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GLBT Families
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From: Laurina Cashin <lcashin>
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 11:42:07 -0500
Early this month Megan wrote "We're hoping we can hear from many perspectives--writers, editors, publishers, librarians, teachers, and others, to find out what is happening in your world today as you create, edit, publish, or purchase and make GLBT books available to chidren, teens and famlies. "
I've been avidly following this month's discussion and I'm happy we've had posts from different perspectives. To add to this discussion, I asked Bobbie Combs to write something about her experience as a publisher of books for GLBT families. Here it is ********* We are the two owners of a small niche press, Two Lives Publishing. Two Lives was founded 5 years ago for the purpose of creating books for kids in LGBT-headed families. We published 2 books the first year - ABC A Family Alphabet Book and the companion 123 A Family Counting Book, both featuring illustrations with gay and lesbian parents and their children.
Both ABC and 123 were well received by LGBT families, bookstores, and librarians, and it quickly became obvious to us that customers were anxious to find "more books like this". So we expanded our web site
(www.TwoLives.com) to include/sell any and all books we could find for/about LGBT families and kids. At this point, we are still publishing 2 titles a year (including a fall 04 title by Nancy Garden, The Case of the Stolen Scarab!), but almost more importantly, we function as a distributor for many titles from other publishers, and also from other countries. We occasionally struggle with the fact that we are competing with our bookstore customers, but the fiscal truth is harsh - if we were not selling these other titles, we would not be able to publish more books of our own.
We wanted to point out that we are in contact with many LGBT families each year, and we are told over and over again that what these families want is to see themselves normalized in books; they are finished with "topic" and
"issue" books. They appreciate books such as ours and a few outstanding examples from major publishers, like Everywhere Babies (Harcourt) The White Swan Express (Clarion), and all of Todd Parr's books (Little, Brown).
We also wanted to say that we get many submissions of stories (some good, some not so good!) from authors who tell us that the large publishers are just not interested in publishing stories for this market. Hopefully this will change, as we don't have the resources to publish even a fraction of what is needed for this market!
Thanks for your support!
Bobbie Combs and Sally Lindsay, Publishers
**************** Laurina Cashin We Love Children's Books 508 N. Swarthmore Ave. #1 Ridley Park, PA 19078 lcashin at welovechildrensbooks.com 610S2 24 phone 610S2'90 fax
Received on Sat 19 Jun 2004 11:42:07 AM CDT
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 11:42:07 -0500
Early this month Megan wrote "We're hoping we can hear from many perspectives--writers, editors, publishers, librarians, teachers, and others, to find out what is happening in your world today as you create, edit, publish, or purchase and make GLBT books available to chidren, teens and famlies. "
I've been avidly following this month's discussion and I'm happy we've had posts from different perspectives. To add to this discussion, I asked Bobbie Combs to write something about her experience as a publisher of books for GLBT families. Here it is ********* We are the two owners of a small niche press, Two Lives Publishing. Two Lives was founded 5 years ago for the purpose of creating books for kids in LGBT-headed families. We published 2 books the first year - ABC A Family Alphabet Book and the companion 123 A Family Counting Book, both featuring illustrations with gay and lesbian parents and their children.
Both ABC and 123 were well received by LGBT families, bookstores, and librarians, and it quickly became obvious to us that customers were anxious to find "more books like this". So we expanded our web site
(www.TwoLives.com) to include/sell any and all books we could find for/about LGBT families and kids. At this point, we are still publishing 2 titles a year (including a fall 04 title by Nancy Garden, The Case of the Stolen Scarab!), but almost more importantly, we function as a distributor for many titles from other publishers, and also from other countries. We occasionally struggle with the fact that we are competing with our bookstore customers, but the fiscal truth is harsh - if we were not selling these other titles, we would not be able to publish more books of our own.
We wanted to point out that we are in contact with many LGBT families each year, and we are told over and over again that what these families want is to see themselves normalized in books; they are finished with "topic" and
"issue" books. They appreciate books such as ours and a few outstanding examples from major publishers, like Everywhere Babies (Harcourt) The White Swan Express (Clarion), and all of Todd Parr's books (Little, Brown).
We also wanted to say that we get many submissions of stories (some good, some not so good!) from authors who tell us that the large publishers are just not interested in publishing stories for this market. Hopefully this will change, as we don't have the resources to publish even a fraction of what is needed for this market!
Thanks for your support!
Bobbie Combs and Sally Lindsay, Publishers
**************** Laurina Cashin We Love Children's Books 508 N. Swarthmore Ave. #1 Ridley Park, PA 19078 lcashin at welovechildrensbooks.com 610S2 24 phone 610S2'90 fax
Received on Sat 19 Jun 2004 11:42:07 AM CDT
