NEW VENTURE WILL SIGNIFICANTLY EXPAND SOURCEBOOKS JABBERWOCKY'S NONFICTION PROGRAM 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.” This week Sourcebooks turned twenty-nine, and took some time to celebrate twenty-nine years of success, growth, and innovation, and most importantly, all the people who helped us get there. The Sourcebooks Naperville team in front of the office, full of ice cream and good cheer. 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. Every year ReaderLink holds their annual meeting in the Chicagoland area and invites their partners to come in for two days of sharing great information and networking. For anyone not familiar, ReaderLink is the group that, among other things, supplies books to some of your favorite retailers like Walmart, Target, the wholesale clubs, grocery chains, and more. ReaderLink also hosts an awards ceremony where it presents awards to it's publishing partners.
This year the awards dinner was hosted by author and television personsonality Anderson Cooper and during the event Sourcebooks was honored to be presented with the Rising Star Award. Publisher and CEO Dominique Raccah accepted the award and gave the following speech: "Thank you for recognizing our company with this exciting award. All of us at Sourcebooks put an immeasurable value on our business relationship with the staff and management at ReaderLink. There is no question that ReaderLink and the retailers you serve have played a key role in the growth of Sourcebooks during our 27 year history, a simple truth that no doubt applies to every publisher in the room tonight. We are very grateful for the opportunity and the support ReaderLink has given our titles over the years. And nowhere is that more evident than in our news tonight that with the success you’ve helped us create, This is Where it Ends, our brilliant young adult novel is today a #1 New York Times bestseller. 25 weeks on the list. Thank YOU!!! Thank you!! Thank YOU!! Each and every one of you. Our thanks as well to the many special individuals at Readerlink that have given guidance, advice, feedback and direction to us as our publishing program has grown. John Norris and his team have been instrumental in how we have shaped our children’s publishing program. Our romance line has grown dramatically with the support and insights of Cathy Cadek. Sourcebooks YA and Adult imprints continue to see terrific growth as well and we are grateful for the support of Donna’s wonderful staff. Our thanks as well to the critical ReaderLink teams in California, and Bentonville. We are well aware of the complexity and thousands of moving parts and people it takes to do what you do at ReaderLink on behalf of your retailers, your suppliers and the millions of readers they serve. We are in awe and excited to be a part of it all with you." Thank you to everyone at ReaderLink for your partnership, and for honoring our team with the Rising Star Award! Yesterday, All Things Considered ran a brief piece about reader analytics. That’s a new field being developed by a lot of people, including the very smart folks at Kobo (Michael Tamblyn) and Jellybooks (Andrew Rhomberg).
What’s interesting in this conversation is the “or” nature of it. Data or editorial gut? But I think what we’re seeing evolve is when we use data as a part of our information stream…or maybe even a number of different data points to support our decision-making. Not “or” but “and.” As book publishers, we make thousands of decisions, and it’s always striking how relatively small decisions can have big impact. It’s hard to get a book 100% right. And that’s probably why it’s also so rare. For me, innovation and data are really all about connecting authors to readers; helping to expand readership and also connecting in new ways. I tried explaining that recently in an interview. I think we’re at the beginning of reader analytics. And it’s going to take us to some new places that will undoubtedly lead to other new conversations. What do you think? Dominique P.S. If you want to learn a bit more about reader analytics, here’s a quick reading list:
“I think the mystery category could be an interesting space for us. Could you look into that?” At Sourcebooks, big projects often grow out of small questions. And in this case, the small, seemingly innocuous question—“Could you look into that?”—was directed at me, a fledgling editor with the time and interest to do a deep dive into the well-established, sprawling mystery category to determine whether Sourcebooks might be able to find a foothold in the marketplace. At other publishing houses, the thought of taking on such a large task might be intimidating. But at Sourcebooks, innovation has always been a prominent theme, especially in the fiction program. From building a new imprint from the ground up under publishing legend Hillel Black’s guidance, to the Jane Austen spinoff craze that rocked the early 2000s, to the establishment of a thriving romance program, Sourcebooks editors have been seeking out new opportunities in adult fiction for nearly two decades, and I was thrilled to have the chance to take on a similar challenge. I started my investigation with data, analyzing the top twenty mystery imprints in the Big Five, as well as looking at the most successful independent publishers in the space. I broke the entire mystery/suspense/thriller market down into categories, and from there into subcategories. Everything from James Patterson’s gritty thrillers to Joanne Fluke’s delicious cozy mysteries went under the microscope as I worked to identify which types of books were selling well, paying special attention to where debut authors were finding success.
Finally, I had to put together a plan for Sourcebooks’s entry into the mystery category. I compared the data I had to Sourcebooks’s strengths, looking for places where we could capitalize on our existing knowledge and skills to reach readers in new ways. Women-oriented mysteries were a clear opportunity for us—as a well-known romance and women’s fiction publisher, I suspected we might also find success with books featuring female sleuths that tackle issues of importance to women readers. Since we also have a strong historical fiction program, historical mysteries in the tradition of Jacqueline Winspear and Susan Elia MacNeal were an area I was eager to explore. Our well-established mass market romance program and strong presence in the library market could lend itself to development in the mass market cozy mystery space, and our passion for book club fiction and fantastic storytelling led me to wonder if we might not want to publish books in the vein of Tana French, Lori Roy, and Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger. All of this research and planning went into a 108-slide PowerPoint presentation, which I shared with our publisher and senior staff to propose the development of a mystery program at Sourcebooks. A year and a half later, we are releasing debut author Radha Vatsal’s A Front Page Affair, the first book in an exciting historical mystery series set in World War I New York City that has received outstanding trade reviews, is a Library Journal debut of the month, and represents the beginning of what I hope will be an important evolution in the Sourcebooks fiction program. One of the very best things about being an editor at Sourcebooks is the huge number of opportunities we get to take advantage of in terms of flexibility and our publisher’s enthusiasm for innovation and willingness to let us experiment. Editors armed with nothing more than passion, a keen editorial eye, and a small question (“Could you look into that?”) have established imprints that now house some of the most beloved and respected authors in their categories. And, of course, in the end, everything we’re able to do as editors comes from the wonderful authors we work with. A frequent refrain at Sourcebooks is “We publish authors, not books,” which points to our belief that one of our jobs as a publisher is to support our authors in editorial work, marketing, publicity, and sales, in hopes that we’ll still be working together five, ten, fifteen years down the road. As we embark on this new adventure, I’m so thrilled to be welcoming our new mystery authors to the Sourcebooks family and can’t wait to see the success we’ll create together.
|
Welcome to the Sourcebooks Books and Buzz Blog!
Click a category below, search for a specific author, book, or topic. Categories for each of our imprints are as follows: Categories
All
Archives
April 2020
|