What is going ON in the Middle Grade Market??

In this episode, Beth and Lisa take a look at the challenges facing middle-grade publishing, from declining sales to changes in bookstore stocking strategies, that seem to be all anyone can talk about! They share insights on how aspiring authors can adapt to the shifting landscape and stand out in a saturated market.

Key Discussion Points:

• Viral Tweet and Industry Impact: Lisa’s tweet about authors leaving middle grade went viral, sparking widespread conversation and worry among aspiring authors. (00:46)
• Middle-Grade Sales Decline: Middle-grade sales dropped by 1.8 million books in the first half of 2024 compared to 2023, largely due to shifting reading habits and increased screen time among young readers. (03:02)
• Bookstore Stocking Changes: Barnes & Noble's reduction in middle-grade hardcover stocking and Ingram’s cutback on backlist titles have limited book visibility and availability. (09:53)
• Adapting as a Writer: Lisa offers actionable advice, including writing shorter middle-grade books (35,000 words), crafting a hook in the first chapter, and keeping chapters short to cater to modern attention spans. (19:16)
• The Importance of Listening to Industry Trends: Writers should pay attention to feedback from agents and editors to craft pitches that align with what the market demands. (21:15)

Beth and Lisa encourage aspiring middle-grade authors to be strategic in their approach by writing shorter, punchier books that capture attention quickly. Despite the market challenges, they emphasize that there are still opportunities for success if authors remain adaptable and smart in their storytelling.

Mentioned Links:

• Beth’s Substack on middle-grade trends (free)
• Previous episode with agent Anne Rose
• Writers with Wrinkles website

Next Episode:
On September 30th, tune in for a conversation with literary agent Cathie Hedrick-Armstrong of Marsal Lyon Literary Agency.

Chapters

• 0:00 Challenges in Middle Grade Publishing
• 8:04 Challenges in Middle Grade Market
• 18:13 Crafting Middle Grade Writing Strategically

Transcript

Beth McMullen: 0:31

Hi friends, I'm Beth.

Lisa Schmid: 0:32

McMullen and I'm Lisa Schmid and we're the co-hosts of Writers with Wrinkles. This is a special episode of the podcast, so we can talk about middle grade publishing right now, because there's been lots of conversations online in the news about what is going on and we thought we'd try to cut through all the noise, give you some actual information, minus the panic, and that we would record this. Today is a Thursday and we're going to drop this tomorrow, so this is going to be a quick turnaround for this episode, but we thought it was timely. We started talking about recording this with Lisa's infamous tweet. Do you want to talk about the tweet?

Lisa Schmid: 1:12

I feel like, everybody must have seen it because it had a gazillion views.

Beth McMullen: 1:16

It did. Well, it was one of those things, and I am virtually invisible on social media. So it was shocking that I know of at least three people who have decided to exit middle grade, who have several books out that have shifted over to adult fiction because the middle grade market is too difficult right now and their books aren't getting picked up. And I just spoke with somebody who's leaving middle grade. It's heartbreaking, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Beth McMullen: 1:47

It was just a very simple tweet and it was like hashtag save middle grade, and I just didn't even think anything about it. And then the next thing I know it's getting retweeted, retweeted, retweeted, and there's this whole commentary and authors who've never hooked their head into my little universe were suddenly following me. Agents were following me, people, editors were following me. It was crazy and it just kept getting retweeted. And then, but the other other the downside of that also was that you know, people were talking about it, but there was aspiring writers who were feeling crestfallen, and so then I started feeling anxious and I remember calling you going. I want it to stop getting retweeted because I'm crushing people's hopes and dreams people's hopes and dreams.

Lisa Schmid: 2:39

I think you hit a nerve. I also think that the truth is always better than some Pollyanna point of view where you're saying, oh, it's going to be great. It's going to be great because, honestly, right now it is a hard space to be working in and that bears out, if you look at the numbers, what is happening in middle grade publishing and sales. I just put out a sub stack about this, which I'll put the link to that in the podcast notes here so if people want to read it, they can.

