Letter from London
Julia Eccleshare -- 8/31/98
Random House Children's Books, with its long history of distinguished publishing, has been through considerable changes in the past year but now looks far more settled under its new management team. Debbie Sandford, who joined RHCB from Reed (now Egmont) 14 months ago, is now managing director, while Ian Craig, most recently at Collins Children's Books and previously at Cape, has returned to RHCB to become head of publishing.
Despite the changes, Sandford said that the division is in good shape, with the phenomenal success of the Roald Dahl Treasury underpinning a strong 1997 performance. The return of Craig will give the lists a clearer editorial focus and, as he said, "Debbie's role being responsible for the profitability and performance of the division allows me to concentrate on the creative side of our publishing."
Simon &Schuster has launched a U.K. children's division drawing initially on the existing U.S. children's publishing and the Pocket Books paperback list. There are plans for an original publishing program, and Martina Challis, previously managing director of RHCB, has been appointed director of children's publishing. The original publishing program will feature novelty formats and media tie-ins as well as fiction and picture books. The spring launch list will feature a series of titles based on TV programs, including Rugrats and Star Trek.
HIT Entertainment's managing director, Peter Orton, spent eight years trying to get the rights to Katharine Holabird and Helen Craig's Angelina Ballerina titles, so when children's publisher ABC went into the hands of receivers he bought a 40% stake for L250,000. HIT Entertainment now plans to give Angelina Ballerina the kind of animated film treatment that it has had such success with for Kipper, Brambly Hedge and Percy the Park Keeper. Once a distribution and then a production company, HIT Entertainment is fast becoming a mini-Disney, with its own model animation studio and merchandising and licensing divisions. The acquisition of ABC gives it a base as an originating publisher. Ingrid Selberg, previously publisher at Reed Children's Books, has recently been appointed managing director of the new publishing division. "Initially, Angelina Ballerina, which was contributing 25% of the ABC turnover, will be our bedrock," Selberg said, "but we are also looking at the ABC backlist with the intention of keeping the best to form the basis of a picture paperback list in the U.K. We also plan to publish a selected number of new titles each year specifically to find and develop new characters."
Series Success
The follow-up to J.K. Rowling's smash debut Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, called Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, hit the top of the overall hardback bestseller list within a week of its publication last month and has already sold more than 30,000 copies. Sales of the first Harry Potter title, which has won the Smarties Prize, the Federation of Children's Book Groups Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian and the Carnegie Medal, have reached over 150,000. Rosamund Walker, editorial director of Bloomsbury Children's Books, said, "The success of the Harry Potter titles has been phenomenal. As the books are enjoyed as much by adults as children, we are rejacketing [the first title] and publishing it as an adult edition in September." Five more Harry Potter titles have already been signed up; Scholastic/Arthur Levine will publish the first title in the States next month, retitled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
Wicked, the six-book adventure series written in the alternating voices of two of Australia's hugely popular writers, Paul Jennings and Morris Gleitzman, has also proved highly successful in the U.K., selling more than 200,000 copies of the six titles combined. In Australia, the figures have reached an impressive one million. Elaine McQuade, children's marketing director at Penguin, has been especially pleased by the response to the books from teachers, who, she said, "have been delighted by the Wicked books because they have been such a draw for reluctant readers. Nothing has been firmed up for a second series of Wicked because it was such a lot of work for the authors, but it still might happen."
Jane Nissen has retired as associate publisher at Penguin Children's Books, where she edited many prize-winning authors, including Anne Fine, Robert Swindells, Martin Waddell and Margaret Mahy. Nissen will remain at Penguin working on special projects, including the p try list and the Puffin archive, which she is well-placed to do, having worked at Penguin Children's Books, with only a short break, since 1975. The new associate publisher is Penny Morris, who is moving from Scholastic, where she has been the publisher of preschool and media titles.
Nissen's reputation as an editor and list of prize-winning authors is matched only by Miriam Hodgson's at Methuen, now part of Egmont. Hodgson, too, has announced her retirement as of November 1. She is to remain linked to Egmont, becoming executive editor with special responsibility for older fiction. Cally Poplack, currently senior editor, will become the editorial director of Egmont fiction publishing.
The profile of children's books has been given a huge boost through a new set of postage stamps. Images from favorite children's books are currently adorning Royal Mail stamps as part of its sponsorship deal with the Library Association's Carnegie and Greenaway Medals. Called "Magical Worlds," the series celebrates the best of British fantasy. The series marks the 100th anniversaries of the birth of C.S. Lewis (with images from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe) and the death of Lewis Carroll (images from Through the Looking Glass). The stamps also commemorate E. Nesbit's The Ph nix and the Carpet, Mary Norton's The Borrowers and J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Philip Pullman's Northern Lights highlights the English areogramme. All the designs are drawn by Peter Malone
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