The middle grade market in the US

• Siobhan O'Brien Holmes
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Over in The Wolf Pack Facebook group (join us!), I’ve been posting weekly about a different topic in publishing, to give hopeful authors some insight into the current landscape and what the children’s book market looks like today. I wanted to share those here, too, and expand on certain points a little more in a way I couldn’t do on Facebook for fear of breaking the post character limit (if there is one!).

I started off by talking a little bit about what’s going on with middle grade right now in the US. The below is based on lots of research as well as my own knowledge of and thoughts on the kidlit landscape. I’m based in the UK so usually tend to gravitate towards facts and figure about the UK publishing scene, but a lot of my clients are from the US and are understandably worried about the current climate, so I’m kicking off with a look at kidlit in America.

The MG market in the US has seen declining sales over the past year, which is obviously pretty scary for children’s authors. Sales of print books specifically (paperback and hardback) fell by 5% in the first 6 months of 2024 (and they’d already fallen by 10% the year before), which might not sound like much but translates to 1.8 million fewer books being bought. Although there was a drop across children’s books in general that year, the middle grade market took the biggest hit.

So why is this happening?

• Rather horrifyingly, there’s been a sharp drop in reading for pleasure amongst children in the US, with the number of middle grade readers saying they read for fun halving in 2023 (this is sadly happening in the UK, too)
• There is less access to public and school libraries, and an increase in book bans and censorship. As Trump fights to shut down the US government’s library agency, this is likely to continue being a challenge
• Overall reading proficiency at the middle grade level in the US is declining, partly driven by school closures during the pandemic
• An increase in screen time – although this isn’t something that’s unique to American readers (it rose by a massive 50% during Covid in the US)
• Children often discover new middle grade books at school, either through peer-to-peer recommendations or from their teachers. The pandemic put this on hold, even though books were still being published, so that loss in discoverability really harmed those new titles
• A couple of years ago, the US bookshop chain Barnes and Noble significantly changed their stocking strategy, choosing to only stock frontlist titles based on performance rather than automatically buying new releases as standard.They said they would prioritise books with a big online buzz – not great for middle grade as these books don’t tend to make a splash in the same way as YA and adult titles, partly because young readers aren’t on social media, and particularly bad for debut authors who have no track record. They also reduced the number of hardback middle grade books they sold, which had a big impact on publishing because most books are published in hardback initially, before coming out in paperback.B&N felt hardback books were too expensive for the middle grade audience so took them off the shelves, meaning readers weren’t getting access to those titles until they came out in paperback, sometimes a year after the initial launch buzz had worn off.

Final thoughts

I definitely don’t want this to put anybody off writing or querying middle grade in the US. It’s important to understand the challenges this category is facing, and the landscape is probably going to shift permanently in some ways, but that doesn’t mean middle grade is dead. Everything in publishing tends to be cyclical and it’s likely things will improve.

There’s been a huge boom in MG graphic novels in the past couple of years, and hopefully this will contribute to a rise in reading for pleasure in general, which will in turn lead to more sales in all formats and genres.

I don’t want to get too political here but for things to really change there needs to be a bigger focus from the US government on reading for pleasure, diversity and the importance of libraries, and a move away from book bans and censorship.

Publishers will need to respond to the rising appetite for graphic novels and take maximum advantage of its marketability: I mean, what’s easier to advertise on social media than a gorgeous comic book spread?