How to find your theme

I am willing to bet that every story, poem or illustration has a theme.

The theme might not be deliberate, but because of the nature of art, and because there is a human artist creating it, there will be a theme within your work nonetheless.

Themes are simply the topics that get explored within a book. Personally I often find that the things I’m interested in, or thinking about naturally spill over into the stories I want to tell.

Themes can be really helpful in publishing because they make it easier for agents to sell a book to an editor, for editors to sell it to the sales teams and later down the line for the sales teams to sell in to bookshops and retailers.

However, sometimes the reverse is also true.

Our debut book The Perfect Fit was rejected by one publisher because they had another book about shapes on their list (even though the theme and actual story in the books were completely different.)

Similarly, The Odd Fish received several rejections from publishers who already had a book about plastic in the ocean on their list.

In an ideal world, each book would be consider on its own merits, but as I’ve said before, publishing is a business and the aim of a publishers will always be to make a profit.

If a publisher has two books out at the same time about the same theme or topic, then they are potentially halving their market.

(This is the same reason publishers try to stagger having too many picture books by the same illustrator out at the same time because it potentially reduces the number of co-editions they will get for each book as smaller markets can only buy a limited number of books.)

Knowing what the theme of your book is will really help you when writing a query letter and pitching it to agents and editors.

So, to help you narrow down your theme/themes, I’ve listed most of the common ones below.

I’ve also explained why knowing what your theme is won’t be enough to stand out in a crowded market and how you can elevate this by taking it one step further…