Publishing Trend @ Bologna Children Book Fair

Pierdomenico Baccalario
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Book On A Tree - Bologna 2014
Present : great shifts
Every generation has
underestimated the potential for
finding new ideas. We
consistently fail to grasp how
many ideas remain to be
discovered. Possibilities do not
merely add up; they multiply.
- Erik Brynjolfsson - Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

– Robert Muchamore (Bookseller 14.03.14, pag. 19)
“The story of publishing is one of decreasing prices
and the increasing variety of books. Public libraries
were created when books cost several days’ wages.
Now, they are cheaper than a sandwich, and
Shakespeare is free.”
Bad news: Prices

❖ 262, 7 Million of books borrowed in 2012-13!
❖ 288 Million of visits!
❖ + 44,5% volunteers to keep the libraries open!
❖ - 100 libraries in the Uk in the next two years!
❖ For the ﬁrst time in the UK librarian industry the
number of independent libraries has fallen under 1000
(they are 987). Over a third of independent bookshops
have been wiped out in the past nine years.
Bad news: Places
Bookseller (21.02.14)

Bad news: Time
– Scott Wallsten, What are We Not Doing When We’re Online?!
“Each minute of online leisure time is correlated with 0.29 fewer
minutes on all other types of leisure, with about half of that coming
from time spent watching TV and video, 0.05 minutes from (ofﬂine)
socializing, 0.04 minutes from relaxing and thinking, and the balance
from time spent at parties, attending cultural events, and listening to
the radio. Each minute of online leisure is also correlated with 0.27
fewer minutes working, 0.12 fewer minutes sleeping, 0.10 fewer
minutes in travel time, 0.07 fewer minutes in household activities, and
0.06 fewer minutes in educational activities”

❖ There are 43,200 hours of new YouTube videos created
each day, as well as 250 million new photos uploaded
each day on Facebook. Users also contribute valuable
but unmeasured content in the form of reviews on sites
like Amazon, TripAdvisor, and Yelp. A team of just
ﬁfteen people at Instagram created a simple app that
over 130 million customers use to share some sixteen
billion photos (and counting).
Bad news: Contents
Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee (The Second Machine Age)

– Dale Jorgenson - Barbara Fraumeni, Productivity and U.S. Economic Growth
“The value of human capital in the United States is
ﬁve to ten times larger than the value of all the
physical capital in the United States..”
Good news: Human Capital

❖ As the technology destroys geography — a barrier
that used to protect authors from worldwide
competition—it opens up specialisation as a source of
differentiation. Instead of being the thousandth-best
children’s book author in the world, it may be more
proﬁtable to be the number-one author in Science-
Based Advice for Football Clock Management.
Good News: Specialisation
Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee (The Second Machine Age)

Good news: Imagination
– Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource, 1981!
“It is your mind that matters economically, as much or more than
your mouth or hands. In the long run, the most important economic
effect of population size and growth is the contribution of additional
people to our stock of useful knowledge.!
!
The main fuel to speed the world’s progress is our stock of
knowledge, and the brake is our lack of imagination.”

Children’s lit: Uk
Where children’s literature is concerned,
the golden age refers to a long period
beginning in and around the 1830s, and
continuing into the early twentieth
century. Writers were beginning to
preach at children less, and feed their
imaginations more.

From here:

To here:

Little Brown Young Readers is working
with toy giant Mattel to publish Ever After
High franchise. A middle grade series of
books set in a boarding school where the
children of classic fairytale characters
choose either to follow their parents’
fables or to carve out their own destiny.
Mattel has already launched a range of
six dolls (at £ 19,99), and next year will
roll out clothing, accessories, stationery
and other products.

