What Publishers Are Doing

I’ve never studied educational theory, and only visit schools as “queen/author for a day.” So I was rather nonplussed when we agreed to write about Common Core Standards this month. I figured other bloggers would say lots of great things before my late-in-the-month turn – and I could copy off their paper.  Well, they did, and I really don’t have anything to add.

Except that Cheryl Harness’s “shame-faced cinders” (in her recent post) reminded me of the cinders still lurking in my hiking boots from my recent tortuous climb up Stromboli…..

….and Mount Etna.

Then Caroline Arnold, a good friend and good writer (like Charlotte), described a recent talk she gave on the subject wherein she discussed what her publishers are doing about the standards. So I’m copying off her paper instead. Here are what a few of my editors say about Common Core Standards and nonfiction books.

Lerner and Carolrhoda Books

Editor Andrew Karre’s responses were swift, short, and sweet. 

1. Have the Common Core Standards brought any change to the number or type of books you are acquiring?

Yes, to a certain extent.

2. Are you making any changes to the back matter to relate more directly to the standards?

 Not many. Our back matter was already pretty robust. In that case CC confirmed our approach.

3.  Have you changed your marketing strategy to accommodate the standards?

Yes, definitely.

4.  Any other comments about the standards and what they might mean to your list?

I think it means great things for creative, thoughtful, author-led nonfiction—which is to say I’ll be able to continue doing it and maybe do more of it. I think it’s a huge boon for poets.

Katie O’Neel, publicist at Lerner and Carolrhoda, elaborated.

We have started to include the Common Core correlations of each title in our catalog front list. We have also created Common Core libraries, which provide curated bundles of books, in library-bound or multi-user ebook formats, that have particularly strong correlations to the Common Core. We have also created hundreds of Common Core teaching guides that are available for free download on our website.

It’s all very user-friendly at https://www.lernerbooks.com/pages/common-Core.aspx

Holiday House

Editor Julie Amper weighed in.

“Holiday House has always published books with the school curriculum in mind. New we are adding information on how the book fits the Standards and how it could be used. In both our catalog and on our website we have annotated how books fit the Standards and how they might be used.

We do not see the Common Core Standards as a departure from what good teachers having been doing for a long time. The Standards aren’t teaching new or different information, but are rather a checklist of skills teachers have worked on with their students for years.  We see great opportunities for creative teaching by adoption of the Common Core Standards and use of trade books and other materials in the classroom.”

The Holiday House website’s home page has a link to Common Core State Standards which links to Teaching Ideas, Titles by Subject, and teachers’ materials.   www.holidayhouse.com

Boyds Mills/Calkins Creek

Boyds Mills Press, with their well-respected Calkins Creek American history imprint, and Word Song, a poetry imprint, are poised to take advantage of Common Core Standards. Kerry McManus, publicist for Boyds Mills and Calkins Creek, reports that the spring 2014 catalog will link the new titles to various standards, and Educators’ Guides will do the same.

Chicago Review Press

With a large back and front list of middle grade activity books to draw on, Mary Kravenas, Marketing Manager, writes,

“There hasn’t been a huge sea change in how we look at acquiring books. If anything, the CC standards have confirmed what we had already established with our list -- the strength and importance of non-fiction books for K-12 students. We do look a little deeper now when we’re positioning a title, discussing what standards a title addresses, and it reaffirms our commitment to quality non-fiction.”

So teachers and writers, just....

Interview with Chicago Review Press Publisher, Cynthia Sherry

I first visited Chicago Review Press, located in a vintage brick building not far from the Loop in 1996 to do some editorial work on my first book, The Wind at Work. At that time CRP occupied one floor of the building. I remember a delicious Italian lunch with the staff at a nearby restaurant. (LA doesn’t have an Italian population, so I hunt down the pasta in Chicago, Brooklyn, SF – and Italy too!)

Fast forward to Summer 2012, and another trip to Chicago. I had just flown in from New York, in time for a late lunch – French this time – with Cynthia Sherry, before she took me on a tour of the expanded offices of CRP – now filling the entire four-story building with Independent Publishers Group (IPG), its distribution arm. We talked about how Chicago Review Press had fared – very well, thank you – in the intervening fifteen years, and I’m pleased that they have just published an updated edition of The Wind at Work.

