Apparently rhymes have fallen out-of-fashion for children’s books … here’s why

When we first began work on our debut book, Willow the Wonderer, it felt utterly natural to us to write it in rhyme. In fact the premise of the whole story had come into Darren’s mind decades ago in the form of a rhyme:

Willow the wonderer

Woke up one day

Wondering about happiness

And where it lay

And so the story begins …

We had no aspiration to start our own ‘publishing’ company, nor were we set on becoming independent self-published authors either. We sort of fell into creating Wise As Stories when we realised how limited our options in the world of children’s book publishing were.

First, most publishers don’t take on ‘unsolicited’ manuscripts, they don’t work with first-time writers (unless you are already rich and famous…), COVID was at its height so wait-times with those that did ranged between 12–18 months (during which time you could not submit your manuscript to another publisher…) and the clincher — no one accepted books written in rhyme. It was written there in no uncertain terms on websites that rhymes were not welcome.

I was gobsmacked! Have they not heard of Dr. Suess. Don’t they know of Green Eggs and Ham?! Sam I am…

Don’t they know their market?

Kids love rhyme! Written to a meter, rhymes creates a lovely melody when read out aloud. This is a great way to engage kids in reading and also acts as a great memory aid, making it easier for kids to learn new words.

Parents love rhyme! Puts the little ones off to sleep in no time which makes it perfect as bedtime stories.

Besides, I love rhyme! There was a week when in the thick of writing the book, I would speak to Darren only in rhyme …

As I looked into it, I realised that publishers actually do have a great grasp of their market — or more correctly, market size.

Book publishing is a tough slog — you no longer get into it for the money. Over the last decade or two, ‘you-know-who’ has greedily captured most of the value for themselves, leaving publishers and authors grasping at the last 10–20% of the value of the product they create (and that’s after you-know-who’s evil algorithms have discounted the hell out of it).

It’s open knowledge most writers don’t earn a living from their writing — they too do it for love.

But publishing is still a business and all large for-profit businesses are trapped in the same vicious cycle of having to deliver a growing bottom-line, year-after-year, forever after — just like in fairytales.

So what do you do when your profit margins are squeezed? You focus on increasing your sales volume by expanding your ‘addressable market’ to as many countries and people as possible. And for a publisher to do that, their book needs to be translatable into many, many languages — beyond English.

With a straightforward prose, that is no problem. With a rhyme, that is impossible.

Writing in rhyme for children’s books has indeed fallen out of fashion but it is not because kids, parents and writers don’t like it; it’s because it’s bad for business.

Originally published at https://www.wiseasstories.com on March 12, 2021.