The philosophy?
Tom Weldon, UK executive
of Penguin-Random House,
says that…

“The biggest challenge for publishers is not digital,
but discoverability; how do we capture
consumers’ attention. Once you’ve caught it, I
don’t mind where they buy the book”
– TW on Bookseller, 14.03.14, pag. 06-07

“With our brands we no longer compete just with
other publishers, but with tech companies, and
other entertainment business, such as BBC,
Lego…”

“We will be the ﬁrst of a new kind of childrens’
publisher: we are storytellers, but we might tell
this story through books, toys, app, clothes. You
can’t just think of this as a book, because kids
don’t”

Uk children book market
Topics?
Centenary of First World War!
Dying / real stories!
Be super / Be funny!
Cooking for children

❖ … a dog (Megan Rix, A soldier’s friend)!
❖ … a magical car (Cameron McAllister, The tin Snail)!
❖ … poetry and a museum (Gaby Morgan, Poems from the
ﬁrst world war)!
❖ … a brother (Dan Smith, My brother’s Secret)!
❖ … love (Mary Hooper, Poppy)!
❖ … love - but at the end he dies (Rebecca Stevens, Valentine
Joe)!
First World War +

❖ … witches and a trilogy (Sally Green, Half bad)!
!
❖ … mystery and a series (in the ’30), (Robin Stevens,
Murder most unladylike)!
❖ … afterlife shock and a one-shot novel (Patrick Ness,
More Than This)
Dying +

❖ … mutant teens (Steve Feasey, Mutant City)!
❖ … teenagers superhuman (Jeff Povey, Shift)!
❖ … school devils and angels (Soman Chainani, World
Without Princes)!
❖ … absolutely nothing of special (Tom Gates, A tiny bit
lucky)
To be super +

❖ … Let’s Bake (Cathryn Dresser)!
❖ … How can a pigeon be a war hero? (Tracey Turner)
Non - fiction

Children’s lit: ITA
The children’s book market is
not yet globalised, and there
is different way to react to
the same topics. There are
different main character and
different Super Star.
Colloquio con un editore che ha chiesto
di rimanere anonimo. E che non è
seduto in questa sala. Forse.

From Here:

LA MANO DI THULUHC
Miei Cari
e Sventurati Amici,
cominciate subito a tremare,
perché al Castello della Paura
il brivido è di casa!
Guido Sgardoli
LA MANO DI THULUHC
LamanodiThuluhc
1
To here:

❖ … american slavery (Francesco D’Adamo, Oh, Freedom) !
❖ … ﬁrst world war (Chris Hill, Il volo dell’asso di picche)!
❖ … ’29 crisis (Francesco Silei, La doppia vita del signor
Rosember)!
❖ … second world war (Roberto Denti, Ancora un giorno ;
Cognolato - DelFrancia, L’eroe invisibile)!
❖ … criminal gangs (and judo) (Luigi Garlando, ‘o Maè)!
❖ … migration and natural disaster (M.T. Andruetto, Il
paese di Juan)
Facts +

❖ … glasses (Elvira Linda, Manolito Quattrocchi)!
❖ … brothers (James Patterson, Mio Fratello le spara
grosse)!
❖ … and trouble-makers (da Tom Gates alla Schiappa,
passando per Gianburrasca e Timmy Frana)
Funny School +

❖ … Oxford (Samantha Shannon, La stagione della falce) !
❖ … riding clouds (Alex Shearer, Cacciatori di nuvole ;
Davide Morosinotto, le Repubbliche Aereonautiche)!
❖ … ﬁght for love (Lauren Oliver, Requiem)!
❖ … ﬁght against aliens (Rick Yancey, La quinta ondata)!
❖ … parallel worlds (Leonardo Patrignani, Utopia)!
❖ … vikings mices (Geronimo Stilton, i Topinghi)
Distopic +

❖ … witches and a trilogy (Sally Green, Half bad)!
❖ … a castle full of dark stories (AA.VV. , Il castello della
Paura)!
❖ … a boy grown prisoner in a room (David Almond, La
vera storia del mostro Billy Dean)
Fear +

❖ … sex (Godard-Weil, Smack! Smack!)!
❖ … philosophy for children (Anna Vivarelli, Pensa che ti
ripensa)!
❖ … horribles animals (Elise Gravel, il verme; la mosca)!
❖ … early pregnancy (Annalisa Strada, una sottile linea
rosa)!
❖ … kids in history (Laura Orvieto, Storie di Bambini
molto antichi)
Non - fiction +

❖ … Ugo Fontana ( + Roberto Piumini, Grandi Regine ; +
Donatella Ziliotto, Mondo Bambino)!
❖ … Mafalda (Quino, Mafalda)!
❖ … black chicken (Calimero)
Old-style stories +

Mondadori publishes a new serie of pre-school
book based on “Calimero”, one of the most
acclaimed italian characters of ’80. Now on air
in a 3d new style animation cartoon on RAI.

