Following the long-awaited dénouement of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events last October, it was expected that the Baudelaire orphans' corner of the world would fall quiet. But just when you thought all had been revealed—here come the paperbacks.
This May, roughly six months after the release of the series' final installment, The End, which had a whopping first printing of 2.5 million, HarperCollins will release paperback editions of The Bad Beginning and The Reptile Room, with new illustrations and backmatter. More paperbacks in the series will follow, one every four months or so. Also adding to the Snicket spinoff empire is Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid, a book of Lemony Snicket witticisms and life advice that will be released next month to coincide with the paperbacks.
HarperCollins clearly hopes to reach a whole new set of young readers the second time around. But does enough of an untapped market remain to carry the paperbacks to success, especially when the hardcovers can be had at a low price point? And could the move be in risky violation of the old show biz tenet: leave 'em wanting more?
Back when A Series of Unfortunate Events premiered in 1999, its paper-over-board format and low price point were a novel approach, and contributed to its huge success (though the first two books each got 25,000 first printings, that number steadily increased—books 1—12 have a total of 26.5 million copies in print). Susan Rich, executive editor of children's books at HarperCollins, sees the paperbacks as an opportunity to further deepen the multilayered world of Lemony Snicket that kids love. "We wanted to be as inventive with the paperback as we were with the hardcover," said Rich, who, along with author Daniel Handler, illustrator Brett Helquist and designer Alison Donalty, found inspiration in the first mass market paperbacks from the 19th century, which introduced the idea of serialized storytelling. They then went about reformatting the backmatter with a slightly altered voice—"from a more austere, 'dear reader' tone to something a little more carnival barker-y," Rich said.
HarperCollins's initial printing for the paperbacks of The Bad Beginning and The Reptile Room is 750,000 each, and 150,000 for Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid. There are approximately seven new full-color illustrations in each book. A serial supplement called "The Cornucopian Cavalcade" was developed for inclusion in the back of the books, anchored by Michael Kupperman's 13-part comic, "The Spoily Brats," about brother and sister detectives whose parents live abroad. "What shall I do, Lemony Snicket?," an advice column with questions from young readers, also runs through the series, along with novelty additions like fake advertising and a manual on how to be a paper magician. A serialized story from 20th-century humor writer Stephen Leacock titled "A Psychic Pstory of the Psupernatural" begins in the first book and winds up in the third, The Wide Window.
Is There a Market?
Both HarperCollins and booksellers agree that although there may be a small crossover with established fans, the paperback market resides with kids who are just discovering the series. But given the recognizable paper-over-board package that the series flourished with for the past eight years, some booksellers were surprised by the arrival of the paperbacks. "I don't expect to get a huge bump like we normally do with paperbacks, because people weren't waiting for them," said Megan Dietsche Goel, children's book buyer for BookPeople in Austin, Tex. And booksellers were frustrated that paperbacks had been available through book clubs and fairs since early on. "The clubs are a problem we always have to deal with—I had customers asking for the paperbacks and I couldn't supply them," said Becky Anderson of Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville, Ill.
To reach out to new readers, the marketing and publicity campaign will include promotion on kids' Web sites, including Nick.com; 24-copy mixed floor displays in bookstores; distribution of "The Cornucopian Cavalcade" to 150,000 fourth-graders nationwide; and 10,000 teacher's guides to be handed out at IRA next month in Toronto, where Daniel Handler is the featured speaker.
HarperCollins tried an expensive experiment last year when it released The Complete Wreck, a boxed set of volumes 1—13 in October with a hefty $150 price tag. Her store sold 18 of them, Anderson said, attributing most of those sales to a reading Handler gave at Anderson's in November. Anderson's may have done better than most with the set—Harper announced a first printing of 300,000, though it ended up printing only 150,000; the house said 65,000 have shipped since October. Nielsen BookScan, which is said to to cover approximately 70% of the book market, reports that the boxed set has sold just 6,000 copies.
Still, a pricey boxed set's failure to fly off shelves isn't necessarily a harbinger of the sales potential of a mass market paperback. Brian Monahan, children's book buyer at Barnes & Noble, is enthusiastic about HarperCollins's chances of finding a second wave of readers, predicting that the paperback editions will "definitely" have an audience, "perhaps those who were price resistant or didn't want to carry a hardcover around." Rich naturally remains optimistic: "There are new 10-year-olds every day."
