Next spring, 43-year-old Canadian children’s book publisher Kids Can Press will launch KCP Loft, its first imprint aimed specifically at teenagers, with books that will have potential crossover appeal for adults. Kate Egan will helm the imprint. Egan is a Brunswick, Maine-based freelance editor who has worked with many major publishing houses, and was one of the editors of the blockbuster Hunger Games trilogy.
Egan had not worked with Kids Can Press before, but president Lisa Lyons Johnston says she found Egan via word of mouth. “Truly, Lisa called me from out of the blue,” says Egan. “I thought that she was just calling to ask me to freelance on a book or two, but she had something bigger in mind.”
Egan, who has worked in children’s publishing for 20 years, is the author of several books for young readers: a picture book inspired by her son, called Kate and Nate Are Running Late!, and the four-part chapter book series The Magic Shop (written with magician Mike Lane), all published by Feiwel and Friends. She also wrote the official illustrated companion book for the Hunger Games movies. Egan will work from Maine, traveling for meetings when necessary.
“I have to say, I think this really is the nature of business of the future,” says Lyons Johnston. “In the global marketplace, people can work from anywhere. A lot of what she’s doing is editing and reading, so to have that quiet space at home is not a bad thing.”
KCP Loft will publish fiction and nonfiction titles for ages 14 and up. Many titles will be considered for adaptation into other multimedia formats by Kids Can’s parent company, Corus Entertainment, whose brands include several major TV and radio stations. Egan will edit all of the imprint’s books, and she will make acquisition decisions with an advisory panel made up of Kids Can and Corus employees.
“That doesn’t mean that if something is not a fit in terms of screen, that we won’t acquire a project,” says Lyons Johnston. “It just means that we have the benefit of the potential to capitalize on that.”
The first four books, announced for 2017, are all novels: Wendy Brant’s Zenn Diagram, a teen romance with a supernatural twist; Lindsey Summers’ Textrovert, a smartphone-centric romance based on the popular Wattpad story, The Cell Phone Swap; Kim Turrisi’s Just a Normal Tuesday, about a young woman coping with her sister’s suicide; and Bridget Tyler and Jeff Norton’s Keeping the Beat, about an up-and-coming English rock band.
“Each one of those books has a unique voice,” Egan says. “We are looking for stories that we haven’t heard before. So we’re not looking for any particular story, or any particular genre; we’re just looking for strong stories told well in voices that feel fresh to us.”
