From Anne Frank to War Horse: children's historical books sell! - Katherine Roberts

I’ve reached that stage between projects when I don’t quite know what I’ll publish next. I’ve got several files of half-worked ideas, including two novels not yet contracted, mostly historical fantasy for younger readers since that’s where my passion lies. But what of the editor who told me bluntly a few years ago that “historical fiction for children does not sell”? I have ambitions the same as the next author, and certainly don't want to waste everyone's time, including my own, writing something that has no hope of selling because of its subject matter.

So here's the million-dollar question: is it possible to write historical fiction for younger readers that hits the Top 100? (Which I assume is what the editor really meant by "sell".)

In the interests of research, let's analyse the best-seller lists. I began with the Kindle best-sellers, since I can do that lying in bed with no danger of heavy-historical-tome-reader’s-RSI.

Sadly, there 's only one historical novel on the list when I look*, in at number 20: Winter in Madrid by CJ Sansom. It’s not a children’s book, at least I don't think so. Even more sadly, it’s one of those 20p-is-that-all-our-work-is-worth? promotional efforts on behalf of its publisher. In fact, looking at the Kindle bestsellers, I decide this list is flawed because it’s clearly driven by price and not much else, with only two of the ebooks in the Top 20 costing more than £1. Besides, apparently only about 20% of readers – and even fewer younger readers – actually own a Kindle at present, so there obviously isn’t much point me looking there for inspiration... at least not for another few years.

All right, let’s take a peek at best-sellers in (adult) historical fiction.

Wolf Hall & Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan

Dominion by CJ Sansom (interestingly, not Winter in Madrid…)

Pillars of the Earth & World Without End by Ken Follett

HhHH by Laurent Binet and Sam Taylor

The Fever Tree by Jennifer McVee

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

Some of  the above would interest me an adult reader, but none really count as children’s books, even though I can imagine teenagers and young adults enjoying them for the adventure. In fact you have to scroll down to number 143 on the historical list to find The Once and Future King by TH White, which also happens to be one of my all-time favourites from when I was a teenager.

one of my favourite books as a teenager

This is quite encouraging, since my Pendragon Legacy quartet about King Arthur’s daughter is a similar legend-based fantasy for children set in an Arthurian world - and I'm happy to report that the third book in my series Crown of Dreams overtook "The Once and Future King" on amazon last month, so the Arthurian legend still looks promising if you're considering it. But since authors start work on a book a couple of years ahead of publication, I need to get started on a new project even while my publishers are busy bringing out my last one (this is the reason authors sometimes forget the plots of their own books when they are on publicity tours... their head is already starting to spin with the next idea!)

So let’s get a bit more specific and find out what does sell to a younger readership.The current best-selling children’s books in fiction come up as:

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (series) by Jeff Kinney

Beautiful Creatures series (film tie-in) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl)

The Hunger Games (trilogy) by Suzanne Collins

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom (picture books) by Julia Donaldson

Harry Potter (series) by JK Rowling

Holes by Louis Sachar

Wonder by R J Palacio

A mixed bag here, covering all ages from picture books to YA. I loved Holes (if you haven’t read this yet, it’s one of those wonderful crossover titles that appeal to a wide readership). And I was blown away in a slightly envious "damn, why didn't I write that?" way by The Hunger Games - what self-respecting SF/F/H fan wouldn’t be? But only two on this list can really be counted as historical, and I suspect both of those are on a curriculum somewhere as required reading, since neither seem to me the sort of book a child would seek out for fun - and Diary of A Young Girl of course isn't  fiction. Although diaries do seem to have an edge, so maybe I'm wrong? Does the diary format make historical subjects more appealing to a child reader?

Ah ha, perhaps the problem for younger readers lies with the actual reading, not the subject matter. So how about the most popular movies of last year?