Lisa Schmid: 3:06

What struck me the most was that in the six months of January to June for 2023 versus 2024, there were 1.8 million less books sold in middle grade, which was like a staggering number to me, I think, because you hear, oh, they're not selling as well, blah, blah, blah. But when you see 1.8 million fewer copies sold in the first six months of 24 versus 23, that felt kind of like a gut punch to me. I hadn't really thought about it in absolute numbers. So I think what you were seeing in the tweet is the kind of micro result of that, like individual people who are experiencing this downturn and what that feels like to them, or people who are looking at the market as a potential place, they want to work and saying, wait a minute, what is happening?

Beth McMullen: 4:10

Right, yeah, there was, there's a lot going on. Yeah, there was there's a lot going on. But I do have to say there was one gal who chimed in that I thought was it gave us a little glimmer of hope, and it was an editor from Random House and she tweeted back the market is slow, but we're making a big push for middle grade over at Random House, for what that's worth. We agree that it's so essential to continue growing lifelong readers. So this was an editor, again at Random House, and I, of course, immediately thought oh, prepare yourself, honey, because you're about to get a million thousand submissions for middle grade, because I immediately like, oh, this is going on Leslie's list if I don't get picked up.

Beth McMullen: 4:59

And so I just I think that you know what I'm hearing from and I think we've kind of talked to some people on the show is that they are adjusting and they're seeing that they have to make some shifts because this can't sustain itself. You can't just continue down this path without making adjustments to help it continue to grow, otherwise you're going to, you know, push yourself out of business.

Lisa Schmid: 5:25

So some of the why behind this, I think, is interesting. Obviously, a contributing factor is post-pandemic behavior. I read and I cannot remember the source for this, so forgive me. Reading for pleasure among nine to 12 year olds is losing out to other activities, particularly screen time, and that's like so obvious if you just look around the world. And it happens to adults too. It happens to me.

Lisa Schmid: 5:55

I was talking with a book coaching client recently about how important your first chapter is, because what you're competing with now is not other books or homework or sports, but with the tiny little device in your pocket. And if you can't provide something that grabs the attention more so than the tiny little device, then you're sunk and it's a huge mountain to climb. It's hard. I mean, it used to be, yeah, have a great first chapter, but now it's like you have to have a chapter that's not only great, but it has to transcend that dopamine rush that you get from whatever it is you're doing on your phone, which is tough in the best of circumstances. That's tough. So part of the reason that, part of the reason of of why we're seeing this change in middle grade, is because reading for pleasure has had a big shift post pandemic. I don't know, maybe we would have ended up here anyway, but possibly slower. But that pandemic, really, because it sent us all to our little screens, it definitely accelerated that trend in my mind accelerated that trend in my mind that's.

Beth McMullen: 7:06

you know, one of the things I see often, especially with aspiring authors online, is talking about how frustrating it is for them that you know they only get to send the first 10 pages, that their book really picks up steam or whatever, and it's like you know what.

Beth McMullen: 7:22

You may think that, but if it doesn't catch an agent's eye, if it doesn't catch their attention, it's certainly not going to catch a reader's attention, and so you really do need to knock that first chapter out of the park. Otherwise and not saying that the rest of the book needs to, you know, well then you can coast, but it that first chapter, you really need to work on it and make it like it has to have a hook, it has to have something that is going to grab the reader's attention more so than any other time. And I know a lot of people say it's you know the first line. I don't agree with that. It's like to me. It's just like that first you know paragraph that first, whatever. That's posing the question for the whole book. It has got to be there, and if it's not there, you need to work on it.

Lisa Schmid: 8:13

Totally, totally true, because I think with adult fiction you have a tiny bit more leeway, not a ton, but a little bit more, because most adults are better at saying to themselves okay, I'm going to give this another five, 10 pages, but kids, no way, you don't have that bandwidth. You've got to get it done in the first couple of pages or you're sunk. And honestly, like you said, if you're thinking to yourself, well, my book picks up later, just shift that momentum forward, bring it all forward, because it doesn't matter what happens on page 10 through 250, if you never get anybody past page three. So you've got to, really you've got to just double down on that. And that is a result of of just these trends heading in the direction they are.