Cynthia Sherry, publisher of Chicago Review Press, has been with the company since 1989, where she acquires books, oversees the editorial and book production of about 65 titles a year, and manages a staff of ten. Cynthia is a graduate of Grinnell College in Iowa, where she majored in English and met her husband, musician Rick Sherry. They live in Chicago with their two daughters.

Tell me a little about the background of CRP.

Curt Matthews, a graduate student at the University of Chicago and poetry editor for Chicago Review magazine, had come across some wonderful works that were too long for the journal, and in 1973 he and his wife Linda decided to publish them out of their basement. They received permission from the University of Chicago to call their fledging company Chicago Review Press. The name had cachet and many of the early publications were Chicago-centric, including a very early graphic novel called Prairie State Blues.

In 1975 the press published The Home Invaders: Confessions of a Cat Burglar, by Frank Hohimer, who was doing time at Joliet Correctional Center. CRP sold the film rights and the film Thief, based on Hohimer’s book, was released in 1981. Income from that film propelled the company forward. Four decades and many successes later, Chicago Review Press now publishes about 65 nonfiction titles each year and is a sister company to Independent Publishers Group (IPG), one of the largest book distributors in  North America.

Chicago Review Press has always focused on publishing titles of lasting interest. Some of our titles have been in print for more than 20 years. We also believe in developing new voices and taking chances on quirky and sometimes controversial subjects. With more than 700 titles in print and e-book formats, Chicago Review Press publishes history, popular science, biography, memoir, music, film, and travel, among others. Our award-winning line of children’s activity books and young adult biographies make up 25% of our list. The company is proud to remain independently owned and minded.

Why do focus on activity books for children? Who is your audience?

We generally focus on activity books because we feel that hands-on activities expand learning and are fun for kids. The primary audiences are educators, homeschoolers, librarians, and engaged learners ages 9 & up. We don’t dumb the material down for kids and we typically provide a lot of interesting sidebars that put the subject in the context of the era. Recently we launched a young adult biography series called “Women of Action” that has been well received, and we will likely expand in the coming years.

The first edition of The Wind at Work stayed in print for fifteen years! Other publishers whisk books out of print in a few years.  Why are you different?

We are very focused on publishing books that will backlist well and we are more patient than the larger New York publishing houses. Sometimes we publish a book that’s ahead of its time or for a niche market that requires more work and time to penetrate. Getting books into the National Parks, for example, can take a year or more because they want to see the finished book and they have review committees looking over the content carefully. Lots of children’s books will receive reviews months after publication and parents and teachers want to know that the material has been time-tested. The Wind at Work is an example of a unique book whose market grew over the years as wind technology became more prevalent.

Other publishers suffered in the 2008 economic downturn.  What happened at CRP?

We were large enough to withstand the economic downturn, but small enough to be flexible and make appropriate changes to our business model. We were quick to convert our backlist titles to ebooks. We have also been fiscally conservative over the years and that put us in a great position to build our business and invest in new technology while other companies were downsizing and retrenching. Also, we don’t pay large advances and that has protected us over the years from any big downsides in the risky business of publishing.

What are you doing with ebooks?

We embraced ebooks from the beginning and converted all of our backlist titles into the three ebook formats. It’s definitely a growing segment of the publishing business, but where it will level out is anyone’s guess. I think it will end up being at least 30% of the business, but perhaps as much as 50%. Ebooks currently represent about 20% of CRP’s overall sales, but I think there is a lot of growth potential as younger readers growing up with handheld devices become book buyers. That said, I also think that print is here to stay and that some books lend themselves better to a print format, namely picture books and heavily designed books.

What do you see in CRP’s children’s book future? 

We will likely branch out and try new things, but slowly. Right now we are working on developing a few new series like our “Science in Motion” series for ages 9 & up and our “Women of Action” biography series for young adults. We will pay attention to common core standards and STEM as we move forward and try to grow our library and education markets. We like science and building things, so activities will stay in the mix. As for now, fiction and picture books are still too risky for us, but who knows what the future will bring for CRP.

