From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_ttmd.com>
Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 10:54:10 -0400

Marc has a question regarding the implications of the low win rate of non-fiction.

Question 5: "What makes for great ALSC-age art, layout, design in nonfiction -- do we even know?"

I only have a couple of data points to contribute and I am uncertain of their pertinence.

Adult age Nonfiction Bestsellers have a very high attrition rate with 52% of a sampling of 100 top 10 nonfiction bestsellers from 1920 to 2000 being out of print. This compares of with a rate of less than 5% for such prizes as Caldecott, Newberry and Pulitzer in the same period.

86% of adult aged Nonfiction Bestsellers are written by males.

78% of Critically Acclaimed books (i.e. determined in hindsight) are Nonfiction.

Nonfiction bestsellers have the lowest rate of editions-per-year-in-print of any of the prizes analyzed, 0.79 editions per year in print versus an average of 2.6. A higher number indicates greater market demand.

Adult nonfiction bestsellers are cited and discussed much more often than the winners of children's prizes but only at 50-60% of the rate of Pulitzer of Fiction bestsellers.

This doesn't really tell us much other than that nonfiction numbers have a pattern markedly different than fiction books. Much of the difference, I suspect is traceable to the shelf-life of nonfiction. Being fact-based, it is subject to displacement by new facts in fast moving fields. I suspect that that explains the low editions-per-year-in-print figure. I also suspect literary historical nonfiction such as Barbara Tuchman's Proud Tower or Distant Mirror or Walter Lord's A Night to Remember probably have consequentiality figures much more in line with fiction. I'll try and include some like that for the final report.

But none of this really sheds much light in terms of children's nonfiction which remains terra incognita.

Charles
Received on Fri 17 May 2013 10:54:10 AM CDT