We are happy to share that Jinxed by Amy McCulloch is a Middle Grade Editors Buzz Title at BookExpo this year! The title will be published in January 2020 under Sourcebooks Young Readers.

Jinxed was published under Simon & Schuster Children's UK in August 2018. The book is The Golden Compass for the digital age, following a young engineer named Lacey who dreams of working for a company behind customization robot pets called "baku," but soon learns that Jinx, the cat-shaped baku she befriends, is part of a dangerous plot. STEM-based and geared toward female readers, this series starter is a standout in the middle grade category. 
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Clear your shelves! It's time for Barnes & Noble's Book Haul Blowout! Starting Wednesday, February 27, through Monday, March 4, you can score 50 percent off a huge selection of new releases, bestsellers, paperbacks, kids' favorites, and more.

From book club picks to Golden Age mysteries and from bestselling board books to young adult thrillers, Sourcebooks has something for every reader to love! Keep reading to discover the Sourcebooks bestsellers and new releases you can add to your #bookhaul:

About CCPPG 
China Children's Press & Publication Group (CCPPG), the largest professional children's press and publication group in mainland China, was formed by consolidating of China Teenagers Press (established in 1951) and China Children's Publishing House (established in 1956).

With 750 employees, CCPPG publishes 5 newspapers, 11 magazines and around 1,500 books every year. In 2013, the total printed copies of books, newspapers and magazines reached over 130 million. CCPPG owns Juvenile & Children Reading Experience Wonderland (the Wonderland), a website (www.ccppg.com.cn), China Children Audio-Visual and Electronic Publishing House and a range of educational services branded as "Heart-to-Heart Sister". The Wonderland, a base to promote reading among young people, is China's largest professional bookstore for children and teenagers. In 2013, as shown in the "2012 Press and Publication Industry Analysis Report" developed by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of The People's Republic of China, CCPPG ranks the first in terms of total economic value among all children's publishers in China.

About Sourcebooks
​Sourcebooks is a thriving entrepreneurial company that brings extraordinary authors to readers in the most dynamic, data-driven ways. We create books that transcend categories and defy odds and have been honored with hundreds of national bestsellers and awards. We are home to enthusiastic, book-loving employees who are dedicated to connecting books to readers in new and innovative ways. Story by story, book by book, we have touched over 100 million lives. Join us as we change 100 million more. ​

Many were no doubt surprised and saddened by the news that Sally Dedecker passed away on Monday night.

Sally was a close friend, and an extraordinary asset to the publishing industry. So many have since come out to talk about the ways that Sally impacted their life, their work, and themselves.
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In September, I had the honor of presenting her with the BISG Lifetime Service Award. I spoke of Sally’s many achievements and contributions to BISG and the entire book industry. I was speaking on behalf of all of her many friends at BISG:

As we continue to reinvent BISG, there's no better example of what our core values mean in practice than Sally Dedecker. For more than half of the time that BISG has been serving the industry, Sally has been serving BISG.
Her knowledge and experience make her invaluable to this organization and the publishing industry as a whole. 

As seen through her work with BookExpo, uPublishU, BISG, and more, Sally’s collaborative nature has helped publishers, authors, readers, and so many others connect for meaningful conversations that help our industry move forward.
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In a sense, Sally is an unsung hero, with an incredible breadth of knowledge. Through her comprehensive consultant agency, Sally Dedecker Enterprises, Sally has helped provide solutions in distribution, sales, marketing, product development, among other areas of the digital and print publishing process.  As many of you know, she has also developed and curated the educational conferences for BookExpo America.

When asked about Sally, Maureen McMahon said, "If I had to describe Sally Dedecker in one word, it would be 'unstoppable.' Her combination of industry knowledge, energetic problem solving, and generous friendship put her at the top of the list of colleagues we turn to for advice -- or when we just need a dose of Sally's no-holds-barred candor. You can always count on Sally to tell it like it is."

