Your Questions, please, for Julia Eccleshare

[AgentPete]

I’m delighted to welcome one of the most respected figures in children’s publishing onto our 24th October Pop-Ups.

Julia Eccleshare MBE is a legend in children’s and YA publishing.

Julia has been children's book editor of the Times Literary Supplement, worked as picture book editor at Puffin Books, fiction editor at Hamish Hamilton children's books, and much more. She has served on many book award panels including the Whitbread Children's Book Award, the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize, the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, and co-founded the Branford Boase Award for an outstanding novel for young people by a first-time writer.

This will be a show you mustn't miss if your writing might be targeted towards a younger audience – which these days, probably includes most writers.

Here’s the link:




Litopians can submit questions in advance to be asked during the show - please let me have them below.

 

[Vagabond Heart]

Q. In terms of children, and their loyalty to a genre/author, are trilogies and the like more favoured than standalones?

 

[Hannah F]

Q. Where, would you say, do YA readers mostly look for the next book to read: friends' recommendations? Goodreads? school library? other?

 

[KateESal]

As a school librarian, I've noticed that fewer children are willing to invest their time in longer, dense-text books nowadays, preferring instead shorter reads and illustrated formats. What are Julia's thoughts on this?

 

[RK Capps]

What are some cliche openings you see all the time, and what would elevate a cliche for you i.e. what things would you look for that make it stand out from the crowd? Would you consider working with an author, who has a cliche opening, if you liked the writing, the character and premise?

 

[DavSpill]

What kind of market is there for reimaginings of literary works for children? What about collections of (related) short stories?

 

[KateESal]

With many secondary schools introducing reading initiatives like tutor-time reading programmes and Drop Everything And Read etc. does Julia think publishing could do more to promote reading in partnership with secondary schools?

As a patron of CLIP she already works with an organisation aimed at promoting reading in primary schools, but older children had the steepest drop-off rates for reading for pleasure. Could the publishing industry do more to try and arrest this?

 

[KateESal]

Teenagers tend to be highly engaged with fanfic and the Wattpad platform and there's the BookTok phenomenon. What are Julia's thoughts on how these trends could be harnessed by the traditional publishing industry to further increase engagement in reading among teens?