Category: Industry Insider

Publicist Interview: Julia Hlavac (Sleeping Bear Press)

On By Only Picture BooksIn Industry Insider

This month’s Industry Insider interview is with Julia Hlavac, the Publicity Manager for Sleeping Bear Press/​Cherry Lake Publishing. I met her (digitally speaking) when I used the Sleeping Bear Press title Write On, Irving Berlin last month as the Education Activities source text. I quickly realized that Julia had a lot to offer, as you’ll see below!

As a Publicity Manager, Julia works closely with affiliated authors and illustrators to garner them media attention, book reviews, as well as organize events at bookstores, conferences, libraries, and schools. She also manages the Sleeping Bear Press social media accounts. Prior to joining Sleeping Bear Press, Julia worked as an Academic Program Specialist at the University of Michigan’s International Institute organizing events and external programs.

Website: www.sleepingbearpress.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/sleepingbearpress
Instagram:@SleepingBearPress
Twitter: @SleepingBearBks

RVC: You’re pretty new to Sleeping Bear. What about them attracted you?

JH: Not having worked in publishing before, I have to say that what really attracted me was the opportunity to work in public relations. They were specifically looking to build up the company’s social media presence and work with bloggers and influencers to promote books, which is a fairly new way of publicizing products and one that I’m really interested in.

I appreciate the creative freedom this job offers, while still working hard to drive the mission of our company (“Great Books for Children!”). I take it as my responsibility to make sure that all of our authors and illustrators are actively representing us through their events and via social media outreach. I love the idea that collaboratively—not just across the U.S. but even internationally—we’re building this brand together.

RVC: Let’s get down to brass tacks regarding something I know many writers are confused about. What’s the easy-​peasy way to understand the difference between marketing and publicity?

JH: Publicity is the way in which a company, author, or illustrator is portrayed in terms of identity and brand. It’s very focused on connections. Publicity can be good or bad, and it’s never guaranteed.

Marketing is paid placement.

RVC: What don’t most authors get about marketing?

JH: That we’re doing so much of it! There’s so much going on behind the scenes and within the industry, even if you don’t immediately see or hear it. Our marketing team works extremely hard to make sure that our company name and book titles are out there. We’re promoting our products to great lengths!

RVC: What don’t most authors get about publicity?

JH: We think about what type of publicity the book will get even before we agree to acquire the manuscript. That includes considering market trends as well as who might buy the finished product and how similar books have been received in the past. It’s really important to think about what makes this book different from any others that are out there.

RVC: Is the “No publicity is bad publicity” idea a real thing?

JH: Speaking specifically to the publishing world, yes, no publicity is bad publicity. We want people to know about our titles and the fantastic talent behind them.

RVC: What are the top three things an enterprising picture book author can do to help you do your job?

JH: The top three things are:

  • Be proactive. We have an ever-​growing list of books and for each one, we have an author and illustrator. If an author/​illustrator reaches out to me with an event/​media/​conference they want me to help them arrange, it’s much easier to get things done swiftly than for me having to personally research it for each of them. Of course, I devote quite a lot of time to working on getting them media attention and lining up events, but if they come to me with ideas, things move much faster.
  • Have an active website and social media presence. I always tell my authors/​illustrators that I’d rather they be actively engaged on one social media platform than moderately engaged across three or four. I think it’s important for our authors/​illustrators to have websites that represent them and act as portfolios. The reality is, most of our authors/​illustrators work with more than one publisher. So, if you look on our website and see that they have one book, but in reality, they have published 10+, that information needs to be accessible when you Google their names. Same with social media—I tell our authors to think of it as free advertising. For those who have an active following such as Clayton Anderson, Devin Scillian, and Kayla Harren (to name a few), it’s such an easy way for their networks to spread information about a new release. Even for those who don’t have thousands of followers, a few retweets from the right people or organizations can make all the difference when it comes to promoting their books.
  • Call me! We live in a very digital age, but my colleague suggested I arrange calls with all of our authors/​illustrators releasing new books when I started the job. By doing that, I learned so much more about each of them than I ever would on a couple of email exchanges. In publicity, it’s important to know how comfortable our authors/​illustrators are when it comes to presenting, school visits, interviews, etc. That’s the type of info you only figure out after having conversations, yet it’s so crucial for me to know that in order to do my job well.

