I propose a moment of silent sympathy for the writers of the world, in the face of what’s been a rather humbling, reality-bending month in the world of children’s book sales. First, J.K. Rowling witnesses (by proxy) the sale of more than 72 million copies of HP7 within the first 24 hours of its release. Last week Scholastic announced that their initial print run of 12 million copies doesn’t look like it’s quite going to cut the mustard, so they’re headed back to press to print another two million. Ah, yes, business as usual. Just going to print another TWO MILLION books to satisfy American readers.<\/p>\n
My sense is that most writers can shrug this off with little more than a sigh and a shake of the head. I mean, c’mon. It’s Harry Potter. It’s the most remarkable phenomenon in publishing history, Rowling has done something no one can fully comprehend (though everyone desperately wants to, so they can then replicate it), and c’est la vie. It’s hard to be jealous of something so… well, freakish.<\/p>\n
But then another couple of weeks pass and the children’s market heats up again. This time it’s Stephenie Meyer<\/a> who’s raking in the cash with the release of her third young adult novel in the Twilight Saga<\/a>, Eclipse<\/em>. Its initial print run? One million copies. Ouch. And ouch again at Wellesley Booksmith. Within three days our store had sold through my sizeable initial order of the book, as had all of our distributors — Bryant Altman, Bookazine, Bookstream, Ingram and Baker & Taylor. (At least I’m not the only buyer who underestimated…)<\/p>\n I don’t begrudge Stephenie Meyer her success in the least. She, like J.K. Rowling, has been perversely fortunate enough to tap into something that readers (oh, say, a million of them) have apparently been hungering for. I do, though, have to sigh along with writers everywhere over the comparison of Meyer’s initial print run with those of most authors seeing the publication of their third or fourth or even their 25th novel. With the average advance for a first-time children’s book author hovering around $7,500 and the print run for their first book likely to be 5,000 copies (my source for these figures: Michael Cart<\/a>), it’s easy to see why most writers find it impossible to make a living writing children’s and YA books, let alone make a fortune.<\/p>\n And so I lift my cap to the non-Rowlings and non-Meyers of the world. Here’s to you and your meager advances, your moderate print runs, your ability to walk the streets unmobbed by screaming teenagers, your dedication to a low-paying (but oh so valuable) cause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I propose a moment of silent sympathy for the writers of the world, in the face of what’s been a rather humbling, reality-bending month in the world of children’s book sales. First, J.K. Rowling witnesses (by proxy) the sale of more than 72 million copies of HP7 within the first 24 hours of its release. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}