Lisa Schmid: 8:59

Another thing that we talked about with Anne Rose, who's a an agent as well as an author, who was on the show a couple of weeks ago. If you haven't listened to that one, go listen to it, because she has lots of interesting things to say. Among them, another why for explaining this trend in middle grade is that Barnes Noble made a huge, huge shift in how they stock their shelves, what they will purchase, and you have to remember that a publisher's customers are really the bookstores. They're going to determine what is sitting on the shelves in front of potential readers. So those operations are going to affect how books are sold and marketed and all of those things. And because Barnes Noble has pulled back on middle grade hardcover fiction in a big way, suddenly that avenue was shut down and that's huge, has a huge impact in the number of books that are moving.

Beth McMullen: 9:57

It does, and that's so depressing because I used to like years ago, when B borders was still a thing oh my god, I miss border so much I know and it's may come as a surprise. Like I, for a long time I was reading adult fiction, like I loved adult fiction.

Lisa Schmid: 10:16

This is all shocking. This is pretty oh my gosh people are like listening to this podcast and swerving off the road shocked.

Beth McMullen: 10:23

I only started reading middle grade years and years ago when I started hearing about this whole Harry Potter phase craze and I was like you know what I want to check this out Like, why is everyone talking about this? So I started reading middle grade and that's when I fell in love with middle grade again and I was able to go to boarders who had a huge section of middle grade and peruse and I would go like every weekend and find middle grade books that I wanted to read and that's how I fell in love with it all over again, because they were right there for me to see. And bookstores have taken away that opportunity for kids. It's no longer kids that get to buy the books, it's whoever. The adults are saying you should buy this book, and so, as a result, I really feel like that's also impacted the middle grade, because kids no longer have a say in what they want to buy, because they're not on Amazon.

Lisa Schmid: 11:17

You just can't look at books that way to buy, and so I mean you have to go to the library, but then again the library is going to have the same stuff available that borders Now I'm totally confusing my borders and my Barnes, barnes, noble is going to have, because that's the stuff that's coming out, right, right, so it's. You know, when you slice in half the number of books that are actually being published and put out there on the shelves of bookstores or libraries, you're just there's way less for the kids to choose from.

Beth McMullen: 11:48

And Barnes and Noble is so like. The section is so small. It's like an L-shaped like section of books. You know that cover, one little tiny cubicle in the corner of Barnes and Noble. And the first day that my book came out I went in there like is my book here? Are they carrying it? And it was there. There was one copy like on a really high shelf that like no kid's ever going to see.

Beth McMullen: 12:14

And the other thing I'm hearing is that a lot of times that once they sell that they may not restock it. They just will move on to the next thing, especially if it takes some time to sell. Yeah, and the other thing is which is really disheartening is Ingram is now not stocking as much of their, their backstock of their middle grade. So, for example, like you can't get Olly Oxley and the ghost because Ingram doesn't stock it anymore. You know you can get it on Amazon or you can get it straight from the publisher. You can't get it from Ingram and it's not that's five years old, I get it. But I have friends whose books came out like two years ago and they're no longer. Ingram no longer stocks it because they're just. So then it's like there goes those sales because they can't get access to it. You know booksellers can't get access to it. So there's this whole swirling, you know mess, of why middle grade is struggling so much.

Lisa Schmid: 13:14

Yeah, and there's lots of spokes in the wheel. You know Barnes Noble is just one of them. Ingram, like you just mentioned all of those things are contributing to this downtick in sales. The other thing that Anne Rose talked about that I think is interesting when you're talking about this topic is that there is the oversaturation in the market, and she actually said this is affecting all genres, but that of course includes middle grade. The market is not going to magically become undersaturated, especially because you have self-publishing really on the upswing. It's gotten better, the books are better. Authors well-known authors are turning to it because they have more control. They're going to make more money off of it. They're not feeling like the publishers are giving them enough for what they're trading off in terms of sales. So you can't count on suddenly the market being desperate and all sorts of books finally selling. I don't think we're going to see under saturation happen. So that's another thing that is impacting middle grade sales right now.

