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Donna Green spends most days at her easel, secluded on her farm in the South Shore town of Marshfield, Mass., midway between Boston and Cape Cod. Here she does what she loves most: create paintings for books, prints and note cards. Although hers may seem a rather quiet existence and many on Publishers Row may not know her name, the buzz in bookstores about this artist's work is quite audible. Since 1990, Smithmark Publishers has sold more than three million copies of 10 titles illustrated by Green, including Leaves from a Child's Garden of Verses and The Velveteen Rabbit. Green's top selling title, To My Daughter, with Love: A Mother's Memory Book, has alone sold almost 1.4 million copies since its 1993 publication. And Smithmark has advanced the bulk of its 70,000-copy initial print run for My Little Artist (Nov.), the first book for which Green provided text as well as art.
Word of Green's talent first reached the publishing world a decade ago, when Rob Fremont, a book packager just starting out, stumbled upon her work and realized that she would be the ideal artist to create paintings for a book he envisioned: a Christmas anthology. In 1989, armed with sample art by Green, Fremont headed to Frankfurt where, he recalled, "the project received quite a bit of attention." It caught the eye of Harvey Markowitz, then publisher of W.J. Smith, who soon after the fair bought the rights to what became Green's first book, Merry Christmas: Best-Loved Stories and Carols. According to Jack Lamplough, Smithmark's director of publicity, W.J. Smith sold out of its 40,000-copy first printing soon after the house published it in 1990. W.H. Smith was then purchased by Penguin, though Markowitz bought it back in the early 1990s and gave the company its current name, Smithmark (now an independently run division of U.S. Media Holdings). And Donna Green is the imprint's bestselling author ever.
A fourth-generation artist, Green said about her work, "I never set out to be successful. I set out to do what I love to do and share it with others. Whenever you do something in good faith and in a positive light, I do believe you can't help but be successful." Though she traces her family's painting legacy back to her great-grandfather, Green explained that it wasn't family tradition that drove her career choice. In her words, "My inspiration was far more personal. Painting to me is like breathing. It helps me express how I feel about life."
My Little Artist, Green's most recent book, is perhaps her most personal work yet. Featuring watercolor paintings in the artist's trademark style--self-described as "a cross between realism and impressionism"--this volume reveals how a grandmother gives her granddaughter lessons in art that are also lessons in life, centering on the importance of "heartsight" ("Remember ... my little artist, our eyes see only the surface; our hearts look at the world from the inside out"). The book came out of Green's memories of an older woman who was a grandmother-figure to her as a child and who, according to the artist, "was an important influence on my life and art. She showed me how to see everything through my senses."
Though Green acknowledged that filling these pages with text as well as pictures was "a very different experience," she commented that "words were not hard to come by. Editing them down was the difficult part. Growing up, I did not read or write very well and was in a special-needs class at school. But I always knew I had something inside of me to say, even though there seemed to be a barrier to getting it out. As I wrote the words for this book, I could almost see pictures with them. And I realized that this is for me a different kind of art, almost like another dimension of painting."
Spawning a Cottage Industry
As Green's popularity grew, so did her exposure in markets other than the retail book trade. In 1993, she and Fremont joined forces to launch Vermilion, a packaging and publishing company that issues simultaneous editions of Green's Smithmark books to distribute to the international market and to the gift trade (the latter through Pictura, a New Jersey greeting card publisher). Though Fremont insisted that Smithmark should be given "the lion's share of credit for Donna's remarkable sales," he cited total sales of between 500,000 and 600,000 copies of the Vermilion editions of Green's titles, largely in card and stationery shops. Vermilion also distributes, through direct mail and via its Web site, art prints issued by the Country Cottage, an art publishing company Green runs with her mother. Both operations are based on Green's sprawling farm.
Green's art and these businesses, along with raising her son and daughter--who, as avid painters themselves, comprise the fifth-generation of artists in the family--leave the artist little time or inclination to promote her work through interviews or bookstore visits. Noting that Smithmark "has been besieged by booksellers' requests that she do signings," Lamplough anticipates that Green may do some in-store events next spring. This will come as good news to retailers who, despite Fremont's description of Green as a "secret bestseller," are well aware of the artist's popularity.
Among them is Pam Giovannini, owner of the Front Street Book Shop in Scituate, Mass., a town nestled between Marshfield and Cohasset, where each Saturday Green sells her original paintings out of a studio in an 18th-century cottage. Giovannini stocks each of Green's books, which she calls "chronic top-sellers for us. The fact that she is a local author and uses local models in her books definitely helps sell her books. I display them in the window, and we hand-sell all of them." Giovannini reported that her customers often ask for Green's books specifically and many buy them for gifts, either for children or for other adults.
Though hardly able to cash in on the local-author angle, Katie Parker, v-p of purchasing for the 13 Chapter Eleven stores in the metropolitan Atlanta area, also has many Green fans among her customers. She, too, spoke of the artist's crossover appeal, commenting that "we sell many of her books to adults who are buying them as gifts for other adults. I find that all we have to do is display herbooks on a table, and they disappear very quickly. Often authors will sell better in some of our stores than others, but Donna Green sells consistently in all our locations, from hip, modern midtown to the suburbs."
These days, Green is putting the finishing touches on her 11th book, To My Son, with Love, a companion to her bestselling title. "Over the years, I can't tell you how many mothers with sons have asked me, 'Where is ourbook?' " the artist explained. "The reaction I've received from readers of To My Daughter has been incredible. One woman bought seven copies of the book for her seven daughters and then called and asked me for one more, for another daughter she had given up at birth. She said it was getting hard for her to write, and she wanted to write notes in the book while she still could, telling this daughter what it was like having been separated from her. It is experiences like this one that keeps me painting."