No task has been too small, no project has been too big for Sally. She has looked at our business as if it were her own, because truly, it has been. Sally has dedicated her life to this industry, and has made an incredible impact.
Sally once again chaired this year's jury to select the recipients of BISG's 2017 awards. We couldn't tell her that we'd also picked out one for her. I am happy, proud, and honored, to present Sally Dedecker with the 2017 Lifetime Service Award, given by all of her colleagues, past and present, who know all the many and amazing things she has done to make BISG work for its members and for our industry.
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I will miss my friend. I know we all will. She made an enormous difference in our lives, for which I will always be grateful.
—Dominique Raccah, CEO and Publisher, Sourcebooks

In celebration of Children’s Book Week, March 4th and Sourcebooks recently made a joint donation of 21,000 books to First Book, the nonprofit social enterprise that has distributed more than 160 million books and educational resources to programs and schools serving children from low-income families. The donation of six Little Pickle Press titles appealing to children from preschool to middle grades is being made in support of First Book’s partnership with Every Child a Reader, the charitable arm of the Children’s Book Council and sponsor of Children’s Book Week, which will take place May 1 to 7, 2017.

Little Pickle Press is known for award-winning books that help children make sense of complex issues. Titles donated include: A Bird on Water Street by Elizabeth O. Dulemba, Roar Like a Girl by Coleen Murtagh Paratore, Spaghetti Is Not a Finger Food (and Other Life Lessons) by Jodi Carmichael, The Treasure of Barracuda by Llanos Campos and translated by Lawrence Schimel, What Does It Mean to Be an Entrepreneur? by Rana DiOrio and Emma D. Dryden, and What Does It Mean to Be Safe? by Rana DiOrio.

In January, Sourcebooks and March 4th (formerly Little Pickle Press) announced an innovative publishing partnership, and this donation is one of the first efforts undertaken as part of their on-going relationship.

“We are honored to help make these books available to schools and families who may not otherwise have access to quality children’s content,” said Rana DiOrio, CEO of March 4th and founder of Little Pickle Press. “We have always believed that for society to thrive, it must promote literacy and instill values in its young people. Getting meaningful messages into the hearts and minds of more children has always been the keystone of our approach.”

​To learn how to participate in Children’s Book Week, visit Every Child a Reader.

March 4th is catalyzing a universe of character-driven stories that meet the cross-format demands of young consumers and their caring adults. Brought to life through video, film, aStories™, and merchandise, this universe increases market awareness and penetration for its publishing partners.

​Sourcebooks brings extraordinary authors to readers in the most dynamic and data-driven ways. Through innovative publishing, exploring every platform, and creating breakthrough models, Sourcebooks is consistently finding new ways to help authors touch people and change lives. In 2016, Sourcebooks CEO and publisher Dominique Raccah was named PW Person of the Year and BISG Innovator of the Year. Visit www.sourcebooks.com for more information, and check out the Sourcebooks blog.

Contact

March 4th, Inc.:
3701 Sacramento Street #494, San Francisco, CA, 94118; (877) 415-4488; dprichard@march4thinc.com

​Sourcebooks, Inc.:
1935 Brookdale Rd, Ste 139, Naperville, IL, 60563; (800) 432-7444; heather.moore@sourcebooks.com

A Country Between: Making a Home Where Both Sides of Jerusalem Collide by Stephanie Saldaña

​“Beautifully written, ardent and wise.”—Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Secret Chord, People of the Book, and March

When American writer Stephanie Saldaña finds herself in an empty house at the beginning of Nablus Road, the dividing line between East and West Jerusalem, she is a new wife trying to navigate a fragile terrain, both within her marriage and throughout the country in which she has chosen to live. Pregnant with her first child, Stephanie struggles to protect her family, their faith, and herself from the cracks of Middle Eastern conflict that threaten to shatter the world around her. A Country Between captures the fragile ecosystem of the Middle East and the difficult first years of motherhood in the midst of a conflict-torn city.

Buy the Book
Indiebound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Brave New Girl: How to Be Fearless by Lou Hamilton

Insightful, bold, and timeless, Brave New Girl shows women and girls that anything is possible, and motivates them to move past fear and into courage. Each page is an invitation to pause, reflect, and happily rise to the occasion. This inspirational gift book encourages girls and women to seize the day, be kind to themselves, and break down any imaginary barriers holding them hostage.

