Today seems as good a day as any to talk about why I’ve re-valued some of the work that’s done within the book industry, in particular the children’s book industry. And why I’m not working for magic beans any more.

First, an important distinction. I’ll always donate blood, sweat and tears to this industry that I love and that won’t change. I’m brimful of privilege and in terms of barriers — now, let me count — I have faced zero, zero barriers to working in the industry or to getting published, even when I moved to the other side of the world. I’m white middle-class neurotypical cisgender university-educated: open sesame! I’m even called Emily and grew up surrounded by books: it’s tricky to tell us all apart. Love to see that Venn diagram some day. While I try not to take my privilege for granted, that’s not to say I never do. But there’s a lot of free labour needed in this industry and many ways to use my privilege. When something needs doing and it’s for the greater good, it’s my chance to give back and I’ll drop everything to do it. 

But.

But volunteering your time in some circumstances can too easily turn into devaluing your work overall. Being a passionate advocate for children’s literature means identifying where your industry is being devalued and who’s doing the devaluing. Too often, I’ve realised, it’s me. It’s me devaluing my own work. When I do that, by extension I’m devaluing the work of other children’s book creators. Indeed, giving work away for free is rife in our industry.

It’s a battle to constantly champion children’s books without absorbing some of the ways that writing for children is belittled. Writing that is produced for children and is largely produced by women takes a double-hit. Sometimes we get it into our heads that what we write isn’t worth very much.

When it comes to giving my work away, I started early. Here comes the mistake hinted at in the title. I don’t call myself a picture book author so it may surprise people that I’ve published three picture books. They exist in different languages and formats, have been included in picture book anthologies, and one of my picture book characters even has a novelty playhouse with cut-out figures. Apparently. I’ve never seen any of this except on Google. I don’t receive royalties, I’ve never been paid for foreign rights, and I’ve had nothing to do with the publisher since the deal was done.

What the Dickens?

It’s 2008, I’ve just stepped off the plane and I’m blinking into the Australian sun with a child hanging off each arm. I don’t have a job; I haven’t sold a novel yet. I’ve been dumped by my first agent and recently picked up by another. Then I’m approached by an editor in the UK. I’ve worked with her before at a reputable company, she’s now working somewhere else and she wants to commission a picture book. It’s a flat-fee, no royalties, no questions asked scenario. I need the money so I write one. When she asks for another, I hesitate but I write that too. By now the jet-lag has passed and I realise what I’ve done. They’re talking UK and US editions already. Sounds like plenty of money for them and a handful of magic beans for me. 

So I ask for a royalty for any future books, and they say they’ll think about it. Quelle surprise, months later they want another story with the same picture book character and pretend there was never any chance I’d get a royalty. Tell her she’s dreaming, they say. So I can write the book for another handful of magic beans or I can take a hike. And I can’t even be sure that they won’t get someone else to write the story using my character.

I write it, give the publisher a minuscule piece of my mind, and plant the beans in my little rented garden in Melbourne. I don’t really celebrate the books when they are published. I rarely mention them and when I do I feel ashamed. For the next fifteen years I watch them come out in different languages and formats. Nothing comes from the magic beans I planted in the garden, though if you put your ear to the soil you may hear the sound of impish laughter.

If only this were an unusual story.

Unfortunately, we sell ourselves short all the time. Moreover there are some publishers out there who produce children’s books with the passion and finesse of a tinned potato factory. They just want them in the cans and off to as many stores as possible. 

I thought of that time in my life recently when a publisher asked me if I wanted to contribute a short story to an anthology. How lovely to be asked, I thought. Wait, you’re offering how much? The fee was what my teenager could make in three hours of bar work, and of course no hope of royalties. The publisher said they could not afford to produce an anthology otherwise. As sad as that is, what I wanted to reply was: if you can’t afford to produce an anthology without devaluing writing, don’t produce an anthology. (Of course, had this been for charity or had some other value for the industry, that would have been a different story.) 

There are many things we do in this industry that take up our time and for which we aren’t paid. This will never be an industry that doesn’t require a certain level of doing things for the love of it. But the balance is off — it’s way off. This won’t change unless we properly value our work and refuse to cooperate with a system that keeps telling us we’re lucky, or that the magic beans will sprout any day now . . . 

I took a gamble this year by including a paid subscriber option for this newsletter. Here I am, boldly suggesting that my words are something that people might want to pay a few dollars for. For all that I’m driving at in this piece, this meant wrestling my doubts to the ground and pressing publish before I could talk myself out of it. When the subscribers trickled in, my instinct was to panic. In the end, I’ve decided that if my work isn’t worth paying for when I’m nearly fifty and have spent my whole life in the industry, I should throw in the towel for good.

Part of what gives me strength is knowing that valuing my work means I’m also valuing the work of other women in this industry. In demonstrable terms, I’ve become a paid subscriber to several excellent newsletters of late, including The Bowerbird by the fantastic Kate Mildenhall who is one half of The First Time Podcast, the Hyphen by Emma Gannon, Something to Say with Abigail Bergstrom, and hopefully soon Your Kids Next Read (currently a pledge). In a bid to stop scrolling for free content in the vast wilderness, I’m opting to pay for excellent content to be delivered to me. Each one costs around the same as a flat white or two per month.

I’m still producing some content every month for free — this piece is free, for example — but mostly I’m working on articles and podcast episodes that pay the bills. It’s about managing the balance rather than invoicing for every breath I take. It’s also about reserving enough energy and passion for the important unpaid work that is needed.

So today, here’s to rejecting the devaluation of the work that’s done, mostly by women, in all corners of the children’s book industry. Here’s to saying no to magic beans.

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