ELEPHANT IN ROOM: WHAT’S THE FUTURE OF BOOKS?

~WILL ANY BOOKS BE MADE OUT OF PAPER FIVE OR TEN YEARS OR IS THAT JUST WISHFUL THINKING? 

~WILL QUALITY SUFFER NOW THAT EVERYBODY ON THE PLANET CAN PUBLISH UN-VETTED EBOOKS AND OTHER CONTENT ONLINE? 

~GIVEN THE LURE OF CHEAP EBOOKS, CHEAP APPS, AND FREEBIES, WILL IT BE POSSIBLE TO MAKE A LIVING AS AN AUTHOR? 

~HOW CAN ANYBODY FIND OUR BOOKS AMIDST THE DELUGE? 

~DO KIDS LEARN MORE FROM EBOOKS OR LESS?

  

~WILL OUR SACRED LIBRARIES WHISK THEMSELVES AWAY FROM PRINT? 

 

Can’t help but wonder about such things seeing as it’s our livelihood and all, so I just did some gleaning to see where things stand. With that in mind, here are three comments typical of last year’s attitudes, plus a synopsis of seven new comments that were published just yesterday.

OLD (well, sorta)

Jeremy Greenfield, editorial director of Digital Book World – In January 2012, he noted a study that produced the following results: “Given the choice between reading e-books or print books, children prefer e-books... Children who read e-books also retain and comprehend just as much as when they read print books.”  But he did notice that kids reading books with lots of bells and whistles tended to get distracted.

WIRED - In April, they said that publishers were convinced they had to evolve and were hustling to make e-books more immersive.  They hoped that multi-media experiences would be the coming thing.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center in New York - By June, their own study partially backed up Greenfield, showing that kids who read enhanced ebooks "recalled significantly fewer narrative details than children who read the print version of the same story.” It seems that that all those extra features really were distracting.

 

NEW (From the Washington Post)

Multiple award winning novelist Jennifer Miller says that her latest book took 7 years to write, but awards and great reviews alone weren’t enough to get noticed.  Competing with the 60,000 titles published each year is so hard lately that if your book doesn’t sell right away you’re a goner.  So she has become a marketing strategist, an entrepreneur, and a publicist rolled into one.

Publisher David Miller says the roles of various media—books, newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, and journals used to be distinct and didn’t compete with each other, which was great for their bottom lines.  But now the roles are blurred, anything can morph into a book, and everyone is competing against everyone else.

Indie Bookseller Marc LaFramboise says although it’s cheap and easy to produce e-books online, hardly any of them make a dent in the market. Promos via social media play a big role, but it’s impossible to tell why some books fall flat while others soar. One good thing? It’s cheap to put once-popular OP books and backlist titles online. Another good thing? He sells those titles on his website.

Writing teacher Richard Peabody says tons of people still want to become authors, but most of them are introverts and the necessity of marketing cries out for extroverts.

 

Book reviewer Mark Athetakis prefers books made the old fashioned way.  He likes to write notes in the margins and quickly thumb through the pages to find parts of the story he missed, and you can’t do that with a Kindle.

 

Librarian Ginnie Cooper says people are using the library more than ever to get hold of genuine books, to see programs for kids, to access ebooks online, and to take out audio books and DVD’s.

Literary Agent Raphael Sagalyn thinks books from the big publishers still drive “national conversation.”  He is deluged with submissions but says the barriers to entry are higher than ever, so ebooks are a great option (though million dollar successes are very few).  He also says that with publishers it’s all about the money and the entire thrust is “Will it sell?”

