Publishers, booksellers and illustrators tell Madelyn Travis about the challenges facing picture books today.
Before the advent of the modern picture book, British authors and artists such as John Tenniel, Beatrix Potter and Edward Ardizzone were famed for their illustrated works for children.
When technological advances in printing in the 1960s allowed for increasing experimentation with form and colour, British picture books were at the forefront of artistic developments in the genre. Pioneers like Brian Wildsmith, Jan Pienkowski, Shirley Hughes, Quentin Blake and Raymond Briggs are still creating new books today, while the next generation, including Anthony Browne, Angela Barrett, Allan and Janet Ahlberg and Tony Ross has also proved influential. And the newer names of today – Mini Grey, Emily Gravett, Polly Dunbar and Oliver Jeffers among them – will certainly become the giants of tomorrow.
Research has shown that sharing picture books with a young child helps them to develop a love of reading. Reading picture books for enjoyment can have a positive impact, not just on academic achievement in the long term, but also on emotional, visual and cultural literacy.
And picture books are not just for children. Many are complex, sophisticated texts that would certainly appeal to adults if they took the time to read them. In the monograph How Texts Teach What Readers Learn, Margaret Meek exhorts adults to look at picture books 'with your most adult awareness of life and literature and text, and you will see that the invitations they offer to young readers are far from infantile'.
Yet despite the obvious contribution picture books make to so many areas of a child’s development, not to mention their aesthetic appeal to readers of all ages, the number of quality picture books published in Britain is falling each year.
The number of quality picture books published in Britain is falling each year.
Declining sales to libraries and markets abroad have led to shrinking sales of new British picture books, from around 7,000 per title in the late 1970s to around 1,500 today. The statistics have caused such concern among publishers, academics, journalists and others that they have joined forces to mount the Big Picture campaign , which, according to Sunday Times children’s books critic and Big Picture panel member Nicolette Jones, 'aims to encourage new illustrators, to persuade readers and publishers to be adventurous, and to help parents, carers, teachers and librarians appreciate and pass on the riches of a book form that can last lifetimes and change lives.'
Andersen Press have been publishing picture books for over three decades, with Tony Ross and David McKee among their most popular author/illustrators.
Although they have always supported new talent, Andersen’s Managing Director, Klaus Flugge, feels that for many publishers the situation is approaching crisis point; he himself now has to reject manuscripts that five years ago he would have published.
'If you don’t have the print runs, the books are uneconomical. I’m worried about the new talent. That’s not coming through. I don’t see as many artists as I used to.'
'I’m very proud of some of the books that haven’t sold very well on the high street,' says Deirdre McDermott, picture book publisher at Walker Books.
'We are in a golden age of publishing. And there’s a gap in the middle between the books we’re making and the books people are buying. It’s a tremendous time to make books, and we’re making them, but people are maybe choosing slightly easier books to buy.'
"We are in a golden age of publishing. And there’s a gap in the middle between the books we’re making and the books people are buying."
Sales of paperback picture books on the UK high street have long outstripped those of hardbacks. For the consumer, the appeal of paperbacks is obvious: a paperback costs roughly half of the price of a hardback. Now that books are often brought out in paperback less than a year after a title’s first hardback publication, the wait for the paperback doesn’t seem inordinately long. Even libraries are now eschewing hardbacks in favour of the cheaper paperback edition.
Klaus Flugge believes that the move by some publishers to publish simultaneously in hardback and paperback is a mistake and that in disregarding the hardback, customers are missing out.
'Hardbacks last much longer. They are a much nicer thing to share between teacher and child at that age, or between parent and child. On the picture book side there is no other country where there is that move to the paperback.'
While price is a major factor when buying a book, a hardback is often a better investment in the long term. They are more durable and their production values are higher overall.
The paper is thicker and of better quality, the colours are more vibrant and the brush strokes are more visible, all of which can make the overall reading experience much more rewarding. In other countries, adults value the picture book as a work of art in its own right.
Nicolette Jones believes they are undervalued in Britain. 'Few recognise that the best not only instill a love of books in small children, and nurture crucial visual skills as well as literacy, empathy and imagination, but are also enduring works of art.'
The market for original picture book art is just starting to build up in the UK. After years of selling illustrations from a flat, John Huddy felt by 2006 that demand had grown enough to sustain The Illustration Cupboard, the country’s first gallery dedicated to children’s books illustration.
