Podcast

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How does a DDS* sell YA books?

Transcript:

I’m interviewing Katrina McVeigh, manager of the Target book department over in Maribyrnong. As the leader of the entire department, Katrina is there for the daily running of the book section and interacts with customers of all ages. We talked at length about how a discount department store sells books, primarily Young Adult, in both the physical store and online sphere.

Katrina: At Target we don’t know when books are coming in unless it’s a new release, then we got a date, but even so once we’ve sold out of that, we don’t know when the next drop will be. It could be within a couple of days, but more often than not it’s a couple of weeks or even months, or maybe we don’t get them in again, due to the size of the department.

Interviewer: What percentage of books that Target sell are Young Adult books?

Katrina: The Young Adult books, I would say is ten percent.

Interviewer: That little?

Katrina: Yeah, it’s that small. So fifty percent probably our Fiction books, then Cookbooks, Biographies, Memoirs, and you got Children’s books, colouring books … so yeah, I’d say ten percent would be Young Adult books.

Interviewer: Do they not sell as well as Adult fiction novels or…?

Katrina: I find they still sell well, but for some reason the layout of the aisles … there’s certainly a lot more space allocated for fiction; and maybe because they buy so much more of a variety for fiction and non-fiction books as opposed to Young Adult, we’ve only got one side so … on that side I can probably get out a thousand books compared to the Adult books.

Interviewer: Roughly, what’s the price of Young Adult books at Target? Actually, leading onto that, how do you think that compares to traditional bookstores like Robinsons and QBD, and even Big W, as well?

Katrina: So at the moment, I would say from nine dollars up to about fourteen dollars, however, that new book that come out (The Book of Dust / La Belle Sauvage) was twenty dollars. So recommended retail price, that is thirty-two dollars.

Interviewer: Wow. For The Book of Dust?

Katrina: For The Book of Dust.

Interviewer: That’s crazy, that’s such a drop.

Katrina: It is, its, but our, um, like our Anh Do, all those books at our store are nine dollars in, um, Robinsons or QB books you’re looking at sixteen to eighteen. They always come into us first.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Katrina: Like they get, you know, cause quite often than not I’ll say to them, ‘If we’ve sold out, oh, you can try the bookstores’, and they always say, ‘Listen, we’ve tried here first,’ … everywhere – it’s no secret.

Interviewer: No.

Katrina: The secret is out!

Interviewer: Yeah.

Katrina: Target is cheaper. Obviously most of the time they do come to Target because it’s a store that’s renowned now for having the new release books, and hopefully we get them out on time.

Interviewer: Has there ever been a time where, um, the book has come in late or something like that?

Katrina: Definitely, and it’s due to delivery.

Interviewer: Yeah?

Katrina: So with our books, they’re actually direct to store and at Target, all of our stock actually goes through DC [distribution centre/warehouse], gets split up, gets sent out to stores. Our books however, are direct-to-store and it comes via TNT. So TNT will just drop off books and that’s it. Some days I’ll get three boxes, some days I’ll get maybe forty.

Interviewer: How does Target compete in the online sphere? 

Katrina: On Target dot com dot au, there’s only a handful of books on there. It’s a shame really because we got such a great variety of books and a great range, it’s a shame that Target haven’t put more of our books on our –

Interviewer: Mmm.

Katrina: online. Because at Target now, our online make a huge difference to our weekly budget. So, last week for instance, our – we were falling short of budget, but due to online during the week, we had some big days and that bumped our sales up. It didn’t – it didn’t have nothing to do with books, but online itself its drawing people in. So if perhaps Target were to put more of our books online, pictured, it may have a bigger impact on our book department sales.

Interviewer: Do you think because Target doesn’t have many books at all on the – on their online, do you think maybe cause they know websites like Booktopia, Amazon, Book Depository, that they’re just so strong, they don’t even bother to put it online?

Katrina: Perhaps that is the case, or perhaps it’s just the fact that they’re looking at it thinking – I guess at Target, clothing is such a huge margin of our sales; clothing is I think maybe sixty or seventy percent –

Interviewer: Wow.

Katrina: And I guess the mark-up on the clothes –

Interviewer: Mmhmm.

Katrina: Far outweighs the mark-up on a book.

Interviewer: Yes.

Katrina: So I don’t know what Target get the percentage-wise, but if we’re selling a book at nine dollars, they’re only maybe getting one or two dollars out of that.

