jacobsw.bsky.social
I write books, mostly #kidlit. My most recent book is WHAT ROSA BROUGHT. It's the true story of my mother's escape from Nazi-occupied Vienna. He/him.
https://www.jacobsagerweinstein.com
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Statement by authors and illustrators of books in Supreme Court case Mahmoud v. Taylor, Slide 2
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OK, but you have to Amelia Bedelia the entire writing process.
ASSISTANT: Did you tell Jill you wanted to see a draft?
PRODUCER: Yes. Why?
CUT TO: Jill opening all the windows in the producer's office.
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It is my goal as a librarian to get more people to realize that you can actually ASK us to buy books that you want to read! It helps us broaden our collections while helping authors get their books into the world.
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That's from KING BIDGOOD'S IN THE BATHTUB, written by Audrey Wood and illustrated by Don Wood. It's one of my favorite picture books, and it's a brilliant example of how text and art can be equal partners.
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For example, imagine the following picture book text:
"'Today, we lunch in the tub,' cried the king, as his servants spread out a sumptious (if soggy) spread of sweets and savories."
That's solid line. It paints a vivid picture. But what if we let the picture paint the picture, instead?
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On this magical day, Newton travels the globe on an equal and opposite route to Santa Claus. He drops two gifts of different weight down every chimney, and little children gather to watch them fall at the same speed.
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This is the rare pet where I am going to have to respectfully disagree with you. That's a Tilda Swinton role if I've ever seen one.
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A joshua should be a trumpet player.
A daniel should be somebody who has almost been eaten by animals.
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Again, thanks for sharing your information. I'm definitely not a statistician, so please let me know if I am getting something completely wrong here!
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To use some non-made-up numbers, I've published 4 PBs and 2 novels. That's twice as many PBs as novels... but I've actually found it HARDER to sell PBs. Behind those 4 published PBs are a bunch of other PBs that never sold. But you'd never know that just by looking at the end product.
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But if you know how many submissions they received, you can see that they bought 100% of novel submissions, but only 10% of PBs. With that information in hand, you'd know that PBs are ten times harder to sell than novels!
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Let's say a publisher receives 40 PB submissions and only buys 4 of them. Meanwhile they receive 2 MG novels and buy them both.
If you are just looking at the deals in PW, you'd see that the publisher had bought twice as many PBs as novels! That would suggest it's easier to sell a PB.
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If we want to know how hard it is to sell a PB, we don't need to know "What percentage of a publisher's purchases are PBs?" We need to know "What percentage of PBs that a publisher receives do they purchase?"
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Thank you for so generously sharing all that information! It's fascinating.
But respectfully, unless I'm missing something, it doesn't actually disprove the idea that picture books are harder to sell.
You very convincingly demonstrate that publishers buy more PBs than novels. But...
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That is just the sort of behavior I would expect from a Learned Dandy!
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All I want in life is for concerned citizens to describe me as a Learned Dandy.
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I have huge respect for @nickiadanza.bsky.social's Survivor skills but I take issue with his pluralization techniques! In the US and the UK, it is definitely "mothers in law" (and, by extension, "shots in the dark.") Maybe pluralization, like the seasons, changes when you switch hemispheres?
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The secret headquarters in the junk yard is what I remember most vividly, more than any of the individual mysteries!
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Speaking as a purely objective observer who has never been on your podcast and had nothing to do with any theme song, I think average draft placement is the single most important metric of drafting skill.