The name of one of Peachtree Publishers' fastest-selling books—Age-Defying Fitness: Making the Most of Your Body for the Rest of Your Life (Oct.) by Marilyn Moffat and Carole B. Lewis—also provides an apt description of the 30-year-old Atlanta-based press, which concentrates on children's books but flexes its adult publishing muscles once or twice a season. And it's Age-Defying that has pumped up Peachtree's sales revenue by 20% for the 2006 calendar year.

President and publisher Margaret Quinlin admits that Peachtree's children's list "is much more strongly developed than our other categories." Quinlin joined Peachtree as executive editor in 1988, after a career in social science editing; she bought a controlling interest in the company two years later and has had a strong hand in developing the children's list. But she was willing to test the adult health category at Peachtree after working with Carole Lewis, an author and well-known physical therapist, at Aspen Publishers. "She approached me about this book, and I could not say 'no.' I felt it was timely, and it's a good solid book," Quinlin said.

Even before the "new you" season, as January is known in retailing, got into full swing, Age-Defying Fitness hit #7 on Amazon.com. It benefited from mentions in O Magazine in October and in Jane Brody's column in the New York Times in mid-December, as well as a cover story in Advance for Physical Therapists & PT Assistants in September. Since then, the book has dropped back to the top 500, but it remains a very svelte #4 in the exercise and fitness category. Age-Defying Fitnesshas 45,000 copies in print after a fourth printing of 25,000 copies, which arrived last week. Some independents are also starting to see sales jump. "I think the book's going to do well," predicted Dick Hermans, owner of Oblong Books and Music in Millerton and Rhinebeck, N.Y., who put it face out in the health section after several people came in asking about it at both his stores.

Although Quinlin is pleased with the response to Age-Defying Fitness, she has no plans for additional promotions online, beyond this month's keyword search for "fitness" on bn.com and a Buy X, Get Y promotion with Amazon in April. She has long since replaced the publishing model of Peachtree founder Helen Elliot and her son, Wayne Elliot, who actively sought out adult titles with a Southern sensibility and New York Times bestseller potential. "We're not in the business of going after bestsellers but of creating good books. We think of ourselves as publishing for backlist," said Quinlin, who likes the idea of straddling the retail and school/library markets. The move toward publishing more children's books, she explained, also grew out of her background as an education editor coupled with the experiences of several Peachtree staffers who were ex-teachers.

With a staff of 15 and annual revenue of more than $3 million, Peachtree publishes 30 books a year, up from 20 five years ago, and has 300 books on its backlist. Among its top sellers are Carmen Agra Deedy's picture book, The Library Dragon (1994), illustrated by Michael P. White, which has sold more than 100,000 copies, and Deedy's The Yellow Star (2000), illustrated by Henri Sørensen, which has sold close to that. Another strong fall '06 release that broke fast is folksinger John McCutcheon's Christmas in the Trenches, also illustrated by Sørensen, which has 19,000 copies in print after three trips back to press. It received a 2006 Parents' Choice Silver Award, and last month the accompanying CD garnered Peachtree its first Grammy nomination (McCutcheon's sixth) for Best Spoken Word Audio for Children.

For Quinlin, attention to detail is key to Peachtree—from packaging Age-Defying Fitness with a Thera-Band elastic exercise band to switching to new accounting software later this quarter, introducing a new Web site this month at Peachtree-online.com or continuing to handle its own distribution. "Maybe it's a control thing," said Quinlin of the decision to do distribution in-house, "but part of it comes back to caring. It's important that the customer know we care about how the books get to them. It's easier if we can control for it."

Nor has she neglected the company's employees, more than half of whom have been with Peachtree for a decade or more. As part of the company's 30th anniversary celebration, Quinlin plans to give employees a minority stake in the company, which would make it one of the few U.S. publishers to be at least in part employee-owned.