By Dave Weich
Kids won’t want to read books written by other kids? Who says? Must have been an adult.
“Over the past five years,” Elissa Gootman reported in the March 31 New York Times, “print-on-demand technology and a growing number of self-publishing companies whose books can be sold online have inspired writers of all ages to bypass the traditional gatekeeping system for determining who can call himself a ‘published author.’”
Dave Weich: "Since when are kids only interested in 'meaningful' fiction?
“Critics say it is wonderful to start writing at a young age,” Gootman continues, “but worry that self-publishing sends the wrong message.”
The wrong message for whom? As messages go, I’m okay with telling kids that it’s alright to apply your fledgling passions, creativity, and discipline toward the achievement of a tangible, rewarding goal. Formatting a book hardly guarantees its author readership. Gootman makes that clear. No one’s promising wealth or fame. So who loses here?
Then again, kids sure buy a lot of music made by other kids. They hear the songs and see the performances, and instinctively recognize some part of it as their own. They relate, or want to. They imagine being friends with the singer, dating the bass player, or standing on stage themselves and making crowds roar. If I’m tomorrow’s commercial publisher, that’s a potent model to emulate.
Bestselling author Tom Robbins fumes, “Any parent who thinks that the crafting of engrossing, meaningful, publishable fiction requires less talent and experience than designing a house, extracting a wisdom tooth, or supervising a lunar probe is, frankly, delusional.”
Hooey. Since when are kids interested solely in “meaningful” fiction? And exactly who are you, Tom, to decide what’s meaningful to them? In every industry, disruptive technologies most threaten the people and organizations that have spent the most time and money to achieve status and power. When down come the walls, every newcomer is branded an infidel.
True, much of what’s published will be awful, by any traditional standard. Ay, there’s the rub! Historically, adults have exerted an outright monopoly on those standards. No longer. For the first time, kids can write and read among themselves. They’re connected and equipped. Ye olde supply chain is the last thing on their mind.
Only anecdotally is this a story about self-publishing. It’s really about the collision of technology and our storytelling culture.
“The young authors themselves, raised in an era of blogging and equal-opportunity Twitter feeds, take the notion of self-publishing in stride,” acknowledged the Times.
The world I’m describing doesn’t depend on traditional publishers, but adaptive houses will profit by leveraging their corporate infrastructures to shepherd the most talented child authors to the widest possible audiences. They should be acting on these opportunities, or buying companies that can.
It might take another industry to drag ours into the future. (Infidels!) How about Disney, a media empire actively plotting to create customer loyalty in the frigging womb? Will a visionary entrepreneur connect the dots? See, for a fledgling example, Felicia Day’s Written by a Kid.
One way or another, it’s coming. Tomorrow’s popular authors, crowdsourced today. Good news for traditional publishers: The majority of these kids will be over the moon to get even a modest book deal from Random House, Scholastic, or a plucky, independent press. For some, it will mark the beginning of writer-reader relationships that last a lifetime.
Where will it lead? Retailers with “kid-4-kid lit” sections; creative integrations with schools and summer camps; digital communities and contests.
Children’s books written by grown-up authors aren’t going away, simply because there will always be plenty of grown-ups who can captivate children with words and pictures. What’s more, many kids (and teachers and parents) will seek out stories that only older, trained writers can tell.
But when more stories written by children become readily available, more kids will get excited about reading. Kids who’d be reading anyway will read more. Meanwhile, more kids treating writing and storytelling as a worthwhile, formal endeavor can be nothing but a boon to commercial publishing. The only question is: Who will those publishers be?
Twenty or thirty years hence, try explaining to your grandchildren, “When I was a kid, the only books available to me were written by people my parents’ age.” The idea will seem to them as antiquated as rooftop antennas and rotary phones.
Dave Weich is the president of Sheepscot Creative, a marketing agency that invigorates literary and cultural brands. From 1998-2009, he worked at Powell’s Books, where he served as director of marketing and development. His latest project is a video inspired by the bestselling children’s book, Wildwood, starring Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis at a restaurant in The Impassable Wilderness.
READ: Dave’s previous piece for Publishing Perspectives, “Re-inventing Book Marketing.”
DISCUSS: Kids Love Stories, So Why Not Encourage Them to Publish?
9 Comments
Tom Robbins and Andrew Keen are cut from the same jib.
Bravo! Who is to say that a self-pubbed kid won’t turn into an agented, traditionally published (or otherwise) adult later? America has long had a history of encouraging it’s children to stretch themselves in businesses of many kinds. What if the child who had a lemonade stand grew up to own a restaurant? I say that we shouldn’t limit their possibilities but that we should certainly encourage them to put out a well edited product that will do well in the market, just as we would for any other title. Instead of stomping on their heads and saying, “you can’t do that! You are not an adult!”, we should instead encourage them to learn more about the book process – from writing to market. They might not be quite ready for a publishing contract now, but they could be one day. Let them have at it.
The music analogy is interesting, but it doesn’t quite hold up. Kids don’t buy music “made” by other kids; they’re buying music PERFORMED by other kids. The vast majority of music production (including writing the music and lyrics) is done by adults.
Comparing the creation of music to the creation of a novel, which is a largely solitary endeavor that is then polished at the end by professionals, is rather facetious. Novelists don’t have a team of professionals working with them every step of the way to create and perfect their art.