Uk/Ita children book market
What’s happening?
Italian authors are focused on
speciﬁc and specialised topics.
Perhaps they need to be
“more italian in an
international way”.

Settings
Characters
World
ME

SuperStars Take All
Writes R.H.Frank, on New
York Times, in “Winners Take
All, but Can’t We Still
Dream?”

Choosing the best
Technology has supercharged the ability of authors like Rowling to leverage their
talents via digitization and globalization. Rowling’s stories can be captured in movies
and video games as well as text, but each of those formats, including the original
books, can be transmitted globally at trivial cost. She and other superstar storytellers
now reach billions of customers through a variety of channels and formats. More
often than not, when improvements in digital technologies make it more and more
attractive to digitize something, superstars in various markets see a boost in their
incomes while second-bests have a harder time competing. The top performers in
music, sports, and other areas have also seen their reach and incomes grow since the
1980s. Only 4 percent of software developers in the burgeoning app economy have
made over a million dollars. Three-quarters of them made less than thirty thousand
dollars.

❖ Julia Donaldson, for 5-7 market
has 9 books in the top ten;
5-7

❖ David Walliams, for 9-12
market has 7 books in the top
ten;
9-12

Future
Perhaps the most important
ideas of all are meta-ideas—
ideas about how to support
the production and
transmission of other ideas.
- Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee (The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies)

❖ … In less then 10 years, an e-reader will cost less than
£20…!
❖ … without middleman, a book can costs £1 and can be
fairy split between authors and publishers, and writers
could earn as much per copy as we do on a paperback…!
❖ … kids on free school meals could get £10 of e-book token
every term. !
❖ … school libraries can replace bookshelves with lounges
where kids can read, surf or do homeworks and
information professional organise events rather than
books..
Perhaps…

❖ … could decide to ﬁnd their new bestseller using
start-up like Quirky…
Perhaps publishers…
Quirky seeks ideas for new consumer products from
its crowd, and also relies on the crowd to vote on
submissions, conduct research, suggest
improvements, figure out how to name and brand the
products, and drive sales. Quirky itself makes the
final decisions about which products to launch and
handles engineering, manufacturing, and distribution.
!
It keeps 70 percent of all revenue made through its
website and distributes the remaining 30 percent to
all crowd members involved in the development
effort; of this 30 percent, the person submitting the
original idea gets 42 percent, those who help with
pricing share 10 percent, those who contribute to
naming share 5 percent, and so on.

❖ Will use Afﬁnova to choose the best cover…
Perhaps publishers…
It makes use of the mathematics of choice
modeling, an advance significant enough to
have earned a Nobel Prize for its
intellectual godfather, economist Daniel
McFadden. Choice modeling quickly
identifies people’s preferences—do they
prefer a brown embossed bottle with a
small label, or a green non-embossed one
with a large label?—by repeatedly
presenting them with a small set of options
and asking them to select which they like
best. Affinnova presents these options via
the Web and can find the mathematically
optimal set of options (or at least come
close to it) after involving only a few
hundred people in the evaluation process.

– A.S. Byatt, The Children's Book, 2009
“Writers for children must still be children themselves, deep
down, must still feel childish feelings, and a child's surprise at the
world.”
But for sure…

– Elbert Hubbard, A Thousand and One Epigrams (1911)
“One machine can do the work of ﬁfty ordinary men. !
No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.”
And…

Can machines write
books?
Asks David Brooks, on NYT
article: What machines can’
do.

We don’t think so

But we
could fail
We only are
children's books
writers.

Thanks
Pierdomenico Baccalario

Publishing Trend @ Bologna Children Book Fair

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