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Book publishers have long attested that short story collections don’t sell; Wolf would respond they’re not trying hard enough. “Traditional publishers don’t do a lot of marketing for the midlist authors today,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s that they’re too busy trying to survive or they don’t have the budget.”

“I’m organizing and coordinating all the different authors and having them all communicate to their specific niches and audiences. I’m driving them to a common landing page and we created a book blog. We’re leveraging social media and talking to the press.”

it’s true that, with limited marketing budgets, publishers often have to focus on the big titles, and smaller authors must pick up a lot of the marketing work themselves for a shot at success.

Although children sometimes read picture books by themselves, most of the dearest picture book experiences arise from an activity shared between parent and child. The parent is an actor, performing for the child; the two are teammates as they jointly explore illustrations.

moving a work that relies heavily on visual and spatial elements from one medium to another is extremely hard to do well.

Publishers must commission some digital-only picture books to explore what the creative possibilities are when print is not the starting point.

There’s a final dilemma. Publishers are now paying lower advances, releasing fewer titles and selling digital content at lower prices than print content (which in turn affects royalty payments to both agent and author). Assuming this is the new reality, there will be less money to go around for the number of agents now in business. Plus, will it be worth an agent’s time and energy to sell a project that doesn’t pay more than $1,500 upfront? Probably not. One agency has quietly come out with a new model that requires authors to pay a minimum commission—i.e., the agent must earn a minimum amount on a sale no matter what advance the publisher pays, which means authors would “share” a larger part of the advance upfront (or even pay out of pocket in the case of very low advances). Undoubtedly, there’s no shortage of aspiring writers who would be ecstatic to pay more to an agent if it meant securing a publishing deal. But such a model is sure to raise ethical concerns. Agents may take projects knowing they will ultimately be paid by authors rather than by publishers. Is the industry (that includes the author!) ready to accept such a shift in how agents profit?