Beth McMullen: 14:26

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot, and it just we were. There's just so many different little like microcosms of like reasons. Also, like we were talking about New York Times bestseller before we went online. There's 15 spots for adult and only 10 for middle grade and YA, and that's. If they even like, show up, they randomly, the bestseller list will randomly show up. Goodreads has completely done away with their middle grade you know best of which is so discouraging, and I think everybody on the planet in middle grade and kid lit has complained to them, and yet they choose not to respond to it, and so we just. I think all these factors are working against us, but we've worked, you know. I'm hopeful that the publishers are finding a way to to work through this hump and and get over this. You know this crisis, so to speak.

Lisa Schmid: 15:23

It's definitely a confluence of events. There's lots of things coming to bear on this downturn. It's not just one thing. It's lots of things happening all at the same time being driven by declining customers, because publishing is a business, and if you suddenly have one third of your customers disappear which is what it sort of sounds like in terms of how many kids are reading for pleasure then you have to adjust. So all is not lost.

Lisa Schmid: 15:53

This is not meant to be the Debbie Downer of podcasts, but I think you need to consider the market you're going into. And how do you? If you are about to try and sell a middle grade book, what are some things that you can do? So I found this interesting little tidbit, and this was also in my newsletter. There are little pockets of growth within middle grade. Certain subjects, for instance and this is totally like a middle grade list robots, dragons, action, adventure, wilderness stories, graphic novels continue to be a bright spot. That makes a lot of sense if we're talking about an attention economy. So maybe you are writing in one of those spaces, in which case, good for you. You've already got a little leg up. Maybe you've been trying to decide I'm going to write about A or B, and B has robots in it. Maybe this helps you head toward B and write about that story that you've been mulling over in your head.

Lisa Schmid: 17:01

The other thing that I think is important is what we just touched on and something that was also touched on by Anne in our conversation with her is that you have to write a really good book in order for it to stand out in this crowded, shrinking market. It has to be excellent. I don't think there's any room anymore for books that are mediocre or half thought through or not quite done or any of those things. You really have to be creating the best book that you can. Of course, you're always going to improve it when you get into a relationship with an editor who brings it to the next level. Blah, blah, blah. But the most that you can do and maybe that involves hiring an editor or getting more friends to read it or joining a critique group or any of these things but I think you really do need to go the extra mile just to give yourself a little leg up in this tough marketplace.

Beth McMullen: 18:13

Really listen to what is being said out there. So, for example, when I went to ALA and everybody was talking and everybody like editors and agents online everyone's saying shorter middle grade, shorter middle grade, shorter middle grade. I hear that and I'm like, all right, I'm writing a shorter middle grade. I cut 10,000. Like I normally go around 45,000 and they, everyone was saying 35,000 is the sweet spot. I believe that I'm not going to like, try to write some story and say, but you're going to love this, you know you'll love it. You know, when I tell it this way, you know what. I'm just making the, you know, my hero's journey just a little bit shorter and cutting out a few obstacles and I'm still getting. You know my point in, I'm still staying true to the story.

Beth McMullen: 19:00

You know, something else I do personally, and it's because I know kids attention spans are really short, is that I write very short chapters. You know they're no more than four pages. When I'm writing which is like around 1500 words, I guess, I don't know and I create lots of white space and short paragraphs and I just I punch it up like throughout it so that you know kids when they're reading it, if they see this long chapter and I'm the same way. I'm like, oh my God, it's 10, you know it's 10 pages, you know. So I keep really short chapters and try to make everything very pinchy, like just move it along really quick. So that's like, if I hear what they're saying, I believe them.

Beth McMullen: 19:43

I started this book with an action sequence. I'm like you know what, I'm jumping right into action and that's how I started this book and so I think it's just, you know, believe what people are telling you out there and don't try to like go against the grain or think that you're going to write something, this amazing thing that's you know so good that it's, you know, going to change somebody's mind.

