After publishing fiction in hardcover for seven decades, Holiday House will release its first paperback reprints of backlist novels this spring. Though the company has in the past published reprints of some of its picture books and has issued selected titles simultaneously in hardcover and paperback, it has until now licensed paperback rights to its novels to other companies. The inaugural titles under the Holiday House Paperbacks imprint are Mary Amato's The Word Eater, illustrated by Christopher Ryniak, due in March; and Crandalls' Castle by Betty Ren Wright, an April title.
Regina Griffin, v-p and editor-in-chief of Holiday House, called the decision to introduce a paperback imprint "author driven." As she explained, "These two novels sold unusually well in hardcover in bookstores, but we heard repeatedly from booksellers that they wanted to see them in paperback. Because so many of the paperback imprints to which we license rights are at houses with multiple hardcover imprints [with their own paperback reprints to publish], the publication dates of some reprints are necessarily pushed far into the future. Publishing these books ourselves allows us to publish them in paperback in a more timely fashion."
And, clearly, there is a financial incentive for the house to reprint their hardcover novels. "If we license the books," Griffin said, "Holiday House receives a royalty, but in this case, the authors and Holiday House will receive a higher percentage of the monies coming in."
Griffin describes the paperback imprint's debut release, The Word Eater, as "a first novel that didn't get great reviews but was successful in stores [75,000 copies in print to date], largely due to handselling on the part of booksellers. And it made it onto a lot of state reading lists. To qualify for the list in some states, a book has to be available in paperback as well as hardcover. So this was a natural candidate to be our first paperback novel." The book, a humorous story with a school setting, sold strongly through Scholastic Book Fairs.
The announcement last December of the new paperback line, according to Griffin, was greeted with enthusiasm by Holiday House's sales reps, who "cheered and stomped their feet when they heard the news." And they've obviously had success selling the debut title: The Word Eater paperback has made a return trip to press before pub date, doubling the initial run to 30,000 copies.
Holiday House will continue to license paperback rights to some novels on its list. "Our authors have been very well served by their paperback publishers," noted Griffin, "and we will certainly license our books in the future. Having worked at Scholastic, I have been on the other end of this and remember when other companies started pulling back licenses, and I know how discouraging it can be. In many cases the larger paperback houses can do a better job selling the paperback edition, since they have such a wide reach into the paperback market. We will make a decision about reprinting our own paperback editions on a book-to-book basis."
Though the paperback imprint may eventually include some originals, Griffin said it will primarily feature reprints. On the fall list are Amato's second novel, Snarf Attack, Underfoodle, and the Secret of Life: The Riot Brothers Tell All; and Wright's The Wish Master. Griffin anticipates that there will be two new paperbacks each season initially, after which she hopes the list will expand. "We tend to do things a bit more conservatively here," she commented. "After all, we're launching our paperback line after 70 years."
And Griffin is optimistic that the new imprint will expand Holiday House's presence on retail shelves: "While we are very happy with the continuing strength of our sales into the institutional market, we look forward to continuing to increase our sales in bookstores. If it weren't for the enthusiastic support of booksellers, The Word Eater would not have been the hardcover success it has been and we would probably not have launched this line. But we wanted to try something new. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!"