'Recent years have seen an explosion of talent and original books created by hugely talented artists the world over,' says Huddy.
'This original work has now become highly collectable. Therehas never been a better time to invest.’
The best illustrators take their work for children just as seriously as they would anything else that they produce. ‘The painting references that go into any and all of my books are immense,’ says Oliver Jeffers.
‘For example, there are huge Edward Hopper or Constable references in How to Catch a Star and Lost and Found - even just the way the light is used, the way the houses are done. In The Incredible Book Eating Boy, that collage aspect is quite similar to Robert Rauschenberg, so it’s rifled with reference and with heavy artistic influence, and if that’s a doorway for young children into a world of art where they can look at it on their own terms, that’s a huge thing.’
The award-winning Jeffers has been fortunate to have established a successful career so swiftly; it is new authors and illustrators like him that are most at risk in a shrinking market.
Knowledgeable booksellers can help to give new talent much needed support. Polly Jaffe, co-owner of the independent bookshop Jaffe & Neale in Chipping Norton, is passionate about picture books and knows her dedicated customer base.
'I tend to get in the ones that I really really love and hand sell them. It’s an area where people are really looking for recommendations. We sell the old favourites again and again and again, but there are lots of new and very exciting things coming on the market and we do well with those as well.'
Yet sales of new picture books by new authors and illustrators often remain in single figures. 'We did really well with Emily Gravett’s Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears but we were in love with it. It only works with absolute energy behind it, and you can’t do that with whole shelves of hardback picture books.'
Jaffe believes the resistance to hardbacks is partly due to a lack of confidence on the part of the consumer. 'If you know that a book is going to work, having it in hardback is delightful. But if you haven’t got the children there saying "Yeah, this is fantastic," you’re going: "Am I going to want to read this book 500 times?" I’ll tell them that I’ve read it over and over and over again to my children and I still love it.
'We have the occasional customer who comes in and says they love a book so much, can we get it in hardback.'
Borders in Oxford Street have found that displaying picture books cover-out has boosted their sales. 'Our kids’ sales as a whole are up about 25% year on year and picture books are a big part of that,' explains Guy Ramage, the store’s manager.
The resistance to the price of a hardback, he says, applies to books for every age group, not just picture books. 'People are not going to spend above £10 on someone they’re not sure about, whereas they will if it’s part of a ‘buy one, get one half-price’ offer.'
Walker Books are seeking to increase sales of picture books by repackaging them in new formats. CDs on the cover have been popular for some time, and Walker recently repackaged a group of picture books in new editions with cover-mounted DVDs.
The DVDs have also proved successful, helping to introduce old and new classics to a whole new market. 'It’s a very interesting time to be making books because there is huge opportunity to experiment and a great impulse to experiment,' says Walker Books’ Chairman David Lloyd.
Wayne Winstone, formerly Children’s Category Manager at Waterstone’s and now a consultant, agrees that new approaches to marketing are essential if the genre is to thrive.
"Picture books provide a very important bridge ...they are important to families because a picture book is just the right length to be able to sit down with your child and read"
'This genre is extremely valuable to the book industry. It’s such an important stepping stone from graduating from baby books to reading short chapter books. Picture books provide a very important bridge there and from a personal point of view they are important to families because a picture book is just the right length to be able to sit down with your child and read a book.
'So they are very important in getting that parental bond going. The sheer quality and heritage of the backlist is world-leading. We need to cherish that backlist and keep it reformatted so it looks fresh and current and look at innovative ways to market it to different types of customers.'
One of Walker’s rising stars, and one of the Big Picture's Best New Illustrators, is Polly Dunbar, who won the Booktrust Early Years Award with her third picture book, Penguin. She admits that it’s a difficult time to be coming into the field.
'You don’t see many picture books in the shops, but on the other hand there are really really exciting picture books coming out at the moment. It’s a shame that they’re not being seen as they would have been a few years ago. At least people still want to make them even if they’re not selling. That’s the main thing.'
Wayne Winstone believes that, with creative thinking, it is possible to increase sales of picture books. 'The picture book can be reformatted into other formats such as board books and bath books, so there are many ways to get different format and different income streams out of one idea. A good book will always find its market. A good title will always come through.'
