Yes, she has to draw you a picture. Since our #FutureChat of Friday (15th May), we’ve had the news that illustrators Axel Scheffler, Chris Riddell, Birgitta Sif, and others — including the irrepressible Sarah McIntyre — are among contributors featured in a new book, Creatures, to be published by Macmillan Children’s Books in September. As our colleague at… Read More
This Illustration Is By Sarah McIntyre
It’s from her new book, just out, Dinosaur Police. And no sooner had Sarah McIntyre agreed to join us in our discussion [on 15th May]than my Twitter stream — and The Bookseller’s and The FutureBook’s — lit up with this great banner. Give me artwork for #FutureChat and I’ll follow you all the way to 4 p.m. London time.… Read More
What Are We Rewarding In Children’s Literature? (#GuysDoRead)
Are Children’s Books ‘A Women’s Profession’? The announcement today of the shortlist for the annual Waterstones Children’s Book Prize brought an early response: While the award’s shortlists started out as reasonably gender-balanced, they have tended to favor female authors and illustrators in recent years. The 2014 shortlist caught my eye last year as there were only three… Read More
If Writers Don’t #CreditWriters, Who Will?
Science: Breathing Down Your Narrative One reason that writers might want to be sure to credit each other for their work — in tweets, on Facebook, in their own posts and stories — is that there are alternatives not just in the pipeline but on the pages and Web sites of some news outlets near… Read More
#FutureChat recap: Crowdfunding's crowded fund of opinion
‘A writer’s work has value and should be paid for’ As our #FutureChat recap comes to the ether, my Bookseller colleague Philip Jones, inCornerstone in joint venture with Unbound, is reporting that the UK’s Penguin Random House imprint Cornerstone will take over publishing trade editions of books crowdfunded on the Unbound platform. Jones writes: Unbound… Read More
Kickstarter issues its annual greeting card
‘Three years ago Rebecca’s project got a pledge from Scott. This year they got married.’ That’s from Kickstarter’s look-back in handkerchieves at 2014. My associate at The Bookseller Charlotte Eyre has ably written up the attractive annual report that Kickstarter creates to regale us with how well things have gone. Her story, Kickstarter publishing projects raised… Read More
#PorterMeets Crystal Mahey-Morgan: 'Beyond good will'
At the FutureBook Conference on 14th November, Crystal Mahey-Morgan says she intends to to what The Bookseller editor Philip Jones asked for in his Turn up the volume post. Jones, in that reflection on a Frankfurt Book Fair that seemed too quiet to some of us, wrote about #FutureBook14, as we’re hashtagging it, this way:… Read More
Would You Give An App To a Child?
I really don’t see why adults shouldn’t share apps with their children in just the same way that they share print books with them. Anecdotally, from our social media and other contact with parents, that’s just what the parents who read picture books to their children but also have access to iPads do. That’s Kate… Read More
A Chuffed Market's Children's Conference: #PorterMeets Charlotte Eyre
If you walked into publishing right now and stopped one of us to ask, “What’s the healthiest, happiest part of the business to get into?” — the answer you well might get is “children’s books!” The exclamation point would be there, yes. They’re a generally exuberant lot these days, the children’s books folks. And why not? Thanks to Charlotte Eyre’s… Read More
Digital publishing and children: #FutureChat recap
Are apps simply not apt for youngsters? With The Bookseller Children’s Conference ahead — #kidsconf14, as it’s hashtagged, is on 25th September at Southbank Centre in #London — we were glad to have a chance in Friday’s #FutureChat to look at some of the questions around digital publishing and the children’s market. The Bookseller’s children’s editor Charlotte Eyre set up up… Read More