Buy the Book
Indiebound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict

“Fascinating and thoughtful.”—B.A. Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of The Art Forger and The Muralist
Albert Einstein’s first wife, Mileva “Mitza” Maric, was more than the devoted mother of their three children—she was also a brilliant physicist in her own right, and her contributions to the special theory of relativity have been hotly debated for more than a century. The Other Einstein offers a window into a brilliant, fascinating woman whose light was lost in Einstein's enormous shadow.

​Buy the Book
Indiebound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Strong Is the New Pretty: A Celebration of Girls Being Themselves by Kate T. Parker

Girls being fearless. Girls being silly. Girls being wild, stubborn, and proud. Girls whose faces are smeared with dirt and lit up with joy. So simple and yet so powerful, Strong Is the New Pretty celebrates, through more than 175 memorable photographs, the strength and spirit of girls being 100% themselves.

​Buy the Book
Workman Publishing | Indiebound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

The Atomic Weight of Love: A Novel by Elizabeth J. Church

Follow the journey of a driven young woman whose scientific ambitions are subverted by the expectations of her era in Elizabeth J. Church’s debut novel. Told through the eyes of Meridian Wallace, The Atomic Weight of Love takes us from the World War II years in Chicago through to the 1970s in Los Alamos, New Mexico, blending an intriguing piece of American history and science with feminism and a passionate love story.

Buy the Book
Workman Publishing | Indiebound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Radioactive: How Irène Curie and Lise Meitner Revolutionized Science and Changed the World by Winifred Conkling

Radioactive tells the fascinating, little-known story of how two brilliant female physicists working in a male-dominated field made groundbreaking discoveries that led to the creation of the atomic bomb. A nonfiction narrative that reads with the suspense of a thriller, Radioactive sheds light on Irene Curie and Lise Meitner, who are still largely ignored despite their crucial contributions to cutting-edge research.

​Buy the Book
Indiebound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Sourcebooks has acquired from March 4th all publishing rights for Little Pickle Press, best known for creating books that relate meaningful, complex concepts to children, including the bestselling and award-winning picture book Your Fantastic Elastic Brain by author JoAnn Deak, Ph.D. and illustrator Sarah Ackerley, which has sold more than 250,000 copies, and a multi-award-winning series that includes What Does It Mean To Be An Entrepreneur?® and What Does It Mean To Be Kind?®

Since founding March 4th (formerly, Little Pickle Press) in 2009, Rana DiOrio has sought to create products that inspire character development—traits such as kindness, honesty, bravery, and patience—in young people, and to do so in a socially and environmentally friendly manner. In addition to Deak, Little Pickle is the publisher of a number of bestselling authors, including Shawn Achor, Elizabeth O. Dulemba, and Coleen Murtagh Paratore. Many of the company’s titles are multiple award winners, and in 2014 Foreword Reviews named Little Pickle Press Independent Publisher of the Year. In 2015, Little Pickle expanded into the middle grade and young adult markets.

“We are thrilled to partner with Sourcebooks! Dominique and her team embody so many qualities we admire—professionalism, entrepreneurialism, and kindness,” said DiOrio. “We couldn’t have wished for a better partner in furthering our mission to inspire character development in young people, and we are excited by the tremendous potential made available by our shared vision for the future.”

Kelly Barrales-Saylor, who joined Sourcebooks as editorial director for children’s nonfiction in June 2016, has been working to quickly build its children’s nonfiction program, which has already seen great success with titles like This Book Is Gay, Dear Nobody, and the New York Times bestselling Poetry Speaks to Children series.

“I could not think of a more natural fit than adding Little Pickle Press to our growing children’s business,” said Barrales-Saylor. “Rana’s mission to create books for a better world perfectly syncs with the Sourcebooks vision that books change lives. Little Pickle provides us with the opportunity to partner with a remarkably talented entrepreneur, as well as significantly expand our offering of books that inspire, encourage, and teach young readers.”

Little Pickle Press will live as an imprint under Sourcebooks’ Jabberwocky brand, the company’s children’s imprint. The acquisition includes about twenty-five frontlist and backlist titles, which will be available through Sourcebooks beginning February 1. March 4th will work with Sourcebooks to seek out and generate new projects for the Jabberwocky and Little Pickle Press imprints, with new titles to come as soon as spring 2018. DiOrio will continue to run March 4th, Inc., with a focus on creating and acquiring content and developing video, film, and merchandise strategies in support of Sourcebooks and other partners.