Interviewer: Because they marked it down so much?

Katrina: That’s right, because the – of the price is so low. Whereas our clothes – we can sell a dress for thirty dollars … they’ve probably bought it at five dollars. So they concentrate more, they probably put more resources in the clothing side of it.

Interviewer: With everything that we’ve learnt, do you think that Target is a genuine contender for selling Young Adult books?

Katrina: I think they’re a contender, it would be nice to have more space for it. Because every day, a couple – I have customers I can make happy – I can, I can get the book, they’re on the shelf when they ask for it. But more often than not I say, I’m so sorry we’ve had that book, it’s sold out.

Interviewer: It’s a fast department.

Katrina: It is. It does. But it’s a fast department to sell it, but its not a fast department where the stock comes in.

Interviewer: Oh.  

Katrina: It’s not a quick turnover, like if I sell it – if I sold out today, I may not see that book come in for a couple of weeks, maybe even a couple of months. And maybe that’s what it comes back to with them, they have to buy certain amounts. However, there certainly is a market for young adult books at Target. I think perhaps, Target could perhaps reinvent the department by tables and displays. I think there is room for improvement.

*DDS: discount department store.

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Credits:

Interviewer: Laura Cesile.
Interviewee: Katrina MacVeigh, Manager of the Book Department at Target Maribyrnong.
Podcast image credit: Jamieson: ladyofshadws Instagram. Used with permission. Link.
Music: Creative Commons, YouTube video – uploaded by Audio Lounge Music “Royalty Free Music”. Link.

No agent? No problem. Getting published via Wattpad

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Wattpad logo. Wikimedia Commons.

If you are a member of an online YA book community, like Goodreads, then you have undoubtedly come across Wattpad.

A free online storytelling community, Wattpad is a place writes writers post stories, articles, fan fiction, and other writing mediums, through the website or app.

Readers engage with the writers of the stories through the ‘inline commenting ’ function to give feedback or to discuss what is happening in the story.

As author Linda Poitevin explains, Wattpad is “hugely popular with the YA and fanfic crowds, but its reach with successfully published authors is growing rapidly, with […] bestsellers [such as] Scott Westerfeld … Colleen Hoover and many others now offering work there.”

Wattpad currently contains up to 375 million uploads of original content. It’s one of the best reading sites out there, but Wattpad is also responsible for pioneering many YA authors’ careers. A03? I don’t know her.

Brittany Geragotelis, author of the Life’s A Witch series, was rejected by HarperCollins Children’s and discovered Wattpad not too long after. Geragotellis said, “I went from getting rejections from agents and publishers to finding an audience that loves my book!”

She now has 78.k followers on Wattpad, with over 20 million reads of her YA series, which has since been self-published. According to Nina Lassam, the director of marketing and publisher relations for Wattpad, Life’s a Witch is “one of the most successful books on Wattpad.”

Although Wattpad offers free stories to a wide, international audience, the authors on the site have taken advantage of their following and the digital marketing offered through Wattpad to take their novels to the next level: publishing.

Queens of Geek. [Credit: Laura Cesile. Link]

Melbourne writer Jen Wilde is another author who, like Geragotelis, did just that: after a brief stint of self-publishing with Amazon Kindle, Wilde gained a publishing deal with Swoon Reads/Macmillan.

Her first traditionally published book was Queens of Geek, but her entire bibliography is still available for free on Wattpad.

Wattpad is fast becoming a medium through which YA authors can get published.

With a Wattpad account, authors can create an established fanbase, and a place where they can develop their skills as a writer through helpful feedback from readers.

Ashleigh Gardner, head of partnerships for Wattpad, said:

“In the last 30 days [over June and July], people have spent the equivalent of 1,700 years reading YA stories on Wattpad.”

Publishing companies should take advantage of Wattpad authors: after all, a majority of the marketing has, essentially, already been done for them.

In fact, in July 2017, HarperCollins announced a collaboration with Wattpad in order to “cultivate new voices in teen fiction.”

Sara Sargent, the executive editor at HarperCollins Children’s Books, said she wants to “really focus on cutting-edge YA and children’s books. Being able to connect with as far-reaching a platform as Wattpad, which I consider more of a social media platform than anything else, felt perfect.”

