PREVIEW


Children’s Spring Special Introduction & Trends


Children’s Spring Special Heady days blunted by Bologna absence


The cancellation of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair is a blow to the kids’ sector, but many within it are coming up with novel ways to work around the Covid-19 disruption, showing the skills that have propelled the market to its recent heights


Tom Tivnan @tomtivnan


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f this was a normal year, a sizeable portion of the British children’s book trade would be preparing to decamp to Bologna, while simultaneously lording it over their adult division colleagues: “Oh, you’ve never been to Bologna? It’s the best.” (I won’t sugar the pill if you’ve never been; it is by some distance the best trade fair). But outside of what makes Bologna enjoyable—the weather, gelato, the food (oh my, the food!) and the lashings of Prosecco—there is serious work done there. And while most rights teams, publishers and agents are going about the normal business of selling translations and co-editions—and in some cases, as was done during the London Book Fair, keeping Bologna appointments virtually via Skype or Zoom—inevitably there will be a slowdown in deals struck in the first half of the year. There is a received wisdom that no deals are actually concluded at the fairs, that announcements are merely whipped up by an overexcited trade press. To an extent that is true, but how many territories a title is eventually sold into is hugely dependent on word of mouth at events like Bologna. The hot properties heard of at parties and in bars, those which may not come up in 30-minute back-to-back meetings, are what makes Bologna important. Recognising that there will be a Bologna- sized hole in the calendar, we have decided to forge ahead with what would have been


TheBookseller.com


For six years on the trot, the children’s market has notched a record return through Nielsen BookScan, while rights revenue and exports are at an all-time high


the fair’s preview and bump that up to an expanded Children’s Spring Special (CSS). First of all, as you can see in our truncated Agents’ Hotlists (pp20-23, CSS), there are a lot of books on agents’ lists that will surely be gobbled up across the globe by foreign publishers. (As an aside, we will also be running a “virtual Bologna” rights email, with all the deals that would have been seting the fair alight, on 31st March and 1st April.)


For the record We also did not want to miss the chance to shine a spotlight on what is probably the British book trade’s strongest sector. For six years on the trot, the children’s market has notched a record return through Nielsen BookScan (£387.7m in 2019), while rights revenue and exports are at an all-time high. There are testing times ahead, but as the new Simon & Schuster Children’s boss Rachel Denwood points out (see Lead Story in the main magazine, pp06–07), maybe in this time of crisis, children’s books and reading will be seen as essential. I wouldn’t bet against it.


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