I had the surprising experience of sitting in a garden with Rita Golden Gelman the other day. She's a famous children's author with more than 70 books to her name, and is also now well-known as a travel writer on women's nomadic travel. She knew I was a writer too, and asked me about my writing... the only published books I have are practical technology books written in the 1990's about technologies that nobody remembers anymore... So I told her about my children's book I wrote, but have never published. It is very illustration-heavy (think Dr Seuss) and therefore far too costly for me to produce myself. (40 illustrations at about $1000 each is a seriously big risk.) She brought out several of her books and showed me how she works. How her agent and publishers take her words and turn them into amazing books. The whole inside works... And INSISTED I get a children's/YA literary agent RIGHT NOW. And send them my story. So I am. Last time I opened the files was 2010. I polished up the stories. Found three local agents that are looking for work like this. Going to get everything ready this weekend, and send the agents my work next week. Fingers crossed!
I bet the market for kids books is hot because everyone is stuck at home and libraries and schools are also down. So instead of a classroom for 30 kids each kid needs a classroom worth of books. I honestly don’t see how we don’t get two tier schooling after this mess
Interesting thought... maybe so! Looking at agent profiles the other day, there are clearly far more agents who are "full" and not taking on any more clients, than there are agents who are open to looking at new work. Probably a 70/30 split, in my research.