State of Children's Publishing: What's Selling and What's Not - Maya Gartner

Maya Gartner has worked in children's books at Walker, Penguin Random House, and now as an associate publisher at Phaidon Press where she's been since 2021. She specializes in acquiring unique art and design led non-fiction children's books for children ages 0-14 in a range of formats (board books, novelty books, picture books and gift books). 

Moderator TeMika Grooms asks Maya to describe a typical 'day in the life' as an associate publisher:

Maya is based in London (Phaidon is a global company with offices all over the place) where she goes into the office 3 days a week. She loves going into the office because she loves to see her colleagues. Maya project manages about 20 books at the same time and mornings are when she is working on these titles (currently those publishing out into Fall of 2028). Afternoons are when she has video meetings with her NY office colleagues.

Maya was brought up in four different countries and is interested in stories and creators from all over the world. As a kid she was obsessed with Studio Ghibli before it was well-known to her friends and classmates. As a publisher Maya continues to look globally for artists and writers who might delight kid audiences in different countries and markets. 

TeMika asks the panel how they choose what's going to be 'next' and Maya reminds us that Phaidon is traditionally an art book company, so even if she receives an amazing middle grade or YA romantasy novel submission, that is not Phaidon's forte (hopefully spelled 'phorte' internally).

Phaidon Kids doesn't focus on predicting trends but on publishing concept-driven formats where the design reinforces the story. An example Maya shares is the Our World book (by SCBWI success story and member Sue Lowell Gallion!) which is a globe-shaped geography book for younger readers.

Our World: A First Book of Geography

 by Sue Lowell Gallion, illustrated by Lisk Feng

Maya is looking for books that are technically innovative and playful, she shares a lavishly designed book all about the table of elements for older kids as well as Phaidon Children's best selling title—an interactive recipe book series with novelty/pop-up elements. 

Exploring the Elements: A Complete Guide to the Periodic Table
by Sara Gillingham, with words by Isabel Thomas

Panelists shared additional tips about submitting, what they were looking for, and how they find authors and illustrators. To view this session and hear the rest of their answers (along with every other conference session!) you can still register at https://www.scbwi.org/events/virtual-summer-conference-2026. Replays of the sessions will be available until mid-September 2026.

Spread from COOKIES an interactive recipe book (the sifter really sifts!),
part of the COOK IN A BOOK series by Lotte Nieminen

Editor & Agents Panel: Sara Sargent

Topic: The Current State of the Children's Publishing Industry

Sara Sargent is Senior Executive Editor at Random House Children's Books. Sara primarily acquires picture books, but also does some middle grade and young adult, both fiction and nonfiction. She’s been in the industry for about 14 years. 

Laurent asks if the shift of editors becoming agents has changed anything. Sara acknowledges there's a higher volume of work coming in now, but she offers an important and helpful note. Sara believes agents are valuable because a huge role they play is taking time to talk to editors. They are taking the time to call or see editors in person and know what they are looking for in order to expertly direct your manuscripts to the right editors. 

Laurent asks about the current issue of book banning. Sara shares that book banning creates an element of grief. Books bring kids the experience of not feeling alone in whatever there experience is. As editors, to the best of their ability, the intent is to continue to do what they have always done and bring books to kids. Book banning has not impacted any decisions to publish a book. They will continue to acquire books they believe are important and that  kids need. 

Myth busters! There are have been some great one shared by the panelists, and Sara shares a fantastic one. That there is a preference to find author/illustrators and that it's disqualifying to only be a writer. They absolutely acquire picture book text from writers who don't also illustrate. And, as is typical for the industry, it is not up to you to find an illustrator for your work. (This is a common misconception!)

Laurent asks the panelists to share one piece of advice a mentor has shared. One boss told Sara, "I want you to publish books that warm the cockles of your heart." It has stuck with her, and has stayed with her. It's about doing what she loves. Being guided by what lights her from within. 

Such great information was shared in during this panel. If you want to view this session to hear the full content, along with the rest of the conference, register at https://www.scbwi.org/events/summer-conference-2023. Replays of the conferences will be available until September 10, 2023. 

Editors & Agents Panel: Tiff Liao

Tiff Liao is executive editor at Zando's Young Readers initiative. Prior to joining Zando, Tiff worked at Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, where she edited the instant #1 New York Times Bestsellers Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley, Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, and its sequel Children of Virtue and Vengeance. 

As we come off Dhonielle Clayton's inspiring keynote, the panel weighs in on the challenges the pandemic brought to the industry.

Tiff echoes the thoughts of her colleagues and notes that she's been thinking about flexibility and the way it creates uncertainty, but that it also creates a lot of possibility. 

On supply-chain issues:

Tiff has some reassurances here. She shares that there are so many people working on this issue around that clock! Also, know that your readers are still going to find your books, even if the pub date changes. 

