First Books Lowdown: My Unscientific Findings on New-Author-Friendly Publishers...

Every year since I've been blogging, I've put out a call for debut authors for my First Book feature and every year I post about which publishers are publishing the debut authors who contacted me. Here's the scoop for this year (all of which are in random order because I don't like to alphabetize)...

Publishers who are publishing one of the debut books in my pool:

• Flux
• Carolrhoda
  
• Flashlight Press
• Scholastic
• Houghton Mifflin
• Albert Whitman
• Dutton
• Blooming Tree
• Holiday House
• Pelican
• HIP Books
• Clarion
• Bloomsbury
• Feiwel & Friends
• Candlewick
• Raven Tree Press
• Delacorte
• Capstone

Publishers who are publishing two or more of the debut books in my pool:

• HarperCollins
• Walker
• Putnam
• Random House
• Sourcebooks/Jabberwocky
• Farrar, Strauss & Giroux
• Simon & Schuster
• Sterling

This year Putnam ties previous two-time winner HarperCollins at five a piece, so they each get a Friendly-to-New-Authors Gold Star!

Only a handful of the debut authors who contacted me said they have agents--I'm sure more do and didn't mention it--and some of those agented writers didn't get their agents until after the first book deal. I heard from plenty of unagented writers.

About half of the authors who contacted me are YA writers, the other half picture books, MG and chapter books, with PBs as the majority.

If you're among the YA authors (or even if you're not) check out Publishers Weekly's report, What Do Teens Want?, a survey of teen über readers. Lots of statistics and charts! (I tweeted a link to this yesterday and was retweeted like crazy.)

Now back to the tough/fun job of deciding who to interview.

My Favorite Picture Book...

This morning I got a copy of the Publishers Weekly Fall 2009 Children's Book edition which always makes me very happy. When I get these special editions, first I flip through a few times and look at the pictures and publishers' ads (which are like mini catalogs), then I go back and read the lists and features.

This issue includes a feature complied from Anita Silvey's upcoming Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children's Book (out in October from Roaring Brook) for which Silvey asked contributers, "What children's book changed the way you see the world."

If she had asked me, I would have picked Miss Suzy by Miriam Young, illustrated by Arnold Lobel. The title character in this beloved book is a nice gray squirrel who lives in a little house in a big oak tree. She makes firefly lamps and acorn cakes and wears a tiny apron as she sweeps the floor with her twig broom and keeps things tidy. She's quite happy with her simple squirrel existence until a gang of red squirrel thugs descend, chase her away, and take up residence in her once happy oak tree home. (I think one of them had fresh stitches. You knew they were trouble.)

This injustice was very upsetting to me in the early '70s when I first read Miss Suzy. I was a shy, chubby-ish kid and I had my share of being picked on. I hated that mean red squirrel gang and how they picked on Miss Suzy. But (spoiler alert) it all turns out okay. Miss Suzy befriends some toy soldiers (with shiny triangle swords) that she finds in the attic she escapes to. She tidies up and takes care of them. And then they kick those thug squirrels' furry thug squirrel butts out of Miss Suzy's house. It was so satifying to me that she made friends and her friends stood up for her. She took care of them and they took care of her. As a seven-year-old I knew I wanted friendships like like that. And I knew good could win out over evil. Oh Miss Suzy...I can't wait to go home and read my copy even though the binding it cracked and it's full of crayon marks (which is so untidy). But isn't that sign of a well-loved picture book?

I want to hear from you (since I imagine Anita Silvey didn't ask you either)--what book changed the way you saw the world when you were a child? If you'd like to share, post a comment.

Ginee Seo Resigns from S&S...

Publishers Weekly reports:

Ginee Seo, v-p and editorial director of Ginee Seo Books, an imprint of Atheneum Books for Young Readers at Simon & Schuster, has resigned from her position with the publisher, according to an internal memo sent earlier this week by Atheneum v-p and publisher Emma Dryden.

The short PW piece recalls some other recent changes in editor-driven children's imprints:

The past year has seen several changes at editor-driven children’s imprints at major houses, including the resignations of Laura Geringer and Joanna Cotler from their eponymous imprints at HarperCollins, as well as the formation of two new imprints, HarperCollins’s Bowen Press, headed by Brenda Bowen, and S&S’s Beach Lane Books, with Allyn Johnston at the helm.

Here's the link to the full article.

PW Fall Children's Announcements Issue Available...

For some odd reason I decided to go through my inbox this morning (it's tall, scary, and often avalanches onto my office floor), and lo and behold I found this:


It's the Publishers Weekly fall 2008 children's books issue, featuring listings of 2000+ new titles. Flipping through the ads is like viewing mini catalogs from pretty much every children's publisher that matters. The cover price is $12 so head to your newsstand, or check out the info on the PW website.

Balzer, Bray to Launch New Imprint at HarperCollins...

In a press release today, HarperCollins Publishers announced that it has appointed Alessandra Balzer and Donna Bray to the newly created position of Co-Publishers of the new imprint Balzer & Bray. They will join HarperCollins on May 5, 2008, reporting to Kate Morgan Jackson, Senior Vice President and Associate Publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books.

Alessandra Balzer began her career at HarperCollins Children’s Books, and was most recently an Executive Editor at Hyperion Books for Children. Donna Bray started her career at Henry Holt and Company, and was most recently the Editorial Director of Hyperion Books for Children.

Here's a link to the full story on the Publishers Weekly.

PW Children's Books Fall 2007...

Guess what just landed in my inbox? The Publishers Weekly Children's Books Fall 2007 issue! It's chock full of info on "nearly 3,000" upcoming books with cover illustrations thrown in here and there, along with colorful full-page ads from many many children's publishers. It sort of like a collection of mini publishers' catalogs.

The cover features a darling illustration by Sara Varon that I discovered after ripping off the ad-cover "Introducing '70s girl Julie Albright," American Girl's newest character who seems to have stolen the exact outfit I wore for my class picture in the fifth grade.

If you want to grab a copy of this issue from the newsstand, the cover price is $12.

Harry Potter in the News (surprise surprise!)...

Today I discovered a couple of interesting Potter pieces in the media. First The New York Times ran a piece saying the claim that reading the Harry Potter books helps turn kids into book lovers is overblown (which, if it's true, is unfortunate).

A Publishers Weekly article reveals that the Nielsen people have come up with a report offering all sorts of Potter-related statistics on books sales and movie sales, what they call The Potter Effect. Here are a few choice stats:

• Scholastic has spent from $300,000-plus to $900,000-plus on promotion for the various Harry Potter titles with a total of $3.6 million spent on U.S. promotion for all Potter-related books.
• 27.7 million copies of Harry Potter books have been sold in the U.S. since 2001.
  
• 51% of people in the U.S. are aware there's a new Harry Potter book coming out. (Do the the other 49% live under rocks or in biospheres or something? How do they not know?)
• 28% of people in the U.S. over the age of 12 have read at least one of the books. I am not among them--I've not read any of them.
  

And Emma Watson of the Harry Potter movie franchise is rocking some Chanel during the many appearances the cast is making promoting the upcoming movie. She's been all over the fashion blogs I read while I eat breakfast.