RVC: Let’s circle back to social media. Which ones have proven most successful for your authors? What are you hearing?

JH: Our authors seem to be the most comfortable with Facebook, because a lot of them are the most familiar with it. I think Facebook is great for announcing events and new book releases. Twitter is quick and easy, but you have to be on it constantly since it’s so fast-​paced. Personally, I think Instagram is the best platform because it’s more visual and creative, which works well for promoting books.

RVC: Lightning round! Since you work at a press with “bear” in the title … favorite picture book about a bear?

JH: The classic—Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?

RVC: A picture book that you think would make a GREAT feature film is …

JH: Our title Memoirs of a Goldfish.

RVC: #1 song on your playlist.

JH: “Delicate” by Taylor Swift. (sorry, not sorry!)

RVC: Best late-​night snack when curling up with a good book?

JH: Trader Joe’s dark chocolate sea salt almonds.

RVC: Favorite non-​picture-​book writer?

JH: David Sedaris. (Jeannette Walls is a close second though!)

RVC: Three words that describe what a successful PR person + PB author relationship should be.

JH: Collaborative, Communicative, and Effective!

RVC: Thanks a bunch, Julia!

Editor Interview: Alexis Orgera and Chad Reynolds (Penny Candy Books)

On By Only Picture BooksIn Industry Insider

This month’s Industry Insider interview has double the goodness and double the fun, thanks to the generosity of Alexis Orgera and Chad Reynolds, the co-​founders of Penny Candy Books.

Alexis describes herself as a partner, friend, daughter, sister, animal lover, road-​tripper, homebody, poet, essayist, children’s book publisher, and an editor/​editorial consultant. She also spends a great deal of time “thinking about justice, imagination, and how to use what we have in our hearts and heads to make the world a little bit better.”

Alexis has also authored two fine poetry collections: How Like Foreign Objects and Dust Jacket, which won the 2013 Elizabeth P. Braddock Prize for Poetry.

Chad is the author of five poetry chapbooks and a co-​founder of Short Order Poems, a poetry collaborative whose mission is to bring poetry to people in unexpected ways and places. He also [apparently] enjoys brief bios. 🙂

RVC: What is the most important thing people should know or understand about Penny Candy Books?

AO: First and foremost, it’s important to know that we focus on diversity. Our mission is to publish children’s literature that reflects the diverse realities of the world we live in, both at home and abroad. This means seeking out books by and about people and subjects that speak to and from a broad range of human experience.

We’re serious about our mission, serious about who’s telling the stories we choose to publish, serious about making books that aren’t exclusionary based on the traditional (old) paradigms. We hope to build a diverse company—authors, illustrators, readers, editors, designers, and more.

RVC: I think that most writers get excited when they hear publishers talking about alternative structures. So much of publishing seems locked into a pre-​1980s mentality, despite the world changing dramatically in many ways.

CR: We’re new to publishing in this capacity, so I think by default we bring our other experiences as teachers, insurance brokers, store clerks, waiters, baristas, etc, with us to this endeavor, and that helps us see things in a fresh way. We’ve had a steep learning curve, and we’ve been keen to flatten it by learning best practices—but we always pause to ask whether a best practice makes sense or if it’s “best” because it’s what’s always been done.

We want to make it as a publisher and part of that involves doing some tried and true things, such as working with royalty contracts and using a traditional distributor. But we want to make it in our own way. Alexis and I both live outside the usual publishing hubs, and this gives us new insights and perspectives. We’re willing to take chances on newer or first-​time authors and illustrators. We have an open submission policy and we don’t limit word or page counts.

RVC: You launched the Penelope Editions imprint in January 2017. In what ways are its books different than other Penny Candy Books titles?

 AO: We launched Penelope to publish books that we loved that didn’t necessarily fit into Penny Candy’s model. We are currently honing Penelope’s mission, but it will have feminist leanings with books that display guts, vision, and humor.

RVC: I can’t help but note that the two of you are poets. Rumor has it that graduate school—and a shared love for poetry—brought you both together professionally. In what way(s) does having a background in poetry prepare you for publishing picture books which, on the surface, seem a good deal different than the work of Billy Collins, Sylvia Plath, W.H. Auden, and Rita Dove.

