After releasing 14 graphic novel titles into the market in 2010, independent New Hampshire publisher Steerforth Press is returning with more books from Campfire, a line of graphic novel adaptations of classic novels and mythology that are produced in India. The series has sold well enough that Steerforth plans to release the first of Campfire’s original graphic novels beginning in the summer.
Last year Steerforth teamed up with Campfire, an independent publishing house in India that produces English language adaptations of classic novels for the English speaking market in Southeast Asia. Steerforth provides worldwide distribution for the Campfire graphic novel list through its distributor, Random House Publisher Services. The Campfire list includes such classics as Robinson Crusoe, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Treasure Island; and new releases include Gulliver’s Travels, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Swiss Family Robinson and many more.
“The books have been a success when we can get them into the stores,” said Steerforth publisher Chip Fleischer. Bestselling titles in the series have been adaptations of Jack London’s Call of the Wild and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. “Teachers and librarians get it,” Fleischer told PWCW, “the Random House library marketers take them to conferences and librarians snap them up and school jobbers love them.”
But the books have met some resistance in the market. After originally planning to release 70 titles by the end of 2011, the publisher has slowed down a bit, releasing 14 books last year and looking to release about 37 in 2011. Roughly 70 to 80 pages long and priced at $9.99, Fleischer said the spines of the books are thin and they don’t standout on a shelf. Although the books are written and edited by American and British English speakers (the art is most often by Indian artists), the authors are not well known and the series also offers tales of mythology, like Hercules, as well as biographical works, so the books sometimes end up “scattered all over the store,” Fleischer said.
In addition, while older graphic novel readers like the $9.99 price point, children’s buyers—Fleischer is targeting the books at 9-15 year old readers—point to competing volumes from other publishers like Sterling, who are selling graphic novel adaptations of classics at a lower price. The books are also being used to help high school students who are “reluctant readers,” Fleisher said. Nevertheless, Fleischer said Barnes & Noble “got great sell-through during the holidays" and has placed significant reorders. “When we can get them into the stores,” Fleischer said, “people buy them.”
Steerforth will also begin releasing Campfire’s line of original graphic novels in the spring. The house plans to release four works of original graphic fiction this year, among the books are 400 B.C.: The Story of Ten Thousand, a 300-like war story set in ancient Persia; and The Dusk Society, a contemporary horror/adventure story in which a group of normal kids team up to fight evil forces.
