Consumers

Children's books

Children's books are sorely lacking in diversity as more often than not the main character is white. This presents a gap in the market as many families of other ethnicities will be looking for a character that their child could relate to. However the majority of the population in the western world is white so they present the biggest market.

Childrens books are more often than not bought by grandparents or family friends as the parents often find other things to spend their money on for their kids and the kids themselves are rarely in a position to choose the book they want. Therefore the best selling books would appeal to the likes of grandparents and should emaphasize their values and beliefs rather than that of a younger or mor liberal generation.

In the lead up to the film adaption of where the wild things are Guardian Columnist Sam Leith written an article on how he believed that childrens books should be scary despite it not appealing to protective parents or fragile children. He says that a book which never leaves a child's comfort zone will never trigger their imagination and help them develop, pointing out that in 30 years people will remember the dementors in the harry potter series rather than the more wholesome moments in the stories.

“The real art of picture books is taking a sophisticated idea and distilling it down to its purest form.” - Peter Brown.

Peter Brown is a best selling children's author with many accolades to his name. To make sure that he knows what his audience responds to, Brown does a lot of school visits, “and that’s the best thing I do to reach my audience. Outside of regular book tours, I go to spend entire days at an elementary school to talk in detail about my process, so at the end of the day’s there’s 400 kids out there, and it’s invaluable to see their reactions. I get to observe my readers up close and personal. I get to see what lines make them laugh and where I’m losing their attention. So when I write my next book, I’ve learned my lesson and try to incorporate that.”


Info taken from http://publishingperspectives.com/2012/05/peter-brown-knows-what-his-audience-needs/