AO: Poets think a lot about concision of language, the alchemy that imbues words with meaning, and images. We were basically being groomed for kids’ books back in grad school without even realizing it. Going into this business, Chad and I both had strong feelings about the books that shaped us. Those books that really reach in and grab something inside you—they’re essentially poems.

Poetry and kid lit are similar, too, in that they both seek the universal, the experience we can all point to and say, “Hey, I totally get that!”

CR: Poetry and picture books have a lot in common, which maybe explains why poets as diverse as TS Eliot, Gwendolyn Brooks, Randall Jarrell, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ted Hughes, Maya Angelou, Gertrude Stein, Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes, and many others wrote them.

RVC: Are there any poets of the type one might encounter in graduate school or, say, The Iowa Review, who haven’t yet entered the realm of writing picture books that you think might be well-​suited to do so? 

AO: Oh yes, and we have a few upcoming!

RVC: If they’re anything like A Gift from Greensboro, a poem by Quraysh Ali Lansana that became one of the first Penny Candy Books title, you’re right to be excited. 

Speaking of books that excite readers… prior to starting up Penny Candy Books, what picture books were wowing you? Which ones made you want to get involved in this industry?

CR: When I was a kid, my favorites were Small Pig by Arnold Lobel and A Visit to William Blake’s Inn by Nancy Willard. Pezzettino and Swimmy by the great Italian artist Leo Lionni were favorites of my kids and opened my eyes to narrative and visual possibilities in this genre. Books by Taro Gomi such as Everyone Poops and My Friends made us laugh while inviting us into global conversations. Ruth Krauss’s A Hole Is to Dig and Open House for Butterflies—both with spot illustrations by Maurice Sendak—showed me how well kids can respond to figurative language and leaps of imagination, and how to see the world through a child’s eyes.

But for all the great books we admired before starting Penny Candy Books, we also recognized that American kids’ books could at times feel one-​sided, stagnant, Puritanical, pedantic. A lot of stories that needed to be told, weren’t being told.

AO: Of all the books I loved as a kid, I don’t think any featured characters of color, except one that I now recognize to have been very racist and colonialist. I had a real love affair growing up with a series of tiny books by Jenny Partridge about the adventures of animals in Oakapple Wood. To name just a few, more recently, Toni & Slade Morrison’s The Big Box really made an impact on me and reminded me what a picture book can do in its exploration of concepts like freedom. Jacqueline Woodson’s This is the Rope, among many of her books, is another that I loved for its treatment of family history through the lens of the Great Migration. The poet Ted Kooser and Jon Klassen collaborated on House Held Up by Trees, which was a very lovely book.

Finally, as we were planning what our books would look and feel like, we pored over books from all over the world to get a feel for the physicality of design. We were inspired by several French books, particularly.

RVC: I keep finding your press listed high up on the Dealmakers list of Publisher’s Marketplace. How many books do you plan to publish per year? And seeing that your authors include writers from Palestine, Australia, and France, some might wonder—is there a conscious ratio in mind of American vs. non-​American authors? 

CR: We are working up to publishing around 20 new titles per year, and we hope to hit that number within 4 or 5 years.

AO: Not a conscious ratio, no, but certainly an eye toward bringing work from other countries into the US kids’ book market. As a culture, particularly right now, we can’t afford to be isolationist in our reading habits. If kids are reading the works of authors from around the world, they’ll grow up with a broader perspective of what the world actually is. It’s not just our slice of it. 

RVC: Now that you’ve been at it for a few years, what are some of the PB world trends you’re noticing?

AO: Diversity is a very important and necessary development. Hopefully it’s not a trend but a reality that’s here to stay. The “Own voices” movement is a critical aspect of diversity, and publishers are finally recognizing that who is telling the story is just as important as the story being told.

RVC: Describe the ideal Penny Candy Books author.

CR: The only ideals we have are that stories ring true and that authors use language in a way that makes these stories sing.

RVC: Last thoughts?

AO: Here’s to big conversations!

CR: Thanks for your interest, Ryan.

RVC: Thanks so much, Alexis and Chad!

