Children's book publishers Front Street Books and Handprint Books have formed a strategic alliance that will allow the two companies to combine labor and resources. As part of the announcement, Front Street is leaving distributor Publishers Group West to join Chronicle Books, which already distributes Handprint.
The two houses won't be exchanging financial stakes or changing financial arrangements, but they will be combining to form one catalogue and will likely share booth space at trade shows. Back-office operations, sales and marketing and other areas will also be shared.
"Either we have more capacity than we're using or we need capacity that we don't have," said Front Street president Stephen Roxburgh, explaining the decision. But he said that for all the changes, neither company "will change from being our independent selves." Roxburgh added that joining with another house will result in some small limitations, but "the positive potential is considerably higher." As for those positives, he cited the desire to have his own catalogue instead of a spot in the PGW one, as well as lowered costs at trade-show booths, among the advantages.
Handprint was founded in 2000 by Christopher Franceschelli, who had previously been publisher of Dutton Children's Books. The two companies, which bring out about a dozen books apiece each year, will continue emphasizing their main strengths—fiction for Front Street and picture books for Handprint—but also see the alliance as a way to beef up their respective lists in each other's prime area.
