Young love: picture books oust children’s fiction for the first time in two decades

In what may prove to be one of the most significant shake-ups to the children’s sector in decades, the picture books market has outsold fiction aimed at older readers for the first time since accurate records began.

Last year, Nielsen BookScan’s Pre-school & Picture Books category shifted £141.2m in TCM42 to Children’s & Young Adult Fiction’s £135.3m, ending a streak of 20 consecutive years of greater returns for the latter category. Pre-school & Picture Books’ £141.2m was its all-time high, a whopping £8.5m greater than the previous full-year zenith in 2019. Sub-categories Novelty & Activity Books (£62m) and Picture Books (£63.8m) also posted record totals.
Before the pandemic, Pre-School and Picture Books rarely even came close to Children’s & YA Fiction, with 2013’s £2.4m (£110.9m versus £113.4m) the narrowest gap. Every other year has had at least a £10m buffer between the two, and in a Harry Potter year—or in the mid-to-late Noughties, when the UK was in the grip of the Twilight/Hunger Games craze—that gulf was very wide indeed. The greatest distance was in the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows year of 2007, when Children’s & YA Fiction topped Pre-school & Picture Books by a massive £51m.

The reasons for the shift in the market are complex but essentially boil down to different buying patterns over the pandemic. However, on a slightly more prosaic and logistical level, some of the changes may have to do with The Works joining the TCM panel in September 2020. BookScan cannot reveal any of its individual retailers’ share, but anecdotally the discount chain may over-index slightly towards picture books rather than the middle grade/YA space. 

The Works may have moved the dial a tiny bit, but the fact that there was a £12m gap between the two categories in 2019 and that the direction of travel in 2020—before The Works joined—showed Pre-school & Picture Books claiming a growing share, suggesting that there are greater forces at play. 

The pandemic was the greatest force and assuredly the rise in books for early readers comes from time-pressured home-working parents looking for ways to keep younger children occupied. Closely aligned to this is the broader “shopping chart”/backlist trend of the pandemic, which benefits those licensed properties and big-brand authors of which Picture Books, in particular, has scads of.

We should emphasise that this is not Pre-school & Picture Books taking a chunk of Children’s & YA Fiction’s sales, but growth all around. YA Fiction sold £27.1m through 2021’s TCM42, up a massive 58% on the same period in 2019. Using the same criteria, Children’s Fiction had a shallower 3% rise to £103.9m—but that is against 2019, which was the second-biggest haul for the category since records began. The other sub-genre, Children’s Comic Strip Fiction & Graphic Novels, sold £4.3m and followed the trend in comics’ adult genres (see p09) by obliterating its previous TCM high, even with 10 fewer weeks in 2021 data. 

And the older age range ruled the top of the combined categories value charts. Led by the £3.1m earned by J K Rowling pictured top and Jim Field’s The Christmas Pig, Children’s & YA Fiction titles claimed eight of the top 10 spots, and 17 of the top 25. Mark and Roxanne “Ladbaby” Hoyle and illustrator Gareth Conway’s Greg the Sausage Roll: Santa’s Little Helper was the top Picture Book on £680,000, while only four others in the category earned more than £500,000 through TCM42. By contrast, seven Children’s & YA Fiction books trousered more than £1m. 

But it is further down the list where Pre-school & Picture Books shines with its greater brand breadth and depth. Running a 2021 TCM42 Top 5,000 for both categories shows 62% of those titles are Pre-school & Picture Books, earning £110.6m, to Children’s & YA Fiction’s £99.8m. As you might imagine, Julia Donaldson and her illustrators are a huge part of this, accounting for 10% of all Pre-school & Picture Books revenue. But she is not alone: 23 different authors shifted more than £1m through Pre-school & Picture Books, more than any other category—and that does not include “unauthored” licensed children’s properties such as Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol. 

An immense proportion of Pre-school & Picture Books is backlist: just under 75% of its revenue is from titles published before 2021, compared to 62% for Children’s & YA Fiction. 

The big question is, will this trend continue? This is probably dependent on whether the shift to the way many have worked over the past two years will become permanent. A lot of firms seem to be keen on rolling over to at least a hybrid home/office regime going forward, so the guess here is that Pre-school & Picture Books’ increased share is not just a pandemic blip. 

J K Rowling image © Debra Hurford Brown.