The Word Cloud

One of my (or any author's) biggest gripes about publishers is the awful catch 22 which afflicts us when it comes to marketing. On the one hand, our beautifully crafted novels are regretfully declined because publishers don't think there's a market for them. On the other hand, those same regretful publishers almost never say what they think there IS a market for. So we authors are reduced to throwing darts at a board, hoping that an acquisition committee somewhere will allow one of those darts to stick. Trouble is, each dart takes a year or so to throw, and if the dart ain't sticking, there ain't nobody paying.

So all the more cheering, then, to see that Scholastic is telling us what's hot in children's publishing. Paranormal romance is still in (though moving beyond vampires). Humour's in. Myth is in. So a comedy vampire snogging Hercules should be about right.

Of course, what Scholastic is doing here is telling us what's succeeded in 2010 and what they expect to do well in 2011. Trouble is, if you're starting a novel now, you really need to know what's going to be all the rage in 2012/13 ... and you can be pretty sure that, by then, the hottest fires aflame now will be largely burned out. Which takes us back to where we were.

Darn it. Still: at least Scholastic are trying, so they deserve a mince pie or two for that.