And
for first-time authors… yikes!“

There are few mega first-time hits.  There are few mega first-time authors.  Mar­ket­ing can get a book noticed, but a book must have time to find its audi­ence. An author must have time to find her/his audi­ence.  Where would Gary Paulsen be if his first books were pub­lished today?  Would there ever have been a HATCHET to sell mil­lions of copies to boys who “don’t read”?

Eschew Spaghetti Mar­ket­ing:  Don’t eat that pasta.

EDITED TO ADD:
I posted this before learn­ing that the young man lost in the NC moun­tains was found safely and also before read­ing this from his father:
“One of Michael’s favorite books when he was younger was about a boy whose plane crashes in the wilder­ness, and how that boy sur­vives on his own, his father said.  “I think he’s got some of that book in his mind,” Auberry said. “In my fan­tasy, when they find him, he’ll be mak­ing beef jerky some­where or some­thing like that. He’s got a lot of resources to draw from.”