Justin Chanda: The State of the State of the Industry

Justin Chanda presents his keynote address at #LA16SCBWI

Justin Chanda is Vice President & Publisher of the four flagship children's imprints at Simon & Schuster: S&S Books for Young Readers, McElderry Books, Atheneum, and the new Salaam Reads. He oversees the publication of two hundred and fifty titles per year ranging from the youngest picture book to the edgiest YA. Justin continues to edit, working with the likes of Jon Sciezka, Loren Long, Kenneth Oppel, Patricia MacLachlan, Peter Brown, Michael Ian Black, Karma Wilson, Dan Krall, Morgan Matson, Mike Lupica, and Debbie Ohi. He is also the publisher of Saga press, a newly minted adult Sci-Fi-/Fantasy imprint. Follow him on Twitter @jpchanda

Some highlights from Justin's upbeat speech...

Justin covers statistics:

•Children's print books are up over last year
•Teen title sales (especially ebook sales) are down
•2015-2016 have been terrific years for Indie Bookstores

Justin covers trends:

"Trends are the mortal enemy of authentic writing"
#EndTheTrend

And offers some excellent advice:

"The story comes first.
Your story, authentically told, in your own way."

His keynote discusses so much more, including the role of teachers and librarians who "are on the front lines of…getting the right book to the right kid." And how blockbusters "are not the true measure of a book's worth - nor should they be."

Final quote to share, from Justin's significant focus on diversity and how it is so necessary and needed in children's literature:

"Variety is the the true business of children's books, and business remains good."

The Editors Panel!

Children's Books 2015: Report From The Front Lines gets underway with, left to right:

Stephanie Owens Lurie, Associate Publisher, Disney-Hyperion
Laura Godwin, Vice President and Publisher, Henry Holt Books for Young Readers
Beverly Horowitz, Vice President and Publisher, Delacorte Press
and
Justin Chanda, Vice President and Publisher, S&S Books for Young Readers

The long view:

Lin introduces the panel!

Close-ups from right before the panel began...

Stephanie Lurie (left) and Laura Godwin (right)

Beverly Horowitz (left) and Justin Chanda (right)

Justin Chanda: You Have Your 1st (2nd, 3rd) Contract(s) Here's How You Can Help and Hurt Yourself

A barely visible Justin enjoying
WeHo, also known as West Hollywood

MUCH MUCH MUCH of Simon & Schusterer Justin Chanda's talk we were verbøoten to blog or tweet about, BUT:

A few allowed-to-be-mentioned points from Justin Chanda's excellent talk on what to do once you have a book contract.

#1 Be kind to the assistants! Of every department in all of publishing. Be kind to the assistants, they do a lot of thankless work and are paid a pittance, they're there because they love and believe in books and authors, so show them the respect and love they deserve in turn.

#2 Justin quotes one of his favorite people, Debbie Ohi, who says that the success of another chilren's book creator in no way diminishes or steps on your own success. Always cheer on other writers, celebrate each other's work, and build community.

#3 Do NOT kvetch online about your publishing house. Even if they were in the wrong, they will be shamed, certainly, but odds are you don't have the full story, and even if you do, every other publishing house is watching social media and if they see someone that is perceived as reactionary or difficult to work with, they pay attention to that. Be a professional, complain to your critique group in the privacy of a hotel bar.

#4 Before you want to suggest this to your publicist, remember: The TODAY Show really only features a children's book twice a year, and at least half of those features are celebrity driven, if this is your or your freelance publicist's best publicity suggestion, well, keep brainstorming.

Fun fact! Justin's office building was used as the model for the American The Office's headquarters.  Contrary to rumor, Justin Chanda was not used as the model for Michael Scott.

Justin Chanda: The State of the State of the Industry

Justin Chanda is vice president, publisher of three flagship children's imprints at Simon & Schuster: S&S Books for Young Readers, McElderry Books and Atheneum. He oversees the publication of two hundred and fifty titles per year ranging from the youngest picture book to the edgiest YA.

Justin feels he needs to begin by telling us: the e-book has not engulfed our universe; printed things on paper have not been eradicated; self publishing has not taken over; drones are not delivering our books--yet.

The good news is: children still need books.

Get ready! Justin tells us there's a new trend! It's going to change the face of publishing forever. It's contemporary YA. This has been the reaction lately, as if contemporary YA hasn't been done. Tell that to Judy Blume and Laurie Halse Anderson.