How does BookTok fit into your thinking and marketing? Is it impacting sales?

Tiff acquires YA and notes that BookTok is a very powerful tool right now. Many top selling YA books are popping back up because of BookTok. Zando does incorporate it as a marketing tool, and into campaigns. But as a writer, Tiff says that if the idea of TikTok gives you hives, don't engage because it won't work right. Writers need to be writers first.

On centering stories and voices that have been historically marginalized and what authors should be considering: 

Tiff wants to address marginalized writers directly. "You as a writer have a much more direct line to what readers want as the creator of the story that speaks to them." Tiff also notes that as the industry shifts towards opening doors, you should also be judicious about searching not only for the right editor, but advocates and allies--partners in the process. 

Final thoughts:

Tiff says: Be kind to yourself....we're all in it together. And it's great that you found this community. 

Emma Ledbetter (Abrams): Editors Panel #scbwiWinter22

Editorial Director of picture books, Emma Ledbetter, has been at Abrams a little over three years. Prior to that she was an editor at Athenaeum and has spent most of her career in children's books, but her school background is in art history, and she did intern at Nickelodeon so she is probably very happy to chat about Sponge Bob with you if you ever find yourselves in an elevator together.

What matters most in the manuscripts you select and why?

Emma is really looking to be surprised. This can take many forms, but when you see as many submissions as she does you observe a lot of patterns in story telling or plot tropes and characters. Surprise could be a unique way into narrating nonfiction, or a character's voice with a truly distinct personality.

What happens after you decide you want to make an offer on a manuscript?

All of Emma's acquisitions go to an editorial team meeting, and then an acquisitions meeting with profit and loss statements, etc. In attendance at that meeting is the Abrams CEO as well as reps from sales, marketing, publicity, library, and subsidiary rights.

Do authors/illustrators now have to the social media clout of a Kardashian to be considered for publication?

There are no expectations that non-celebrities are having a million followers! But it's helpful to have at least one platform that teachers and librarians can find you on, people want to engage with you about your books. Similarly, even if you're not a super social media pro your publishers need somewhere to tag you/your books, so help out their marketing department and at least have an account somewhere.

One of Emma's books, SOUL FOOD SUNDAY, is a
2022 Coretta Scott King Book Award Illustrator Honor Book

Best first steps when submitting?

Kindness and professionalism go a long way, show interest in hearing/being open to feedback. It's not hard to flatter Emma! Even just a little bit of research into her list shows a level of care in your submission, that you know your tastes align.

Are you sure you don't need to be a 12-year-old yodeling TikTok star to get a book deal these days? 

Remember that what you're reading about in the news is because it's a newsworthy outlier and a skewed view of book deals. There is still a huge range of people being published of all ages, backgrounds and locations.

Another of Emma's books, THE PEOPLE'S PAINTER, won the 2022 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award as well as the Association of Jewish Libraries Sydney Taylor Notable Picture Book Award

Michelle Frey: Editor Panel

Michelle Frey is an executive editor at Alfred A Knopf Books for Young Readers. She's been editing for twenty-five year, and twenty of those have been with Knopf. She's worked on all kinds of books. Some of her best known are ERAGON by Christopher Paolini, THE PENDERWICKS series by Jean Birdsall, I'M NOT YOUR PERFECT MEXICAN DAUGHTER by Erica Sanchez, and OF THEE I SING by Barack Obama, illustrated by Loren Long. 

When discussing what makes a submission to turn into a book Michelle must have, she says the absolutely number one things is voice. When she finds a great voice, there can be other problems, but Michelle finds she can work with those problems, but voice is that element that's hard to teach. 

Michelle shared an SCBWI success story. She met an author with an amazing voice at a first-pages session at an SCBWI event, but it had a lot of problems. Based on Michelle's feedback, the writer worked on her book for six months and then submitted to Michelle, and Michelle ended up buying that book. 

When it comes to social media, an authors presence is not important to Michelle when acquiring. Michelle would rather see an author spending time on writing rather than building a social media presence. That said, if social media is a place that an author wants to be, and creates a following, that's great too.

Michelle says she really wants to work with people who are kind. In terms of the creative relationship, building on the partnership is important. She's not expecting a writer she's working with to take every bit of feedback. It's both listening well to the feedback, and also trusting yourself as a writer to fix issues, even it's not in the way she suggested. 

If Michelle takes the time to give a writer feedback (a writer who has submitted), it's because she sees something in that project. It's also a time for her, as an editor, to see how a writer she's never worked with revises. 

#SCBWISummerSpec: A Conversation with Grace Lin and Alvina Ling

There are quite a few pictures of Alvina Ling and Grace Lin together on the internet, but this is the one I chose

You're probably thinking "oh for crying out loud, guest blogger Mike Jung, how about not coughing up your personal anecdotes about the faculty for a change," to which my answer is BUT I WANNA. In fact, Alvina Ling and Grace Lin are both lovely, gracious, engaging people who were supremely kind and welcoming to me, as I know they'd be to you too, if we were actually gathering in person. And, AND, I met them both at SCBWI conferences, which is, of course, the type of cool thing that can happen when attending SCBWI conferences.

