Chronicle Books’ motto is “See things differently.” But walking through the independent publishing house’s San Francisco headquarters, it’s easy to see that Chronicle’s 200-plus staff members do more than see things differently—they do things differently. And this goes beyond the company’s attention to design, and its employee profit-sharing policy.
This is an office where if you leave for a few days to go to a book event, you might return to find your cubicle covered in magazine cutouts of Beyoncé. Or where in-house industrial designer Ben Laramie—who has his own 3-D printer, among other gadgets—might help entertain your kids on a school holiday.
And, of course, there’s Halloween. “Our Halloween parties are very elaborate,” says senior publicist Lara Starr. “Each floor chooses a book to base its own party and costumes on.” Last year, second-floor employees used the picture book Polar Bear’s Underwear by Tupera Tupera, which Chronicle published in March 2015, as their theme. When staff members arrived from the other floors, they were presented with a big bag of underwear—all purchased by Chronicle publisher Christine Carswell and decorated in matching pairs. “The game was to pick a pair from the bag, put ’em on, and find your undie buddy,” Starr explains.
Making a Match
Given the company’s playful culture, it makes sense that Chronicle is known for its innovative board books and picture books, such as Hervé Tullet’s interactive Press Here and I Wish You More by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld, which have both spent many weeks on bestseller lists.
Chronicle has been publishing books for young readers since founding children’s publisher Victoria Rock started the press’s children’s list in 1988. But when Rock stepped down in 2006 to become editor-at-large, management went looking for a children’s publishing director. Two other publishing veterans briefly held the job—Bill Boedeker joined in 2007 and Josalyn Moran in 2009—before Ginee Seo took over in December 2011.
What does Seo think made her a fit for Chronicle? “My predecessors came from different parts of the business—Bill had a marketing background and Josalyn came from a bookselling background,” says Seo, who is firmly rooted in editorial. She notes that her skill set meshes well with the job because of Chronicle’s emphasis on creativity and making things, adding, “I really know how a book is put together.”
Seo’s editorial experience certainly runs deep: she worked for years in New York’s big publishing houses, including Atheneum, where she had her own imprint, and HarperCollins, where she helped launch Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events; she was also an Oscar Dystel Fellow at New York University.
Publisher Carswell agrees that Seo’s experience made her a good match, as did her spirit, noting that the she is “not only much admired in the industry but a true hands-on mentor to those here at Chronicle Books who nurture authors’ words and artists’ visions.” Carswell says Chronicle’s close-knit staff requires a collaborative nature. “That’s sort of an inherent thing—either you are made that way or you are not,” she says. “And I sensed from our conversation, and what I had heard about her, that she was someone who was a collaborator.”
Seo also had experience in one particular area that Chronicle’s leadership was keen to grow: books for teens. Chronicle had published its first young adult books in 2009 and wanted to continue to expand this list, as well as its middle-grade titles. Carswell says publishing for an older age group was perceived as more than just a commercial opportunity. “There was a lacuna in the age of readers we were able to reach,” she says. “If you care as passionately about books as we do here, you want to be inspiring readers from the get-go, and throughout their reading journey.”
A Big Step
Of course, reaching a new market—especially a highly competitive one like the YA market—can be a tricky business. “It was something Chronicle learned when we started doing children’s books,” Rock says. “It wasn’t about adding more books to the list—it was a completely different world. And so, you have to have a knowledge base and a certain amount of resources.”
The YA list has expanded some since Seo joined the team, though it is still small. This year, Chronicle will publish just five YA titles. Now, Rock says, it is looking for some of these new YA titles to shine in terms of sales, awards, and/or buzz. “We’ve published some great books, but we haven’t had anything really break out yet,” she notes. “So I think we don’t want to lose our focus on that.”
But what about that “See things differently” motto? How does the children’s team make sure its books for older kids are different enough to look like Chronicle books? “It’s a question we always ask ourselves, how can we distinguish ourselves?” says Seo, who admits that her own thinking has changed since coming to the company. “In the beginning, I was thinking along the lines of what I would do at a traditional publishing house, which would be to get the best stories that I possibly could and bring them out. I think that that’s still true to a certain extent, but I think that our way is not just different voices but figuring out how we can add a different visual element to the project.”
For the cover of Colleen Gleason’s Victorian-era detective novel The Clockwork Scarab, for instance, published in 2013, the designer hired a steampunk artist to make the metal scarab that graces the cover. And in August, Chronicle will publish Hannah Moskowitz’s A History of Glitter and Blood, about an alternative fairy world. Seo says the book has both a distinctive voice and presentation, including pages made to look like a scrapbook. “Coming from Chronicle, we can add a special dimension to it,” she adds.
Willing to Experiment
Seo has just published another unusual project for Chronicle, a pair of mother-daughter memoirs: Elena Vanishing, a YA book about a teen’s real-life struggle with anorexia, by Elena Dunkle and her mother, Clare B. Dunkle, as well as Clare’s own memoir, Hope and Other Luxuries: A Mother’s Life with a Daughter’s Anorexia, both released in May. She worked on a similar project while at Atheneum: Nic Sheff’s YA drug memoir Tweak, which was published simultaneously with Houghton Mifflin’s Beautiful Boy, written by Nic’s father, David Sheff.
With the Dunkles’ books, Seo was able to edit both the YA book and the memoir (for Chronicle’s lifestyle list). She cites the projects as “an example of the way in which we are able to collaborate and work and not have as many boundaries.”
Even as Seo strives to bolster the children’s list with more titles for teens, she wants to “stay with what people know us best for, which is beautiful concept books for young children.” One of her current favorites is Lizi Boyd’s Flashlight, a simple picture book about a boy lighting his walk through the dark, published in August 2014. “The basic idea is we get everybody,” she says. “We build a Chronicle reader from baby [years] all the way up to their cool 20s and 30s and 40s. We just grab them for life. And we try to do it as beautifully and originally as possible.”
