Topps, best known for its trading cards featuring players from Major League Baseball, has inked a pact with Abrams that gives the publisher the exclusive right to create books based on the company's various sports and pop cultures brands. The agreement is a multi-year deal and is intended to lead to both fiction and nonfiction titles from across all of the publisher's imprints, from Abrams ComicArts to Abrams Books for Young Readers.
Topps, which is currently trying to grow awareness of its brand by extending into TV and film, as well as books, initially worked with Abrams on the 2008 full-color hardcover, Wacky Packages, which was based on a Topps sticker line. One planned series Abrams cited that is already in the works, as a result of the deal, is a fiction line for boys age seven to 10.