Until the cloud rolled in, the publishing world had stayed pretty much the same forever. But these days we’re rushing into unknown territory at breakneck speed, never knowing for sure what’s next. Now that everyone wants open access to content for free and science is making all things possible, can we still plan ahead intelligently?  The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

New Hope for Old-Fashioned Books

Exactly one month ago I received an email from my friend and colleague (and fellow East Bay resident), Marissa Moss. It began almost apologetically:

“I know this probably comes out of thin air, but I've heard from so many talented writers and illustrators that they have problems getting contracts now from the major NY publishers who only want books with mass market appeal …”

Sounds like an understatement in these days of publishing uncertainty (aka “crisis”) but I was hooked. Marissa is a versatile writer and illustrator of both fiction and non-fiction, full of ambition and creativity, who has enjoyed considerable success. What was she up to?

“The golden age of picture books, when fine books were edited and published despite not being blockbusters, doesn’t have to be over,” she wrote.

Instead of lamenting the demise of publishing as we knew it, Marissa announced that she is going to turn the dearth of publishers seeking to put out beautiful books into an opportunity. She has found financial backers who share her values, and she is starting a new publishing house intended to turn back the clock by producing “quality books the old-fashioned way.” Golden Gate Books will make its mark with children’s fiction and non-fiction that book-lovers will want to hold, admire and read repeatedly.

This is actually the second recent blast of publishing news to gust my way. Our own INK is becoming a publisher of e-books, starting with the out-of-print titles of our members. I have four titles ready to go, as soon as I do the necessary scans and we work out the contract details to sell our books on the iTunes store and perhaps other e-marketplaces. This is exciting news not only because it gives authors a chance to immortalize our books and make them available at very low cost to interested readers, however many or few they may be. I am also thrilled because it is the impetus I need to enter this new world of publishing and experiment with its myriad possibilities.

While INK, for starters at least, will be e-publishing out-of-print titles (which, in the current reality of publishing, does not mean out-of-life or out-of-value titles), Golden Gate Books, despite valuing the paper-in-hand approach to reading, may also enter the e-realm by releasing all of its titles as e-books within months of their print debut.

Whether or not its titles have an e-life, Marissa is embracing web-based promotion and even fund-raising. Right now she has enough money committed to plan eight books during GGB’s first year, but if she can raise an additional $50,000 she will go for twelve with a larger marketing bang for all of them. She is using www.kickstarter.com, a fund-raising website that follows the NPR model to seek pledges from donors who receive premiums at different levels depending on how much they give. No pledges are actually collected unless the goal is achieved. In this case, it’s $50,000 in pledges by April 19, 2012. Check it out and please feel free to choose your premium:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/404352146/golden-gate-books-a-childrens-book-revival

Here is one piece of the pitch, where Marissa (writing from the future) summarizes the mind-set of today's typical publishers:

"Instead of taking risks on new voices or subjects, they focused on what had already sold well – one Harry Potter book led to a slew of imitators. One Twilight book created a wake of supernatural novels. Instead of looking for the great books of the future, they looked for books that were like great books of the past."

I would make one edit: change “great books of the past” to “successful books of the past.” I recall my appearance at the Texas Library Association conference in April, 2000, after my book If You Hopped Like a Frog had just come out with Scholastic. It put forth a new, enjoyable approach to proportional thinking in which human abilities were compared, proportionally, to those of animals. Proportion is an important concept in algebraic thinking, taught in various ways (most of them confusing, boring or both) throughout the upper elementary and middle school grades. The Scholastic team was out in force at TLA giving away, waving and wearing a plethora of promotional items in various shapes, sizes and levels of extravagance. Did even one of these marketing pieces reference my book or that of any other up-and-coming author? Not on your life! Every single one was about Harry Potter, whose third (or was it fourth?) installment was hitting the American market. Harry really needed the help, didn’t he?

On May 25, 2009, I wrote a blog post here called “Paen to a Publisher,” in which I paid tribute to one of my publishers, Tricycle Press, which (along with its parent company, Ten Speed Press) had just been bought by Random House. I wondered aloud whether the many uncommon practices that had made Tricycle my favorite, if smallest, publisher would be retained once it became part of the world’s largest media conglomerate. (For example, Tricycle ignored a near-universal convention in publishing by allowing an author to have a voice in selecting the illustrator for his or her book. Tricycle even allowed authors and illustrators to influence editing decisions and sometimes gave them the final say. Can you believe?)