​“There are opportunities for creating momentum and real change in this industry by having publishers band together to better support booksellers and authors,” added Dominique Raccah, CEO and publisher of Sourcebooks. “I’ve greatly admired Rana’s work for years. She has created something really extraordinary, and I am tremendously excited to join efforts with March 4th and the very talented Little Pickle Press authors.”

After taking some time to let loose, and engage in some friendly competition, Publisher and CEO Dominique Raccah spoke on what it takes to create a company like this, and while she was addressing the employees, she was really talking to the entire Sourcebooks family. All of the authors who write such wonderful books, our bookselling partners who help to connect readers with the right books for them, our media partners who share their love of these books, and of course the readers. We wouldn’t be here without the readers. Here’s what she said:

“Wow. Twenty-nine years.

Sourcebooks as a book publishing company simply should not exist. Whoever has a copy of “The Rules of Publishing” would tell you that. You think that’s not an actual thing, but sometimes our industry believes that there are “rules.” We ran into them again and again, and we still do.

My book review of “The Rules of Publishing” is short but sweet, “Let’s create something amazing.” 

Innovation is how we got here. It’s the cornerstone of who we are and who we’ll become next. As you all probably saw, we won the BISG Industry Innovation Award last week, and when I got up on stage I talked about how innovation is iterative, is about the customer experience, and is about having the right mindset.

What I didn’t talk about is what innovation looks like.  For that I would have needed pictures because it looks like all of you. It looks like the great big ideas and the small improvements to processes that let us pursue those ideas. Each and every one of you has a daily impact on the work we do, how we innovate and the success we create.

There are so many places in the company’s history where we did something that other people thought was crazy. We put CD’s in books, we published not one but TWO New York Times bestselling children’s poetry collections, we built a whole personalized website from the ground up. But we did it to create something amazing—connecting authors to readers in new ways.

Sourcebooks would not be the company that it is today without you and your dedication to the idea that books change lives. YOU have changed my life, and all I can say is thank you! Thank you for your ideas, for your hard work, for your dedication. It has been a great year and I cannot wait to create an even bigger future.”

​Thank YOU!

I’m incredibly honored to announce that Sourcebooks won the BISG Industry Innovation Award at the BISG Annual Meeting held today, September 30, 2016, which also happens to be Sourcebooks’ 29th birthday!

I’m sharing the acceptance speech I gave, below, because this award is not about me. It’s about each and every single person who walks through the door into our offices every morning, excited about what they will create that day. This is about our partners, and our authors, and the many readers whose lives we get to touch. It’s about what we’ve ALL created together.

We've done so much. We get to do more. Thank YOU for loving books and helping to create (each and every day) the future of this industry that we love so much.

Thank you.

​Dominique

BISG Industry Innovation Award – Acceptance Speech:

Last week as I was walking out of the office one night I started a list of the things that we were working on that looked like "new" to me. I came back the next morning, expanded that list of 6 to 14 and realized it touched every part of our organization. When I shared it with my team, they expanded it to 31 and at that point I realized that we were rethinking our business from the ground up.

Innovation is, I think, 3 things:

It is customer centric. Leaning into the customer experience, whether it's augmented reality, ya covers, Facebook conversions or personalized books.

And it is iterative. You try, learn, change, over and over. You start small, like that list I made. And you build from there.

And it is about mindset. Our industry is often thought to be the hallmark of stuck. Innovation is tough, it's expensive and on some days it's really embarrassing. But it's our mindset --the way we think about it -- that allows us to drive through and innovate.

When I look at us, the book industry, I see leaders. I see strivers. I see innovators.

I see an industry that's breaking the norms of what media transformation can and should look like. And people who daily do the work for the sheer excitement that books bring into people's lives.

​Thank you so much for this honor, thank you to the whole BISG organization for the work you do, to the committee and working group members and chairs, to my many friends on the board, and to everyone here today for giving your time and effort to making our industry better. As members of BISG we are charged and trusted with setting standards for the industry. Let's continue to set a standard of innovation, of growth mindset, of reaching beyond what we are now and creating the future of book publishing. Thank you.