8th most popular movie of 2012

The top 10 movies of 2012 (according to box office takings) were:

1. The Avengers
2. The Dark Knight Rises
3. The Hunger Games
4. Skyfall (James Bond)
5. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
6. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn
7. The Amazing Spider Man
8. Brave
9. Ted
10. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted

This is encouraging. Science fiction and fantasy settings dominate, as do films aimed at younger audiences, with "Brave" keeping up the historical side by winning Best Animated Film at the recent Oscars. I noted in a previous post on this blog how these three genres have a lot in common, and Brave's heroine is very similar in character to my heroine Rhianna Pendragon, so I'm on target there. But WAIT - this is last year’s movie list, and I was just reading on a famous literary agent’s blog how “dystopia” is now a rude word in publishing circles, when not that long ago it appeared to be all publishers were looking for following the success of the Hunger Games. So this list might work for books already written, but is pretty pointless for the one I haven't started yet.

Right then, let's get to the nitty-gritty and look at the top 10 in children’s historical fiction. Rather tellingly (and surprisingly, because I'd rather assumed it would be there), amazon doesn’t list “historical” in its subcategories under children’s fiction. The closest is “myth/legends”, which is heavily skewed towards fantasy titles such as my Pendragon books, followed by "westerns", which includes fellow History Girl Caroline Lawrence's Western Mysteries in the top 100.

I'd love to have done this list a few years ago, when historical fantasy such as Susan Price's fabulous tale of the border reivers The Sterkarm Handshake won the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, and Celia Rees' Witch Child wowed the world. But these classic titles seem to have slipped out of the lists in favour of Michael Morpurgo's backlist currently riding high on the success of War Horse. Failing to pull up anything sensible by typing "children's historical fiction" into amazon's search box, I call up the list of bestsellers in children's books (general), and work through it by hand looking for historical themes. Given that I'm not a computer algorithm, this is what I came up with:

No. 1 bestselling children's historical title

Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Time Riders by Alex Scarrow
Dodger by Terry Pratchett
Heroes by Robert Cormier
Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan
War Horse by Michael Morpurgo
Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
Gladiator: Son of Spartacus by Simon Scarrow

The top-selling title on this list comes in at number 313 in the total books chart, and the final one at number 1,850. Not at all bad, when you consider how many books are listed on amazon's site. And the subcategory 'children's historical fiction' might not (yet) be there for readers, but it is for publishers when you list a book in the Kindle store. My backlist historical novel "I am the Great Horse" (reissued as an ebook last month) made it into the top 100 of the children’s historical fiction subcategory in the US in its first week... and no, it wasn't 20p at the time!

,

Climb on my back, if you dare...

From which I can only conclude that the editor was wrong when she told me that children don't read historical books, because the ones listed above obviously do sell, and I'd guess from looking at their rankings that they are not only selling, but selling enough copies to make their publishers a profit... although from the current children's historical list above, I suspect it helps if you are (a) male and/or (b) writing about a World War.

For a bit of fun, I'll leave you with some History Girl strategies to consider if you write historical fiction for young readers but the big sales are not happening for you yet:


1. Have a sex change (bit drastic maybe).
2. Use a male pseudonym - or better still, initials to keep everyone guessing.
3. Write about a horse (already done that!) in one of the World Wars (ah...)
4. Get on the adult Top 10 historical list first and then write a children's book (talk about making life difficult for yourself.)
5. Forget all of the above, and just write a damn good story!

*Top 10 book and Kindle lists courtesy of amazon.co.uk, correct as of 24th February 2013

I’m away at the moment on tour for my publisher Templar (I do still remember the plots of my Pendragon books, I do, I do...) So if you have any thoughts on the above, please leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you at the weekend when I return.

Meanwhile, happy historical bestseller browsing!

***

Katherine Roberts is an award-winning children's author.

Her Pendragon Legacy series about King Arthur's daughter is published by Templar:
Book 1 SWORD OF LIGHT
Book 2 LANCE OF TRUTH
Book 3 CROWN OF DREAMS 
Book 4 GRAIL OF STARS  (coming October 2013) 

More about her books at www.katherineroberts.co.uk
Her unicorn muse blogs at http://reclusivemuse.blogspot.com
Twitter: @AuthorKatherine and @PendragonGirl

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