I have never written a postscript to that discussion and here it is: in January, 2011, Random House announced that it was scuttling Tricycle Press. My favorite publisher is history. One of the many pieces of flotsam left adrift by the maelstrom of that decision was my manuscript I Rot: The Fall and Rise of a Halloween Pumpkin, which I described in my May 24, 2010, INK blog post called “Researching With Researchers.” Since then, I have been seeking a new publisher for my rotten manuscript (and the revolting photos by Dwight Kuhn that accompany it).

Along comes Golden Gate Book, seeking authors and illustrators with worthy manuscripts in search of a publisher, authors who have established relationships with booksellers and who effectively promote their own books through school visits and other appearances. . . Along comes Golden Gate Books, promising to give the creators of books an unusual amount of control over their projects. . . Along comes Golden Gate Books, “a company that cares about the magic that happens when a parent reads a picture book to a child.”

And I am now delighted to announce that the magic of a decomposing pumpkin (and it is magical in its own transformative, regenerative way) will be featured on Golden Gate Books’ first list in the Fall of 2013.

Have you ever waited at a bus stop? Waited and waited at a bus stop? You watch cabs rolling by, watch buses going the other way, watch your watch with increasing irritation. Finally your bus does come--with two or three other buses right behind it. A herd, a pod, a troup of buses. Very annoying, isn’t it?

A similar thing has happened to me in the publishing world, but I’m not sure whether it’s annoying or not. In 2004, I had five books come out in one year. And, up until a few months ago, I thought I would have four coming out in 2012.

How does this happen? I’ve never written four or five books in one year, so how do they get bunched up on the other end like buses? Good question. Some books go into production relatively quickly, while others take a long time to write. For example, I wrote a book called Skyscraper that chronicled the making of the Random House Building and I couldn’t write any faster than the construction. It had a four-year gestation period and came out in 2004 along with Choppers! that took about two years from research to release. Other reasons? Editors have babies. It can take a while to find the right illustrator or to wait for an illustrator to finish two other projects before starting yours or the illustrator goes on strike. The economy tanks and publishing houses thin their seasons and spread out the books so your pub date jumps a year or so into the future.

Let me be clear, I’m not complaining, really. I know having a bevy of books is an embarrassment of riches. It’s certainly better than no books at all, or a surfeit of buses traveling in a pack. But what are the pros and cons for the author—and the books?

In the old days, the perception was: bringing out more than one book a season or a year meant the author was competing against herself. Mark that down as a notch in the “con” section. Of course in the old days, most authors published with only one house so the publisher would be competing against itself too; they controlled supply and demand.

Today many children’s book authors work with several houses. We cannot act as traffic cops giving Simon & Schuster the green light for one season and putting Penguin on hold. Now publishers are competing against each other. Has that changed the model? Does it help or hurt the author? And given the increased avenues of media, does having multiple books out at the same time increase buzz? Advertising wisdom says the more consumers hear something, the more likely they will remember it, perhaps become interested and start word-of-mouth.

In 2004, I decided that if there was any time to hire a publicist, having five books come out was it. Susan Raab and I concentrated on three of them. Susan was great and responsible for a good deal of the media coverage they received. So having that many books in one year pushed me to hire a publicist. Having her work on three in one year was also cheaper than if I had hired her for each separately. Furthermore, it may have garnered more results. If a journalist wasn’t interested in one, Susan had an opportunity to mention two others that might be more tempting. Three checks for the “pro column.”

There is another serious con, however. Just as a band of buses assures someone is going to have to wait a long time before the next clutch arrives, if you have four or five books come out in one year, chances are, it will be a while before the next release date. And if it’s quite a while, you feel the effects. Without something new in the offing, your name isn’t as much in the public eye as a reminder of your whole body of work. You get fewer invitations to speak at conferences during the lull. You, or at least I ended up feeling de-energized, even though I knew I had “books in the bank.”

