Little People, Big Dreams: Children’s non-fiction posts all-time record return

If you chart the shift in the BookScan era of the publishing into Children’s & Young Adult Non-Fiction (CYANF), you see it evolving from, broadly, a more schools-book focused sector to one in which the vast bulk of the revenue is derived from trade titles. In the 2000s, Reference & Home Learning was the key sub-category, regularly earning around half of CYANF’s TCM totals. But of course, a lot of those materials subsequently moved to digital and Reference & Home Learning’s sales hit an all-time low of £7.4m in 2019. 

Into the breach from the mid 2010s—particularly since the Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls trend—is narrative-driven non-fiction and titles that focus on personal development and mental health. The category has surged, with overall CYANF totals rising from £31m in 2010 to exceed the £50m mark for the first time in 2019—its TCM42 revenue of £52.1m in 2021 is a record high. 

Children’s General Non-Fiction is now the dominant sub-genre, earning £25.8m in 2021—by a meaty £3m its best-ever haul—accounting for 49.5% of CYANF’s revenue. Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara’s Little People, Big Dreams series is responsible for almost £1 in every £10 spent in Children’s General Non-Fiction, while Adam Kay’s Puffin-published medical-themed titles shifted just under £835,000. 

Young Adult General Interest & Leisure also had a record 12 months, shifting £3.2m, largely down to Manchester United’s number 10. Marcus Rashford pictured above and Carl Anka’s You are a Champion (Macmillan Children’s) generated £1.2m in 2021, 38% of the category’s revenue. A distant second was a title by another twentysomething star barely older than the YA audience: Billie Eilish’s eponymous “visual narrative journey through her life”. 

Kudos to Eilish’s publisher, the five-year-old Hachette Children’s imprint Wren & Rook, which is something of a trailblazer in this field, after publishing Matthew Syed and Toby Triumph’s breakout Nibbie Book of the Year-winning You Are Awesome back in 2018—and the title was still the category’s ninth bestseller by value in 2021. Although a boutique list, Wren & Rook is responsible for three of the top 10 titles last year, and seven of the top 50.