Two weeks after a Bologna Children’s Book Fair at which it looked as if picture books had at last turned a corner, Simon & Schuster UK has confirmed its biggest single co-edition deal ever. Lectorum, part of Scholastic US, has taken 280,000 copies of a bilingual edition of If I Had a Dragon, by newcomers Tom and Amanda Ellery. The deal, negotiated by S&S Children’s Rights Director Alex Maramenides, is one of the largest quantities ever bought by Scholastic as a co-edition. The book will be published in the UK in January 2007.
Can this signal better things for poor benighted picture book writers? Should we all start dusting off all those tear-stained PB manuscripts stuffed into desk drawers and start stending PB texts out again? What do you think?
You can read my report Picture Book Market Warms Up ...
I'd heard that too, at least the one from the Bologna Book Fair. But I've been sending out my PB (actually, it's a PB for somebody I know that I really think should see print) despite what they say about the markets. That's about all you can do. To paraphrase Paul Simon, "Markets come and markets go, what are you going to do about it, that's what I'd like to know."
ReplyDeleteOf course, it would be nice if I sent the rest of my stuff out!! I got kind of ... backlogged.
with the PB world being as tough as it is, i am very wary of sending out stuff for fear of blowing my one shot at getting a manuscript published. but is it just me being a wimpy girl? there was some research that showed women were less likely than men to send out their manuscripts(!!!) - should i be more aggressive?
ReplyDeleteWe've had a few years of incubating our darling little PB's - it's time to watch them break out - of course they might need a little shove in the right direction!
ReplyDeleteGreat news, thanks for cheering us up, Candy
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