That’s why I was so easygoing when my editor called a few months ago to say we had to delay my fourth 2012 release, How Do You Burp in Space?, a kids’ tourist guide to space travel. I was gracious and calm in response to a conversation I’m sure she had dreaded having. After all, I’m an experienced professional who knows that these things happen.

And now I also have a book coming out in 2013!

Here's my 2012 line up:

The Real Future

Disoriented and a little confused. That's what I felt as the pre-Halloween snowstorm hit, accompanied by thunder, falling tree branches (hundreds of them in our tree happy little town) and the pop-pop-pop of exploding transformers. Oddly enough, I was feeling much the same way in the days leading up to the storm, though it had nothing to do with the treatening weather.
*
Two publishers had sent me contracts to turn seven of my published books into e-books. It felt nice that the books were going to be given a new life, but that pleasant feeling was undercut by the actual terms of the contracts. Each publisher had its own idea of what a fair share of the sales was and my agent made it clear that she thought neither was being particularly generous. And neither publisher would budge an inch from their position. It was a take it or leave it sort of deal. What to do? I could just turn them down and see what happened next, though that seemed like a drastic step. And I'm not the sort of person who does drastic things. So I put the contracts aside to think on them.
*
Then the storm hit and the branches rained down and confusion reined (I couldn't resist, sorry). On Monday I was looking through the Times at the numerous storm damage pieces when I came across an article about The Dover Bookstore on Earlham Street in London's Covent Garden. Now here was a story about a real bookstore with real books on the shelves with an owner named Mark Oddie (love that name!) and a regular stream of customers (enough to generate $1.25 million in sales in 2006). Okay, this bookstore sells "clip art" books put out by Dover Publications and not regular trade books. But they are books and The Dover Bookstore was still in business after twenty-five years. All was right in the world, I told myself. There was a center to the planet after all, something to hold onto during uncertain times. Until I neared the end of the article, that is.
*
That was when Mr. Oddie described his store as a "charitable operation" that made enough money to pay the bills, but little beyond that. My spirits drooped even more when I read that Mr. Oddie's lease will be up early next year and that Dover Publications is about to introduce direct downloads of images within a year. It seems that another bookstore will soon go the way of those exploding transformers. Pop!
*
I had hoped to read an article that would reasssure me, but instead came away even more disoriented. Which is when I turned back to those e-book contracts. My agent and I may not like the terms of the contracts, but they do represent the publishers' belief that the books have a future life. No one can define what that future will be, of course, but where there is a future there is hope. That's the sort of profession we're in. Every time we begin a new book we put our emotions on the line. We have no idea how the book will turn out (at least I don't) or whether our words will be well-received or even be in print after six months. But we do it anyway; we risk our happiness and piece of mind again and again, because we need to see where our ideas will lead, what might emerge from a simple idea.
*
So I signed all of the contracts, sent them off, and promptly banished thinking about them for now. No reason to occupy brain cells with needless, troublesome worry when a new project with new challenges is demanding immediate and focused attention. I will always love real books -- holding them, smelling them, hearing the binding crack as I turn the pages. And I'll always surround myself with books. Lots of them. But the real future, after all, isn't confined by form; the real future is in the words on the screen right in front of me.

To Market, To Market

Twelve reactions to my latest nonfiction work:
• “[This] made me quite teary. [I]t’s a beautiful [story], and very nicely told”
• “A great conversation piece, and I think boys would particularly like it”
• “I have to say, I think the story is fantastic”
• “Not only is [the] story an interesting, little-known slice of history, but the writing is quite lovely as well”
• “We all had very positive reactions to it overall. What we all really loved, and what I am sure appeals to you, is that it is a war story but it’s one about reconciliation. That’s really both a lovely and unusual notion”
• “I have read the story several times, and it is an unusual one with lots of good themes and excitement”
• “[A] lovely paean to peace coming out of war”
• “I was very moved”
• “Compelling and well told”
• “I was fascinated by this story of forgiveness and redemption. It’s so touching!”
• “Haunting”
• “There’s no question this has some compelling marketing hooks—and it’s a pretty unbelievable story in the first place”

I would be proud to say that these twelve comments were reactions to MY latest nonfiction work. But this is actually the way that Marc Tyler Nobleman started off a very thought-provoking post at his own blog.

