The Bookseller.com

20th November 2008

Authors question age-ranging statistics

02.10.08 Benedicte Page

Former children’s laureate Anne Fine has said she is “mystified” by the Publishers Association claim that between 75% and 95% of new and reprinted children’s titles will include age guidance by the new year.

Writing on theBookseller.com, Fine said: “Over 800 authors and illustrators have now signed up to www.notoagebanding.org—many of them huge sellers—and in recent weeks not one of them has met with any significant resistance from their publishers when they have insisted they want no banding, or the banding removed on reprints and not printed on any future books.” She queried: “Whose books are these exactly?”

A spokeswoman for the PA said: “The figures came from a meeting with publishers at the Children’s Book Group, who all said that they would have between 75% and 95% of new titles published with age guidance between now and spring 2009.”

Celia Rees, chair of the Society of Authors’ Children’s Writers and Illustrators Group, has also questioned the PA’s figures, saying the number was “exactly” the same as the one given in the summer. But the PA spokeswoman said that the estimated figure put out in the summer had now been “confirmed”.

It is understood that publishers have a high number of commissioned titles—books written to order as part of a series—where age guidance can be included without the need to check with authors.
Terry Pratchett, Alan Garner, Darren Shan and Philip Pullman are among the big names supporting the authors’ revolt against plans to introduce age guidance on children’s books.

The PA Children’s Book Group is currently in the process of deciding how best to evaluate the effects of the inclusion of age guidance on book covers this autumn.

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