In my first post at Novel Spaces, as a guest blogger, I wrote about the responsibility that I feel as a writer of children’s books to produce books that positively impact my young readers.
I have recently been wondering about publishers’ responsibility to not only provide books that will sell, but books that will have a positive impact on the reader’s lives. In the Caribbean, children’s books tend to mean text books. Most mass distributed novels are literature books, scholarly works well suited for classroom discussions of alliteration and other such techniques.
Publishers print these books because parents will definitely buy them if they are a part of the school curriculum, regardless of the price. Regular children’s novels are much harder to sell. So, the supply is driven almost solely by the demand.
I hope that one day we can see a major publisher in the Caribbean market that takes the leap and creates demand by regularly publishing fun, enjoyable novels that encourage our children to pick up a Caribbean based book just for the enjoyment …. the idea just might sell.
Is it just an unrealistic pipe dream? What do you think?
(Originally appeared at Novel Spaces on October 12, 2010)