Hey it's Alvina Ling!

They're also both dedicated advocates for equitable representation of historically marginalized voices in children's publishing, with long histories of doing that work before it entered the mainstream discourse, and long-time BFFs who co-host a podcast called Book Friends Forever. But that's not all, of course. 

Alvina Ling is VP and Editor-in-Chief at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers where she oversees Little, Brown’s picture book, middle grade, and young adult lists, and edits books on all of those lists too. She's worked with creators such as Peter Brown, Bryan Collier, Ed Young, Wendy Mass, Justina Chen, Chris Colfer, Laini Taylor, Libba Bray, Holly Black, Matthew Quick, and of course, the aforementioned Grace Lin. She's kind of a big deal.

The one and only Grace Lin!

Grace Lin is, simply put, one of the most accomplished and influential children's book creators of her generation. She's a Newbery Honor medalist, Caldecott Honor medalist, Theodore Geisel Honor medalist, National Book Award finalist, Today Show Kid's Book Club honoree, Champion of Change for Asian American and Pacific Islander Art and Storytelling (as named by the office of President Barack Obama), New York Times bestseller, New England Public Radio commentator, NYT book reviewer, and TEDx speaker. Her art has hung in the White House. The woman is legit. 

Alvina and Grace really are best friends forever - they met in fifth grade, wrote endless letters to each other when Alvina's family moved to California, shared an apartment in Boston when Grace blanketing the earth with postcards of her artwork and Alvina was interning at Charlesbridge and The Horn Book, and years later, after Grace had established herself as a respected, working author/illustrator and Alvina had climbed the ladder at Little, Brown for Young Readers, finally worked on their first book together, THE YEAR OF THE DOG, which just so happened to be about their childhood friendship. I mean, seriously, how preposterously sweet is that whole story? You can't make this stuff up, am I right?

They went on to collaborate on a bunch of books, including Geisel Honor recipient LING & TING: NOT EXACTLY THE SAME, and the middle-grade novel that took hard-working, deeply respected storyteller Grace Lin and elevated her into the kidlit pantheon, WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE MOON, for which Grace received the Newbery Honor medal. 

They had yet to work on a picture book together, however, and in fact Grace hadn't done any PBs at all for a number of years. The birth of her daughter proved the catalyst for The Rebirth of Picture Book Queen Grace Lin, however, as well as the onset of the Lin & Ling BFF Era of PB Dominance. Their first picture book together was A BIG MOONCAKE FOR LITTLE STAR, which was subsequently named a Caldecott Honor book. I mean, of course it was, right? It was their first-ever picture book together! That is bananas!

There was too much useful, superbly defined advice to comprehensively note here, but one that struck me was the intersection of Grace's perception of herself - a storyteller, that is, instead of an author, illustrator, or author/illustrator - and her approach to deciding whether she's writing a picture book, easy reader, or MG novel. In a nutshell, she doesn't really decide at all, because as a storyteller, she approaches each story with the tools at her disposal, which are words and pictures. and the story itself will reveal which format it fits into eventually. PBs are good for stories that focus on small, intimate moments - a family ordering food in DIM SUM FOR EVERYONE!, for example - while novels are much more enveloping and engrossing. And of course, novels don't rely on illustrations the way PBs do. Grace's family apparently tells her she's always in a bad mood when she's writing a novel, which I suspect is not an experience exclusive to her family. *cough*

One of the most interesting parts of the conversation to me personally was Grace's very open and easy admission that she's always been and will probably always be harried by imposter syndrome. Her honesty is refreshing - stature of the kind she possesses is too often accompanied by arrogance, after all - and she followed up with what I think is a very important point. Her insecurity and doubts are parts of her, and they might stop her from feeling like the world needs her to make art, but they don't stop her from knowing she needs to make her art, for her own sake. And honestly, it's useful to know that someone as skilled and deservedly feted as Grace Lin still grapples with imposter syndrome, because it's so clear that the imposter syndrome is wrong. Super wrong. Sooooooo wrong. 

#SCBWISummerSpec Editors Panel: Neal Porter

Neal Porter, founder and publisher of Neal Porter Books, with Yuyi Morales, author/illustrator of the award-winning picture book DREAMERS

Neal Porter is VP and publisher of Neal Porter Books, an imprint at Holiday House, and is also the founder of Roaring Brook Press, an imprint of Macmillan. His books have won a plethora of awards, including the Caldecott Medal, four Caldecott Honors, Geisel Honors, Sibert Honors, the Coretta Scott King Award and Honor for illustration, Pura Belpré Awards, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and in 2015 he himself was awarded an Eric Carle Honor in the category of Mentor.