Beyond that, though, where’s the harm in encouraging kids to self-publish? Well, some kids may not grow as artists because they never have to face rejection and learn to improve or persevere. But that’s no big loss, right? And I suppose we won’t mind another few million self-published titles by children joining the SP pool each year, because it’s so easy to find quality adult-written SP fiction as it is, what with the total transparency and honesty of reviews, the ubiquity of professional editing, and so on…
Leah, your comment about the music industry is undeniably true if we’re talking about corporate music production, but I’ll bet that if you ask a music-obsessed teenager whether they listen to recordings made by their peers, the answer will be yes. Those recordings are produced independently by kids, and then circulated through social media among schoolmates, like-minded musicians, and curious DIY fans. In music, this isn’t even entirely new. You could point to the Straight Edge scene from the 80s and say the same thing; what’s changed is that now teenagers have the capacity to produce digitally. As a result, the costs of production and distribution have fallen to levels such that there’s really no limit to some smalltown band’s reach. That music simply doesn’t show up on the radar of a typical adult or media outlet — until in some cases it does, at which point a label tries to leverage the band and its fan base for its own financial gain — and the same will be true of kid-generated books.
Excellent! Way to go Dave. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Kids writing for kids reading.
Six genre anthologies of stories published this year by the Born Storytellers, 74 authors all aged between 10 and 17. The Born Storytellers is an annual program that is designed to bring up young authors.
We hold an annual book launch event at (Australia’s) Perth Writers Festival each February/March, the latest series is the first to be streamed into genre collections: Romance, Adventure, Crime&Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Teen Fiction.
Our programs are run in schools over a full semester, and every participant is invited to be part of our publishing program. We also invite those who have been through the program before to submit work, encouraging them to continue their writing journey. We have many outstanding storytellers among them. Our young authors have presented their work at literary festivals and events.
The books are currently being distributed locally. They are printed by Lightning Source and our distribution is about to be rolled out through Ingram to the rest of Australia US and Europe. The books are currently available from our shop website.
Shop >>http://logorythm.com/category.php?id_category=5
Born Storytellers >> http://bornstorytellers.net/
Facebook page >> https://www.facebook.com/bornstorytellers
I’m thrilled to see that someone shares my point of view! The great challenge, and this is true of most kids, is to get them to focus for long enough to complete a story. However, when they do, their parents and educators can often learn so much about the child’s emotional state. Perhaps this will speak to other children as well.
Plus, at that young age, before experience takes its toll, the imagination is so impressive. There aren’t many outlets for it, and so it gets lost in snippets of conversation or play acting. They should be encouraged to explore their outlandish ideas, ask what happens if x is true and what kind of a world does it engender. That’s the type of creativity that will thrive in this entrepreneurial century. I have no doubt that other children will respond to some of the best of these imaginings, and react in kind.
Daisy May Publishing has a workshop for children ages 7-12 who want to write and illustrate a 24 page story picture book. Everything is professionally done and children have a book signing where they make $1.50 on each sale.
I may not be rich but I am happy.
Check out our web site to see some of these events!
Children are the best to work with!!
Respectfully, I’d have to disagree. I wrote my first novel-length manuscript between the ages of eight and ten. My parents told me it was awesome, and of course I thought myself to be a very talented and capable writer. As soon as I finished this book, I wanted to self publish, in the hopes that I would get to be a “real author.”
Instead, my parents encouraged me to submit to traditional publishers. They told me that writing a good book takes work, and sometimes we don’t get it right on our first try. So I submitted. I got rejection after rejection, and although it was hard at first, my parents remained staunchly encouraging and told me to keep trying.
So I wrote another book, and another, and another. Getting all those rejections prompted me to keep improving, because obviously those first few books weren’t good enough for publication. I turned rejection into motivation. At the age of 16, my novel won Scholastic’s annual PUSH Novel Contest, and it’s now undergoing revisions at Scholastic Press. At 17 I fielded offers from six literary agents, and ended up signing with my dream agent.
I am a teenager, and I am a teenager who will be traditionally published. I worked very, very hard to get where I am today, and the reason I worked so hard to improve is because my parents taught me that publishing takes perseverance. If a child becomes a “professional” simply by writing a single book, where’s the incentive to grow as an artist? Enduring rejections, along with realizing that my first five books weren’t good enough to be published, gave me the motivation I needed to work on my craft.
There is an 18-year-old girl I know from the online community. Her parents self published her first book when she was 12, with several more to follow. These books weren’t ready to see the light of day. As a result of her parents’ choice, this girl is mocked and ridiculed online and receives awful reviews. I read her most recent book, and her writing has not improved from book #1. And why should she? If her parents are willing to publish whatever she churns out, and she stands to make money, why would she take time to really work on her craft?
And lastly, as a child author, I am infinitely, exponentially glad my parents did not allow me to self publish my first book. Once you have a book out, that first book defines you as an author. That is your “debut,” and once you debut, there’s no going back. Just the thought of my first book embarrasses me. When you self publish your child’s book for profit, they become a professional. But what if that child decides, later on, that he or she wants to pursue writing as a career? That first book will always haunt them, and I guarantee they will wish their parents never decided to self publish.
Children should be encouraged to write, but they must also be taught that publishing takes a lot of hard work, just like any other career. Everything good in life takes work. If my parents hadn’t raised me this way, if they had chosen to publish my fledgling novel attempts, I doubt I would have achieved the moderate successes I’ve had so far.