Lisa Schmid: 20:12

That's true, and I think what we have learned from many of the agents and editors that we talked to on this show is that they do have an idea of what they are looking for, what they think is going to work in this marketplace. And if you listen to what they're saying, you can get a lot of little hints about how to craft your pitch in a way that's going to get them to ask to see the book. And, honestly, if you're starting out, that's your first goal get somebody to ask to read the whole book. And just listen to what they're saying and do what they're saying. And then you are moving yourself to the top of the heap because you're giving them what they want.

Lisa Schmid: 20:48

And yes, the shorter length is super crucial right now because, again, you're competing with a TikTok video or an Instagram reel or this or that, and those things require no effort. Right Reading requires effort. You have to get the book, sit down and read it. So think about your chapter. Is this as catchy as like a TikTok video of some dog doing something cute or something right? And if it's not, you got to raise the bar. You know I mean it's that hard, but that's the reality of it. It's not going to be easy, but everyone can do it. We see books that are doing it now. So I think it's just paying attention to the information that you're given and abiding by it.

Beth McMullen: 21:37

Yeah, and I don't you know, there are still writers out there that are writing middle grade, that are extraordinary long books, like I've got one on hold and somebody just told me it was 400. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm never gonna read it, you're actually 12 years old.

Beth McMullen: 21:54

So I just but I, you know, still, I ordered it, so I got to go pick it up, I bought it, you know, and but the thing is it's like that particular writer he already has a built-in fan base that will read what you know, whatever he writes, because you know they love him so much and so he can get away with that. You cannot. If, like, if you're like a B-list writer like me, I could never get away with that. And if you're an aspiring writer, you are not going to get away with that. So don't, if you see something out there and be like he's doing it.

Lisa Schmid: 22:33

Yeah Well, he's doing it Cause he's got 20 books under him and he's a New York times bestseller, I think. To remember, I like to call it the Stephen King syndrome. Right, he can write a thousand page book which is expensive to produce and sell, but he's going to sell them. You know, you and me, if we write a thousand page book, it's going to be expensive to produce and there's no guarantee that they're ever going to make their money back. So there is also that if you're seeing books that are long and they are tailored to a specific fan base, that makes total sense and you could be one of those people after you publish a few books. But in the beginning, try to pay attention to what you're hearing from the industry and what they're saying they want in your work.

Beth McMullen: 23:14

And that's the bottom line.

Lisa Schmid: 23:17

That's the bottom line. We have hit the bottom line. So, okay, we're happy we came on here to talk about this because it is a trending topic and we have this platform, so we wanted to just get on here and talk to you guys about it. Do not despair. There are definitely openings and gaps in this market that you can slip through and find lots of success. So don't give up, but just pay attention. Be smart. I think is that what we're saying. We're saying be smart about your middle grade writing. Be smart. I think is that what we're saying.

Beth McMullen: 23:47

We're saying be smart about your middle grade writing, be smart and strategic. You know, if you're just, if you're writing for the joy of it and you're like this is I love I write because you know I have so many stories in my head and I want to get them out, then be that joyful writer. But if you are somebody who wants to get published, you know you also have to look at this as a business, like through the eyes of like a Barnes and Noble or a publisher. Like it is a business that you are getting into. I know everyone's like I'm a creative and we're all creatives and there's a very artsy, fun side to it. But if you want to get published, you're going to have to think like a business person as well and be strategic about what you're writing about and how you're writing it.

Lisa Schmid: 24:27

Lisa, business person as well, and be strategic about what you're writing about and how you're writing it. Lisa is very smart. Listen to her words. Be a joyful writer, but also smart and strategic. We should print bumper stickers or t-shirts. I am a joyful writer, but I'm also smart and strategic. Anyway, so that is it for today's episode. Hopefully you get something out of it. Listeners, please remember to visit our website, writerswithwrinklesnet, so you can find out how to support the show by subscribing, following and recommending. Also on our website, you can find the link to ask a question for an upcoming Ask Beth and Lisa episode. Those are turning out to be very popular and we love your questions. We are back on September 30th with literary agent Kathy Armstrong. She's at Marsal Lion. So if you want to know what agents are thinking and talking about and you totally do for all the reasons we just said please join us for that one and until then, happy reading, writing and listening. Bye, lisa, the best, bye guys.