What started as a solo, self-published picture book in 2021 has transformed into a children’s indie publisher with an emphasis on social justice and a goal of six books per year. Los Angeles-based Gloo Books, a direct-to-consumer company founded by attorney Karen Chan, is a space for BIPOC educators and influencers to write educational, diverse books for young readers. In addition to Chan, Gloo’s staffers are editor Alexandria Scott-Christensen and sales and marketing lead Olivia Butze.
In its third year, Gloo’s publications include a series of Baby Go! international travel board books; a Very Asian Guides global food series inspired by journalist Michelle Li’s Very Asian Foundation and hashtag; and the informational picture book Composting for Community, written by LA Compost founder and executive director Michael Martinez, with illustrations by Hannah Abbo. Gloo’s catalog leans toward nonfiction, including A Life of Song: The Story of Ella Jenkins, in which music scholar Ty-Juana Taylor and illustrator Jade Johnson profiles the popular children’s folk musician.
This September, Gloo will release Calling All Future Voters!, a picture book co-written by Advancement Project organizer Jennifer Lai-Peterson, NAACP board of directors v-p Eddie Hailes, and former Lee & Low editor Laura Atkins, author of two books in Heyday Books’ Fighting for Justice series. “We started this book about two years ago,” Chan said, calling it a “timely” work of fiction about a squad of kids doing community service around voting rights and registration. “The book dives into the history of who has fought for inclusion, who can vote, and why voting is still closed off” to some communities, she said.
“Diversifying children’s literature is my personal motivation,” Chan said, noting that Gloo intends to create “culturally competent books” by authors who come from the communities they write about and even featuring QR codes that direct to source material on language and pronunciation. That commitment “has created word-of-mouth,” she said. “From the get-go, we started receiving submissions, and people contacted us to say, ‘I have a book idea.’ If I had all the money in the world, I would be moving at lightning speed, getting those ideas published.”
From ‘What’s That?’ to an International Menu
In November 2021, Chan published What’s That?, illustrated by Basia Tran, a picture book about a Chinese American boy who dishes with a friend about his bring-to-school box lunch. The picture book was created as an introduction to, and reinforcement of, diverse food options for children, and Chan had her own young son in mind as an audience. But in the process, she said, “I learned about traditional publishing, and it sparked the idea of building a larger company.” While printing, marketing, and distributing What’s That?, “the light bulb went off: maybe there’s an opportunity here to provide a platform for other authors, other storytellers.” Chan named her company Gloo, an allusion to the “glue in the binding of a book” and the way literacy “brings people together.”
Although publishing is a recent occupation for Chan, she sees it as an extension of the inclusive values she prioritized in her legal career. While working in mergers and acquisitions at a law firm, she did pro bono work with asylum seekers. In an earlier role with a nonprofit organization, she worked on immigration issues. “The transactional stuff [of business law] obviously has some relevance, to the extent that publishing is a negotiation of intellectual property,” she said, but she only practices law part-time these days: “I guess you could consider it my side hustle.”
Being an outsider to publishing helped Chan think differently about getting books to readers. “There’s so much technology and social media available to hyper-target certain audiences,” she said. “That’s even more the case with respect to people who have been traditionally underrepresented in mainstream media.” Gloo’s orders result from ads on social media, outreach to library systems and schools, and booths at literary events like the Los Angeles Times Book Fair and the Bay Area Book Festival. Chan also arranged a book launch for three of the Very Asian Guides at Yu and Me Books, her friend Lucy Yu’s bookstore in New York City’s Chinatown.
Rather than work with a distributor, Gloo Books uses a third-party warehouse and fulfillment center in Northern California for both direct-to-consumer and B2B business. Bookstores, gift shops, and novelty retailers make 10-unit minimum orders and receive a 50% wholesale discount. (For now, single copies of Gloo publications may be found on the company’s website and major online retailers, but not yet on Bookshop.org.)
Gloo promises “a similar royalty to traditional publishers” and supports authors with a strong marketing and PR budget, Chan explained. But she believes that authors choose to work with Gloo on principle, not necessarily for financial gain: “I actually think the incentive for people to work with us is our mission. They want to be part of creating change for future generations.”