I had the pleasure of meeting and having more than one conversation with Neal at an SCBWI conference at Asilomar a few years ago, and I made a point of introducing myself and expressing my respect because ye gods, the man is having a CAREER, you know what I’m saying? He’s been in the children’s publishing industry for 43 years, with positions at too many publishing houses to even try to list, and works with some of the most heralded authors and illustrators in the field, including my personal choice for The Best Picture Book Author/Illustrator On the Planet Earth Right Now, Yuyi Morales.

The man himself, Neal Porter.

Neal exclusively publishes picture books - 24 picture books spread across 3 seasons per year, to be exact - and some of the books he’s especially proud of are DREAMERS by Yuyi Morales, NINE MONTHS by Miranda Paul and Jason Chin, HEY WATER! by Antoinette Portis, and A PLACE TO LAND by Barry Wittenstein. In fact, he met Miranda, Antoinette, and Barry at SCBWI events, so, you know, SCBWI has served up a few bottles of that particular flavor of lightning.

Neal’s also done the publishing equivalent of finding a movie star working at the local soda fountain - in his case, the soda fountain being an indie bookstore, and the movie star being future Caldecott medalist Erin Stead - but he mostly hears about new talent from agents. He entertainingly describes the three-person staff of Neal Porter as a “vast empire,” but one which doesn’t accept unsolicited material because, you know, three people. Dude is good with irony.

He was not shy about acknowledging the changes and challenges forced upon the publishing industry by the Covid-19 pandemic. He misses the easy spontaneity of strolling down the hall to chat with colleagues, which is a more formal and ritualized process via Zoom. His list is full through 2022, and looking to 2023 means looking toward a reality we can’t yet predict the shape of. At the end of the day the publishing industry is still a personal, intuitive, and selfish (in the sense of only publishing books he truly loves) one for him, but he second guesses his choices more these days because of pandemic-induced uncertainty.

Neal acknowledges that as a 66 year old white guy, he carries an immense amount of privilege that he sometimes struggles to check at the door, but he finds much inspiration and learning from the examples set by his younger colleagues, and is eager to keep finding new work that prioritizes underrepresented voices, confronts racism, and empowers individuals and communities to rise up. Publishing has proven infinitely adaptable, and he believes a good book will always find its audience, no matter the circumstances.

Lin Oliver, Neal Porter, Arthur Levine, Namrata Tripathi, Julia Strauss-Gabel, Stacey Barney, Jill Santopolo, and Brian Truitt during the #SCBWISummerSpec editor panel.

#SCBWISummerSpec Editors Panel: Stacey Barney

Stacey Barney of G.P. Putnam's Sons kicked off the Editor's Panel at the SCBWI Summer Spectacular by reassuring the publishing community that although she is eager to return to the office, business continues as usual on her end during the pandemic. She quoted Publisher Jennifer Klonsky in reiterating their ongoing mission to "publish books for every reader." She mentioned her experience as an educator prior to becoming an editor, and highlighted books on her list including the award-winning Firebird by Misty Copeland.
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She talked about how the heart of her work lies in the writer-editor relationship, specifically working with a full and trusted list of talent ("repeat offenders"!), emphasizing the push-and-pull of collaboration, and how fun it can be to shape a book together with her authors.

She talked about her criteria in seeking new talent: LOVE. Stacey wants to fall in love with an author's voice and vision, and to see longterm potential in working together, noting that she invests in authors for a career, not just for a debut. 

Although she loves a debut! She said finding new talent "is like the bloom of a new romance."

Stacey also mentioned that although some authors may come to her as best-selling in their genres, if they're new to Children's Publishing, she sees and works with them in the same way as she does with debut talent.

Penguin colleague Julie Strauss-Gabel also noted that Penguin does not a separate acquisitions board, so acquisitions are mostly editor-driven. That effort can be seen and felt in Stacey's passion for seeking authors she wants to collaborate with for a lifetime. 

Q: What's one thing you wish authors did more often?

A: "I wish authors would take more risks with their craft & execution." Stacey mentions that editors read a lot of submissions, and seek a fresh voice and style that jumps out at her – which is the magic that happened when she read the manuscript for Ziggy Stardust and Me by James Brandon.

When asked about authors seeking to begin their publishing career over the age of 50, Stacey mentioned that she won't look at the submission letter first. She emphasizes it's about the words on the page, not the age of the author. If she gets about 25 pages into the submission itself and begins to get curious about the author's identity, "that's when you know you have me!"

Sidenote: Last night at the Illustrator's Social on Twitter, we established a tea club #SCBWITea, so here that is referenced in my drawing! All tea lovers welcome. Despite the virtual format for this conference, we're still finding ways of connecting and building community!