Literary Agent and V.P. Elizabeth Harding of Curtis Brown discusses the $3 Billion children's book business

From this interview with Valerie Peterson on the Balance, Elizabeth shares:

'Where the retail booksellers have been the primary market for adult books, for children's books, the school, and library markets have always been really important to sales — and there's been a recent resurgence there.
To give some historical perspective — 20 years ago the school and library market was very robust and, at the time, it was great if your children's book sold in bookstores, obviously, but it wasn't the focus.
Then Barnes and Noble and other superstores and Amazon came into the picture, and it became really important to be able to sell your books through those venues; a lot of weight was put on those sales. The focus shifted [from schools and libraries] to getting books onto the picture book wall at B&N. The children's market began to rely heavily on those retail sales — which hadn't traditionally been the case, and which was more in tune with how adult books were sold.
There still is a lot of weight put on those sales, but we're back to having the school library market being really critical.

It's well-worth reading the full interview (and I love the advice about befriending your local children's librarian!)

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee