The Middle Grade Landscape, Part 1

What’s New, What’s Happening Next, How Authors Can Navigate

Maybe you read the recent Publisher’s Weekly article about the middle grade marketplace, but in case you didn’t, I have a roundup for you – from my perspective as a middle grade author. Plus insights into what we as authors can expect and do for our books and our careers.

Stats on Sales

I’m a dedicated fan of middle grade, ever since it emerged as an actual age niche in reading levels. As a kid who graduated from Nancy Drew to Agatha Christie with almost nothing in between, I fell in love with middle grade when it emerged as a force just as my son reached that reading age.

And for most of those years middle grade has enjoyed increasing popularity.

But for the past two years, sales of middle grade in all formats (hardcover, softcover, audio, e-book) have been down. And that negative trend is continuing.

What’s Going On?

There’s no consensus as to why this is happening. Some have suggested the price point of hardcovers is to blame, but other formats are also struggling. Others have suggested that the pandemic, by keeping kids apart and therefore not sharing their favorite reads, is the source of the problem.

Barnes & Noble continues to be important to the sales of middle grade in particular. In cities and towns that don’t have indie bookstores, B&N fills the gap. The rumor that B&N would only stock paperbacks in middle grade has been stoutly denied by B&N execs, but they did concede that the number of hardcovers of any title stocked would be fewer – the implication being that price point is the consideration.

After all, most middle grade novels are read once, unlike picture books that are read over and over. Personally, I often wait for a softcover release, or buy the e-book.

Further, middle grade readers tend to “read up” (witness my 13-year-old-self hiding in the bathtub to read Agatha Christie). This means that the noted age gap between what some publishers want in middle grade – a 12-year-old protagonist – and the 13-year-old reader doesn’t fit the readership.

Many agents and authors have noticed that, where before the pandemic it was typical to get 5 to 6 trade reviews, we’re now lucky to get 2, and that “review shrinkage” has resulted in less coverage (speaking from personal experience – this is truly frustrating.) Is that a worker shortage? A new policy? No one can (or will) say.

And of course, authors were all prevented during Covid from engaging in school visits – not only a source of income but an essential way to spread the word about our books.

So… What to Do?

As an author, I have thoughts.

Because of the price point issue, I think we should all be pushing for paperback releases. If you have an agent, I suggest talking to them about that possibility right up front. I’m even willing to go so far as to endorse paperback originals. In the middle grade space, hardcovers are great for libraries, but that need can be filled by library bindings/limited hardcover releases, or possibly shorter timelines between hard and softcover releases.

This means negotiations around advances and earn outs and percentages, but I think it’s high time for rethinking the way things have always been done in publishing.

Let’s also discuss the age range issue. Why do all MG protagonists have to be 12? What’s wrong with MG characters who are 13 or even 14? Ratchet up the language and complexity of the story, and don’t yet cross the boundary into YA content, but I think we need books for those readers.

And we should all be supporting, writing, and endorsing graphic novels. As the mother of a dyslexic son, I finally broke the barrier with him with early graphic novels and comics. At that time I had to choose carefully; now there is a plethora of options.

I’m not sure what we can do about review shrinkage, but we all need to be talking about what it’s doing to our sales.

Recently there’s been a discussion about middle grade book length. As an author whose middle grade word counts have ranged from 35K to 90K, book length really only matters as to what’s needed to create a great story. I love reading shorter books with short chapters. So do many kids.

What’s Next

This is already a long post, so I’m going to leave a discussion of author incomes and more positive actions for next week, if you can hang with me. And I’d love to have you join the discussion, as we could all benefit from exploring new ways of publishing for kids.

See you then!