Consider the Source: Not a Pretty Picture

Friends, we have a serious problem, and it’s harming those who create nonfiction books for younger readers and those who read them.

While I was at the Texas Library Association’s annual conference in April, I noticed that an increasing number of exhibitors were offering reference databases aimed at classroom teachers. Many of these digital resources come with “toolboxes” so educators can select a variety of nonfiction materials in English or Spanish by age, grade, and reading level. Clearly, these databases have a lot to offer, and they’re bound to get even better in the future. But when I examined them more closely, I noticed that they didn’t include any books; the only resources the databases tapped into were primary sources, like newspapers and photographs, and Web sites.

Although the sites had been selected to reflect young students’ reading levels, that’s not the same as giving kids quality nonfiction books that have been crafted by authors, editors, and designers who are adept at thinking, writing, and designing materials for young learners. Nonfiction books do a lot more than simply provide helpful information: they provide students with a model for how to do good research; how to write clear, effective prose; and how to make a case, or tell a story, that has a distinct beginning, middle, and ending. Nonfiction books also skillfully integrate art into the narrative—so the selection, placement, and captioning of each image is carefully considered.

Now here comes the real crisis: when those of us who write these books seek permission to use an image in our works, we only pay for the print rights—not the online rights. Why not buy both? It’s an additional expense (one that comes directly out of an author’s pocket) and most of us have no idea if our books will ever be used digitally. While any responsible children’s book publisher makes sure their authors always have permission to use a photo or drawing, some Web sites aren’t as scrupulous. In fact, some sites—and by extension, the electronic databases they appear in—end up not paying for the images they use. There’s something profoundly wrong, indeed unfair, with this scenario.

And as teachers increasingly come to rely on electronic databases, nonfiction books are getting shut out of many classrooms. The ironic thing is, our work—carefully researched and crafted prose that has been paired with appropriate images—is precisely what teachers want, or should want.

Those who own the images—from large commercial agencies like Corbis (which owns more than 100 million images) to museums and historical societies—often charge authors disproportionately high rates. (The rates are inflated by the high fees agencies can charge advertising firms or the deals they’ve cut with textbook publishers.) A nonfiction book author pays a minimum of $100 for each quarter-page black-and-white image. As I said earlier, to play in the digital game, we authors would have to pay a premium beyond what we’d normally pay—just in case a teacher ever wants to use an online excerpt from one of our books. Sure, I suppose teachers could always use a text-only digital version of a book, but—as everyone keeps reminding us—kids respond best to visual materials, and it’s tragic to go to the trouble of finding the perfect images and working with a designer to compose the pages, only to have to jettison those images. That’s just wrong.

Nonfiction book authors are individuals with no collective clout. Right now, we’re forced to pay inflated fees for images and our works are being excluded from electronic databases, which are growing in popularity. The bottom line? It’s time to create an equitable system—or at least a new pricing structure—that will enable nonfiction books to become a part of every school’s digital universe. Until that happens, everyone loses: authors, educators, and worst of all, kids.