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[CCBC-Net] Picture Books
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From: Norma Jean Sawicki <nsawicki>
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:04:38 -0400
Leonard's observations ( below) are correct but the reasons were more complicated. In the 80s, "auction fever" came into play at the Bologna Book Fair. The U.S. market for picture books...thanks to the opening, and success of many independent children's book stores, was extraordinary. Certain UK publishers....Walker Books, among them, auctioned U.S. rights...causing U.S. publishers to bid against each other. Many factors went into a bid...among them, the quantity. Publishers would, for instance, offer to buy 50,000 copies of a picture book at x price per copy, or 75,000 copies at x price per copy, and so on. The top bidder won. Sometimes the American publisher sold all of the copies it had bought and asked for more...sometimes the American publisher was burned...guessed wrong, thousands of unsold books sat in the warehouse. Eventually, auction fever subsided...too many unsold books, and U.K. publishers, such as Walker, then decided to open U.S. offices. Initially, to distribute books that originated in the U.K. but over time..and certainly, in the case of Walker/Candlewick, a terrific full fledged publisher, that now, like so many other publishers...is foreign owned but acquires and publishes books by American writers and illustrators. Sebastian was a visionary, as well as an astute business man ...he had great taste...loved writers and illustrators and hired terrific people in the U.K., and in the U.S.
"The UK situation is not especially new. When Sebastian Walker, the founder of England's Walker books, decided to open a US outpost in the early 1990s, it was because he reckoned that England represented only 15% of the potential market for the type of upmarket picture book he was interested in publishing (Oxenbury, Voake, Barrett, etc.). The US market was the big prize. That is why at the outset he hired an American art director, and why in 1992 he established Candlewick. A major reason for the contraction of the UK picture book market is that the Thatcher government decimated library budgets and no subsequent government has restored the funding."
Received on Mon 21 Apr 2008 06:04:38 PM CDT
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:04:38 -0400
Leonard's observations ( below) are correct but the reasons were more complicated. In the 80s, "auction fever" came into play at the Bologna Book Fair. The U.S. market for picture books...thanks to the opening, and success of many independent children's book stores, was extraordinary. Certain UK publishers....Walker Books, among them, auctioned U.S. rights...causing U.S. publishers to bid against each other. Many factors went into a bid...among them, the quantity. Publishers would, for instance, offer to buy 50,000 copies of a picture book at x price per copy, or 75,000 copies at x price per copy, and so on. The top bidder won. Sometimes the American publisher sold all of the copies it had bought and asked for more...sometimes the American publisher was burned...guessed wrong, thousands of unsold books sat in the warehouse. Eventually, auction fever subsided...too many unsold books, and U.K. publishers, such as Walker, then decided to open U.S. offices. Initially, to distribute books that originated in the U.K. but over time..and certainly, in the case of Walker/Candlewick, a terrific full fledged publisher, that now, like so many other publishers...is foreign owned but acquires and publishes books by American writers and illustrators. Sebastian was a visionary, as well as an astute business man ...he had great taste...loved writers and illustrators and hired terrific people in the U.K., and in the U.S.
"The UK situation is not especially new. When Sebastian Walker, the founder of England's Walker books, decided to open a US outpost in the early 1990s, it was because he reckoned that England represented only 15% of the potential market for the type of upmarket picture book he was interested in publishing (Oxenbury, Voake, Barrett, etc.). The US market was the big prize. That is why at the outset he hired an American art director, and why in 1992 he established Candlewick. A major reason for the contraction of the UK picture book market is that the Thatcher government decimated library budgets and no subsequent government has restored the funding."
Received on Mon 21 Apr 2008 06:04:38 PM CDT