This business in cyclical.

Trends are undeniable and influenced by many factors. They are not predictable. You can't write to a trend. If you do, that trend will already be over by the time you're done writing  your book. You have to write the book that you are meant to write. "Your voice is the biggest capital you have in this business."

While there are still what is considered girl books and boy books, there's a great rise in gender-neutral books in middle grade. This is great.

Picture books continue their rise back to life. Yes! Successful picture books now tend to have an identifiable character, humor, adult and child appeal, and they are leaning younger (targeting about 5 too 6 year old).

Justin is a huge fan of e-books. They have done a lot help and sustain the reading growth.

There was a belief that ebooks would kill the picture book, but that is not true. The wonderful printed books that you read with a child in your lap are selling more and more.

The adoption of the Common Core standards across the country is now a key focus. People have said it will kill fiction in the classroom. Common Core is far from perfect and we don't even know if it will be around in a few years. Consider that Locomotion by Brian Floca has found great success and is being used in classrooms as part of the Common Core, but it was written well before Common Core was in place.

Our job as writers is to create good books, not to write toward a trend or the Common Core. Just like trends there will be different educational waves that will come and go.

On diversity: It's the responsibly of publishers and publishing houses to publish books that are as diverse as the world we live in. However, the responsibility is not solely in the hands of the publishers, it's also in the hands of those of us writing the books, the agents representing them, the store selling books. We are all in it together.

Our main focus as writers and illustrators should be story. Write books. Illustrate books.

Justin Chanda: The World's Biggest Rod Stewart Fan and How He Edits Picture Books

One of the best, if not the best, picturebook dummy critiques I ever received was from editor Justin Chanda. And BECAUSE it was so fantastic, I felt compelled to attend this session and blog about it for all of you who are not able to be here. Here in this cold, dark Hyatt basement instead of working on my tan/having a Blue Hawaiian poolside.

So here is How Chanda Revises.

A picture book is an Experience. Long before e-books, picture books were the first interactive book, a well done spread of image and text physically compels you to turn the page. "The page turn is key."

Though a picture book IS marriage of word and picture, at the end of the day, it's a picture book, the pictures are very, very important, the best picture books are the ones where the words are making the pictures better and vice versa.

He looks for:

Short, young, funny text. The market trends for picture books are for five- to six-year-olds.

Economy of text. "If you think you can cut a word, you can cut two. If you think you can cut a sentence, you can cut two. If you think you can cut a paragraph—trick question! You should not have paragraphs in a picturebook manuscript."

A good sign after reading a manuscript is saying, wow, that was satisfying to read. Now I want to reread it. If you want to reread it 100,000 times, that's the stuff classic picture books are made of.

"Rhyming. Your picture book can rhyme. Good. But for every one book that uses rhyme successfully, I can show you fifteen that don't."

The MOST important thing you can do while working on your picture book is to READ IT OUT LOUD.

The first thing Justin does when working on an acquired picturebook manuscript is paginate it. Pagination shows you unequal distribution of text, lets you set up awesome punchlines, and helps you start envisioning things as picture book spreads (which is how you should be looking at it.)

These are not the spreads he's talking about.

But this is.

And by paginating, you can see if there's way too much action on a page making it impossible to illustrate (too much action is different than too much text but often correlates).

WRITERS, make sure you leave something for your illustrators to illustrate. We don't need you to write in the color of the sky.

ILLUSTRATORS, make sure you are not simply illustrating what the author wrote.

What to do with art notes? It's great you are thinking visually! Obviously include them if they're setting up a joke that's the opposite of what the text is saying, but don't be sad when your editor doesn't send them on to the artist.

And now I will let the rest of Justin's tips stay with the conference-goers, but I will tell you he's showing the editorial process behind ROBOT ZOT!

and CREEPY CARROTS!

and THE GREAT LOLLIPOP CAPER

and more!!!!

Editor Panel - Justin Chanda (Simon & Schuster)

It's almost Justin Chanda's first year anniversary of being the publisher of Atheneum and McElderry. According to friends, Justin likes Rod Stewart, hanging wall calendars, and swearing, but he LOVES children's books.

Lin: Tell us about your imprints.

The three imprints Justin is in charge of—Atheneum, Simon &; Schuster Books for Young Readers, and McElderry are all separate but do interact. Justin takes a moment to reiterate what he brought up in his session yesterday, that "commercial" is not a bad word and not always separate from literary.