A little later in the piece, he revealed that each reaction came from a children’s book editor—who was rejecting his manuscript. It wasn’t that they were afraid to take a chance on a newcomer; Nobleman has written many, many books including the highly lauded Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman. So, why? Doubtless many reasons, but he was often told that nonfiction—especially nonfiction about someone who is not a household name—doesn’t sell.

Okay, it’s no news that the economy is in trouble and if that weren’t affecting publishing, the changes in technology still would be. No news at all. But Nobleman's post isn’t whining about it. Instead he created his own news—and hopefully a bit of buzz to pitch and call attention to the story he loves and wants to tell in print.

He turned to illustrators—some kids, some old pros with hundreds of books among them. He asked them to create covers for his book. There are twelve on his blog (interestingly, the same number as listed rejections). You can go to the link below to see them all. Since I’m just picking one to share here, I'm loyally going for the cover by Tim Bush, who illustrated my own All in Just One Cookie.

I'll let Marc tell the rest of his own story at the link below. But at the end, he closes with two questions:

Librarians: Is this a book you can see adding to your collection?

Editors: Is this a book you can see?

For me, Marc’s post, http://noblemania.blogspot.com/2011/09/picture-book-for-sale.html, also raises many more:

What about the stories that need to be told precisely because they are about people, who aren't household names but perhaps should be because they came out of mist to be heroes or do the decent thing? People like, say, you or me or the kid that is reading the book?

What is the author’s changing role in these crazy transitional times? First it was just creator; now our roles are equal parts promoters and “publisizers.” The Internet also gives Marc and all of us a platform for another additional role. But what is that role and what will it entail?

And, what will happen when the iPad (RIP Steve Jobs) and its equivalents make illustrated books a realistic digital commodity; how will that shift the roles of publishers and authors even more? What are some of the best case scenarios?

Come on guys, do we have a shot at a discussion here?

A Book By Any Cover?

Happy Passover! And almost Happy Easter!

I am taking this day to talk about something related to my post last month: art. This month it's about covers, and specifically the covers of two of my books--Celebrate Passover and Celebrate Easter. First of all let me just say this is not some sneaky way of getting you to buy my books. Since Passover has already begun and Easter is just days away, it's too late for this year. If I were a truly savvy marketer I would have written this post a month ago. But I'm not that savvy. Not even slightly. This came about because I took out the books to bring them to the family seder (o.k., just one of the books, guess which one?) and remembered that they changed the covers before they put them in paperback. Can you guess why?

Above is the cover of the hardcover edition of my Passover book.

Below is the cover of the paperback edition, out about a year later:

Why the change?

Here's a hint, by way of my book about Easter. Hardcover:

And the paperback:

First of all, although National Geographic was amazingly great to work with on these books, and I had a lot of input on the photographs inside (Lori Epstein, the photo editor, is a genius, so she didn't need much of my input at all!), they changed the covers without telling me.

That's fine, really it is, because they know what they're doing.

The hardcovers were mainly marketed to grown-ups--teachers, librarians, parents. And the softcovers to kids. So the covers reflect that marketing. This just brings home once again that the job of writers and publishers of children's books is different from the job of those who make books for grown-ups. We are aiming at more than one audience at a time. In this case the wizards at National Geographic decided to kind of split the market with the different editions.

Which makes me wonder, what's next? How will the new technology affect the way publishers design the different editions of our books? Will e-books look different graphically than paper books? What about books for Ipads and Iphones vs books for Kindles and Shmindles? I think this is an especially interesting question for nonfiction books and especially for us--the writers, publishers and gatekeepers of nonfiction for children.

I think this is one of those cases when technology will change the way books are written. We've known for a while that once electronic books are the norm we will no longer need picture books with a certain number of pages. But what about the look of these books, from the covers on in? What do you think?

By the way, I am part of a panel at ALA this summer called the Nonfiction Book Blast. Other I.N.K.ers are on it, too. I wrote a post yesterday for that panel's blog that might interest you. You can go here to see it.