Writing Young Adult and Children's Science Fiction & Fantasy: Make the Impossible Possible

This article comes to The Purple Crayon nearly two years after it was first published in Children's Writer, but the conditions it describes still exist. The only point I want to add is to address whether or not the Harry Potter phenomenon has had an effect on children's publishers. Most will tell you that it hasn't. They either like or don't like science fiction and fantasy. Maybe so, but they are more likely to be willing to offer sizable advances for "properties" (usually presented by agents or by UK publishers) that are perceived as being potential best sellers. I've seen published reports of several in the past year, involving sales of trilogies or other small series for advances of hundreds of thousands or in one case of over a million dollars. That didn't happen before HP. Of course, for the average writer, not much has changed, but for someone who has created a truly exciting and original work, the good news is that science fiction and fantasy are now considered to be capable of reaching a wide audience.  

More: http://www.underdown.org/sffantasy.htm