Publishing is a difficult industry to break into. Everyone knows this. And sometimes the traditional pathway to publishing – sending in a manuscript and being offered a contract – just doesn’t work for everyone.

With the many features the ever-expanding internet has to offer these days, authors are looking for new, alternative pathways to publishing. And publishing companies are keeping their eyes peeled.

Wattpad offers many benefits to authors, including:

• The chance to find and grow an audience.
• The opportunity to discover and write for an untapped readership.
• A way to maximise exposure and gain an online presence (very important these days!).
• Have the opportunity to get onto the ‘featured story’ list to promote it.

YA List on Wattpad. [Credit: Laura Cesile. Link]

While a majority of authors would immediately choose the self-publishing route, particularly through Amazon, it would be wise to consider sites like Wattpad, where you can grow a fanbase and hone your writing skills, before attempting traditional publishing.

Using Wattpad is a great alternative to publishing, or even, like Jen Wilde, a way to break into the industry.

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Interested in reading unique stories and being part of a storytelling community? The check out the popular YA books available to read for free on Wattpad.

The debut vs. the YA companion. Originality vs. regurgitation.

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When I found out that YA author V.E. Schwab is releasing three new novels set in the same world as her Shades of Magic series, I admit I was a little excited. (Okay, I screamed.)

V.E. Schwab [Credit: Gage Skidmore. Used with permission. Link]

Although I was ecstatic that a beloved series of mine is being expanded upon with a fresh cast of characters and a whole new plot, I couldn’t help but notice an alarming trend in YA fiction: the rise of companion novels/series.

Companion novels are “a set of books based in the same world, but with each book revolving around different characters that are seen in all of the books in that set.”

There’s nothing particularly wrong with an author expanding on the fascinating book world they have created; in fact, some of my favourite authors – Cassandra Clare and Rick Riordan (who I like to call the ‘Companion O.G.s’) – are experts at successfully expanding upon their original stories.

V.E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic. [Credit: Laura Cesile. Link.]

However, there is a deeper issue at play with the rise of companion novels: the fact that debut authors are left behind.

Take a look at the Bloomsbury USA Children’s Publishing Group’s list: out of the 41 YA books the New York branch published this year, 11 were part of an on-going series, 19 were standalones by established authors (some of which were the paperback releases), eight were re-releases to regenerate interests in the authors as they have new releases in 2018, and three were debuts.

That’s also not including all of the Harry Potter books Bloomsbury published this year, including eight 20th anniversary editions (four paperbacks and four hardcovers), and four illustrated novels.

With publishers so focused on books they already know will sell well – and that already have a large fanbase – fewer writers are being given the opportunity to break into the YA publishing world. Of course, publishing is, at the end of the day, a money-making business like any other business.

But this growing trend of companion novels and series suggests that publishers prioritise established authors over debut stories. They’re shutting new authors out before they even get a foot in the door.

This issue is not contained to the publishing industry either: we see it in every form of media as well, primarily movies and T.V.

How many remakes/reimaginings of movies came out this year? Off the top of my head, I can think of Return of Xander Cage, T2 Trainspotting, Logan, Kong: Skull Island, The Fate of the Furious, The Mummy … this site has a full list of more.  

2005-2014 movie statistics

The media has a regurgitation issue – and it’s seeping into the publishing industry.

Although we should absolutely support long-term authors by buying and reading their works, we should also make room for new voices in an ever-expanding and evolving industry.

But instead of just regenerating already published content with a slightly different twist, the publishing industry should be investing in fresh voices and fresh stories to ensure that every teen sees a reflection of themselves in the books they are reading.

We should be prioritising originality over regurgitation.

SJM’s A Court of Wings and Ruin [Credit: Laura Cesile. Link]

Schwab is not a lone case either:

• YA author Sarah J. Maas has planned six more novels in her ACOTAR world;
• Ransom Riggs, has been contracted to write a new trilogy set in his Miss Peregrine’s series;
• Michelle Hodkin has released the first of three companion books to her Mara Dyer trilogy;
• Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows duology is based in the same world as her Grisha series;
• and all of Becky Albertalli’s standalones are linked through multiple characters.

These examples show that the industry has a skewered preference in focusing on companions, as opposed to taking a chance on new writers. Although, looking at a Goodreads list of 2018 releases, it looks like the industry is trying … albeit slowly.

