“Oh you’re a children’s author! How wonderful! How much fun that must be!” says almost everyone I meet.

And yes, it is fun, living in my imagination, pulling characters from the air, taking distant revenge on long-dead teachers, but it’s an odd kind of a job, because the money doesn’t really come from the books. It comes from all the other stuff we have to do to make ends meet.  

Full disclosure, I have a day job, so although I spend four days a week writing, the two days I spend doing my other job pays better because, like most of the kids’ book industry, I get the kind of advances that disappear in the Council Tax bill.

Of course, not everyone in the children’s industry gets these small advances. There are the headliners. Lucky six figure debuts who make big bucks off that first series, but there aren’t very many. There are A-listers, who get 100,000 for a surefire series. And, finally, there are celebrities, who get bigger amounts and all the marketing. But most of us, the rafts of names on the shelves at Waterstones, get tiny advances.

Part of the problem is that there are lots of us. The industry produces stacks of hopefuls every year, and so many of those disappear without trace. For those who don’t leave, we are left to tear away at a smaller and smaller pie.

This whole business is founded on the desperateness of children’s authors to be published and then their willingness to put up with terrible pay

Like in adult fiction, there are funds. The Society of Authors gives grants, and recently the new GLL Literary Foundation gave awards to 17 newly emerging authors. As well as the awards, the authors will receive mentoring about the business and help to “deliver a series of author events”. This is wonderful news and it’s worth noting that some of the authors on the list are maybe new, but also likely to have stellar careers in front of them. The GLL is a not-for-profit organisation that runs libraries, and is limited to certain parts of the country, but this feels like someone recognising just how hard it can be to be a children’s author.

The problem is, this whole business is founded on the desperation of children’s authors to be published and then their willingness to put up with terrible pay, because they want to be published again. I remember saying to a fellow hopeful before either of us got a contract: “Honestly, I’d pay them if they’d publish it.” This allows publishers to pay us a pittance, but it’s okay, because we will make up the difference in school visits. The publishers expect it. They even arrange free ones for us, hoping that we will learn on the job and convert that into an income stream. And we do. At this time of year, the trains and roads are full of smiling kids’ authors rolling up at schools, yanking on our performance faces and stepping out in front of crowds of children aged 1-18.

But it’s exhausting. Even if you arrange your visits through an agency, and pore over every email, when the moment arrives and you get to the school you may find your presentation hasn’t been downloaded, the children you were expecting to talk to have gone swimming, there are piano lessons in the room next door.  Often there are no books, there’s no lunch, there’s no parking space. And after 10 years of this, I have learned, don’t drink the coffee.

Above all, it is not fun. For many of us, the physical and mental toll of turning up and performing can be debilitating. And that’s if we can even do it. Giving up your day job to visit schools isn’t easy, nor is parking your own children or dealing with health issues on the road. Some of us feel massively unconfident about it. We are writers, not performers. We are not teachers either, and yet find ourselves running workshops for keen and unkeen young writers.

And we may do it very well, but it is not what we set out to do.

Of course, I’ll do what they ask of adult authors – I’ll post on Bluesky, visit bookshops and write blogs, talk at festivals – but schools? Just no. I left school when I was 18 and I don’t ever want to go back.

The solution? Choose fewer of us and pay us properly. Stop raising hopes in people, only to ignore them when the shiny has become dull. Invest in those you choose.

Pay us well for the books, and those who want to be on stage can entertain the kids, but the rest of us don’t have to.

Pay us well, and take the expectation of school events out of the contracts, and absolutely don’t expect us to make up our incomes from it.

Pay us as much as you pay the grown ups. Otherwise, it simply isn’t fair.