Books for Young Readers is the "commercial" imprint, and yet they just won a Printz for THE MONSTRUMENTOLOGIST. BFYR publishes lots of series, teen, picture books. It publishes Scieszka and Haddix, too.

Atheneum is the "literary" imprint, the Newbery maker, the home of THE HIGHER POWER OF LUCKY and KIRA-KIRA. And it's also the home of OLIVIA, which has achieved great commercial success.

McElderry is considered a boutique imprint with a small list. Specializes in poetry and high concept literary fantasy like Cassandra Clare, or YA like Ellen Hopkins.

Lin: Do the imprints interact and share?

The imprints do interact, but as far as submissions are concerned, it's not the best idea to submit the same thing to all, there should be a reason why you submitted to one, like Atheneum, instead of blanketing all the imprints. It shows them you aren't doing your research.

Lin: If Martians landed in Century City, how would you describe the creative climate of children's books?

Justin: Does the Martian speak our language? Or is it clicking?

His answer on the state of the business, e-books, and why his editors' faces melt (from love, not Martian death rays, can be read here.)

Favorite Chanda-isms:

Concerning digital picture books "We don't want to make the Betamax or laser disc, we want to make the VHS and DVD."

"If everyone writes to the trends, the vampires win."

"Eventually trends end, we're interested in what is new."

Justin Chanda: Simon & Schuster: The Not So Distant Past, and the Really Fast Approaching Future

Justin Chanda chillaxing by the hotel pool

This is Justin Chanda's first SCBWI conference. I'm not sure why. He's a force to be reckoned with at Simon & Schuster, and he's incredibly enthusiastic about children's books. He starts glowing and levitating when he talks about them. He's our kind of dude.

As the publisher of 3 flagship imprints at Simon & Schuster— Atheneum, BFYR, and McElderry— Justin helps bring about 200+ books into the world every year.

His session was all about mythbusting. Here are a few.

Myth #1: Commercial = Bad

He looks for a balance of of literary and commercial titles on his lists. Commercial doesn't mean non-literary, or not well-written, it means readers are reading.

Myth #4: We are no longer interested in publishing picture books.

Justin says picture books are the backbone of children's publishing. He believes they have a long life ahead of them, he love thems. He does admit they'll be publishing less of them, but that's a good thing. For all kid book genres, he says aspiring writers are competing with the shadow of a publisher's backlist, the long gone authors that still rank in the top 200 for sales numbers. Rather than have a hissy fit, he says there's much to be learned by studying these backlists.

"There is no Fancy Nancy without Eloise. There is no teen literature without The Outsiders."

"In the past, it was a 'cute' side genre for a publisher. Now, children's publishing is a 4 billion dollar a year industry that sometimes carries a publisher through a fiscal year."

It has been tough in the last few years with the economy and the many layoffs in publishing, but for Fall 2010 the industry is gearing up for a very big year, and Justin feels things are turning around.

Justin has a Love-O-Meter! When approached by editors who want to acquire a book he says to them, "If you're face is melting off to buy it, I will let you buy it." He calls these the passion projects. "It's lightning striking somewhere and I want to continue to foster that as a publisher."

He mentions trends and tribulations for middle grade and teen books. And what's working for promoting them and what's not.

"The rise of the internet, it's all about the actual online marketing that the authors are doing. A nut that hasn't been cracked for mg, you can't blog and tweet a middle grader, that's illegal... It might take a few years, but it is so much a part of what's working now, and networking and connecting with teens is how teen books are going like hotcakes."

Justin talks about books he likes. Lots of face melting comments.

And here's his stance on e-books:

"E-books are great. They are wonderful. Anyone who tells you different is wrong. It's just a new avenue to get great stories out to kids and adults. It's like the Wild West right now, and we are still trying to figure it out. I do not believe e-books are going to eradicate the hardcover books. I know it will be difficult for booksellers, but I'm embracing it. And the iPad is going to be a great way to develop picture books. Digital publishing in general is not replacing things, its just a way to get more people reading."

He mentions the recently launched LOSER/QUEEN by Jodi Lynn Anderson, a book only available online. A serialized novel! Readers get to choose the next stop in the story, Justin calls it a massive experiment, and at the end, they will publish a hard copy of the book.