The call for diversity in Young Adult fiction

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In March 2017, when advance copy reviews of Laurie Forest’s The Black Witch came out labelling the novel as ‘racist,’ ‘offensive, and written with no marginalised people in mind,’ the subsequent online conversation that resulted took the YA community by storm.

Reviewers, bloggers, authors and readers gathered on Twitter and Goodreads to discuss the book and unearthed a larger issue at play: the lack of diversity … at a publishing level.

The YA community banded together and sent a powerful message to publishing companies everywhere: it is no longer enough to feature diverse characters within novels; we need to focus on the diversity of authors behind the novels as well.

But why is that important? Shouldn’t it be enough that novels feature diverse characters, so young adults and children from minorities reading these books see a reflection of themselves? Well, actually, it’s incredibly important.

In 2014, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) examined 3500 multicultural novels and discovered alarming results:

2014 statistics

Of the 179 novels about African/African Americans, only 69 of these books were written by Black authors/creators. Of the 36 books about American Indians, 15 of these were written by Native Americans.

Of the 112 books about Asian Pacific/Asian Americans, 48 of these were written by Asian authors. And of the 66 books about Latinx people, 36 of these were written by Latinx authors.

As shown, there is a very long history of authors from majority groups – white, straight, cisgender – writing about the experiences of minority/diverse groups. Essentially, there’s nothing wrong with that … unless the portrayals of culture and sexuality are written incorrectly.

Unfortunately, YA fiction has a bad rep when it comes to this, because so often majority authors tend to rely on negative stereotypes and tropes.

Look at The Black Witch as an example: according to many reviewers, the novel, written by a majority author, portrays race and culture in a harmful manner, leading many reviewers to blackball the novel before it was even published. Read a few reviews here, here, here, here and here.

The Black Witch is not even a lone case: Bestselling author Maggie Stiefvater has often been accused of purposely using harmful Asian stereotypes in her The Raven Cycle series, while J.K. Rowling was called out for misrepresenting Native American culture in her four-part story ‘A History of Magical America.

To make matters worse, marginalised authors are often pushed aside, or even outright rejected, to make room for majority group authors – and then these same authors are praised for ‘writing diversely.’

https://twitter.com/getnicced/status/897515608971071489?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bustle.com%2Fp%2Fhow-ya-twitter-is-trying-to-dismantle-white-supremacy-one-book-at-a-time-76946

Click on the tweet to read the full thread.

In the wake of The Black Witch controversy, author Justina Ireland explained that the YA publishing sector’s biggest problem is its ‘systemic exclusion of the stories of marginalized groups as told by marginalized creators [sic].’

To push back against such a problematic publishing system, marginalised authors banded together on Twitter to revive the #OwnVoices hashtag, first established by Corrine Dyuvis, which has since developed as an unofficial category of YA.

A book labelled as #OwnVoices means that it is about marginalised people written by authors from the same marginalisation. This is incredibly important as #OwnVoices authors are writing about issues, such as race and sexuality, with real life experience.

The authors share an identity with their characters that is apparent in the respectful way the author portrays that identity.

So how can the YA publishing industry fix this lack of diverse writers/creators? It’s very simple:

PRIORITISE #OWNVOICES AUTHORS.

While it feels as though the publishing industry is not listening to us – especially when books like The Black Witch are published – the industry is changing in a positive way, albeit slowly.

#OwnVoices authors like Sandhya Menon, S. Jae-Jones, Julie C. Dao, Angie Thomas, Ibi Zoboi, Cale Dietrich and Lilliam Rivera had bestselling debut novels published this year, to widespread praise.

We can only hope that the industry continues to listen to authors, reviewers, bloggers and readers, and makes a positive step in the right direction.

Couple of diverse novels. [Credit: Laura Cesile. Link.]

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For more information and further reading on this issue, I highly suggested checking out the following articles:

‘Our Own Voices, or Why Not All Diverse Stories Are Created Equal’ by Susie Rodarme.
‘How YA Twitter is Trying to Dismantle White Supremacy One Book at a Time’ by Sona Charaipotra and Zóraida Cordova.
‘Diversity is Not Enough: Race, Power and Publishing’ by Daniel Jose Older.
‘All I Think About You is White, White, White Thoughts’ by Sarah Nicole Lemon.

If you want to read more diversely and support marginalised authors, read my list of recommendations here.