Editor Interview: Sylvie Frank (Paula Wiseman Books)

On By Only Picture BooksIn Industry Insider

 

This month’s Industry Insider interview is with Sylvie Frank, Senior Editor at Paula Wiseman Books, a boutique imprint of Simon & Schuster’s Children’s Division. She is the editor of award-​winning and critically-​acclaimed books including Strictly No Elephants by Lisa Mantchev, illustrated by Taeeun Yoo; I Have a Balloon by Ariel Bernstein, illustrated by Scott Magoon; Miss Mary Reporting: The True Story of Sportswriter Mary Garber by Sue Macy, illustrated by C. F. Payne; and OCDaniel by Wesley King.

Since joining Paula Wiseman Books in 2013, Sylvie has been on the prowl for literary, character-​driven middle grade and kid-​focused, snappy picture books. She is drawn to original and diverse voices across all genres. One of her favorite pastimes is browsing agents’ and illustrators’ websites for new talent. When she’s not reading, Sylvie can be found running while listening to audiobooks.

Or answering interview questions from OPB via email.

RVC: At an SCBWI event in Orlando maybe 5 years back, you said one of the most common reasons you were rejecting PB manuscripts was that they were “too quiet.” What kind of trends–good, bad, or otherwise–are you seeing in PB submissions these days?

SF: I still see a lot of submissions I would call too quiet. It’s been interesting and encouraging to see that our divided political times have led to writers and illustrators channeling their energy and frustration into their work: I’m seeing a lot of picture books that celebrate acceptance, diversity, and individuality, as well as books that are calls to action. There’s absolutely a need for these books, but I’m anticipating a tidal wave of them starting this fall. Where some of these manuscripts go wrong is that they can read more like mantras than picture books, which can make it difficult to develop a visual concept.

RVC: Let’s talk about “visual concepts” for a moment. How much should PB writers (not author/​illustrators) be thinking about that with their own manuscripts? Are there ways that these writers can communicate a useful/​helpful/​appropriate sense of their vision without stomping over the illustrator’s turf or rubbing editors the wrong way?

SF: This is so tough for writers. They should have a completely solid vision for their book. After all, a picture book relies equally on text and art to tell a story (if it’s not wordless, that is). As the writer, you should have a thorough understanding of how the book could page out and what scene might unfold on every spread. If a writer is thinking only about the words, then likely the story will not have enough of a visual component to make it a successful picture book. It’s for that reason that I encourage all writers to make picture book dummies as a step in their writing and revision process. But here’s the catch: writers must then let their visions go. It’s a lot to ask—I know! But the art of creating a picture book means that the illustrator’s vision is just as important as the writer’s. So, it’s the writer’s job to write the story in succinct, specific, action-​filled words that leave space for the illustrator to show the story. That means leaving out descriptions and leaving action open to the artist’s interpretation. Things to leave out: the weather, what a character is wearing or how he/​she/​it looks, describing how someone gets somewhere, etc., etc.

Resist!

Of course, this leads us to the topic of art notes. I’ve heard of many editors who believe that if a picture book manuscript requires art notes, then it’s not good enough. I’m not quite so strict. My personal opinion is that if the action is visual and does not require narrating, a very, VERY brief art note can be used so that the editor or agent understands how the action is progressing. As the writer, if you envision a scene in which your protagonist has baked a cake and gotten flour, frosting, and sprinkles absolutely everywhere and it’s the climax of the story, the manuscript could read: 

I was going to be in big trouble.

Then an art note could say: [Art note: Baking project has gone awry.] 

You do not need to tell the illustrator (or editor or agent) that there is flour on the protagonist’s nose and sprinkles on the floor. These details are up to the illustrator to decide, and potential editors and agents have excellent imaginations: they can create this scene in their heads. That’s why they’re good at their jobs.

RVC: Speaking of people being good at their jobs—it seems that more and more often, a PB’s final title is decided well after a contract is signed, thanks to input from editors and other publishing pros. Is that the case at Paula Wiseman Books or is that just anecdotally true? And how important is it to have a WOW title during the submission process if it’s more than likely going to be changed at some point?

SF: I would never let a less-​than-​stellar title deter me from acquiring a manuscript I loved—although I would likely try to come up with a better title before taking the manuscript to acquisitions. It’s frequently true that manuscripts get renamed somewhere along the publishing path, but certainly not always. Some manuscripts come my way with a perfect title and we never even consider changing it. Some titles require weeks and weeks of brainstorming and agony before we find the right one. Every book is different, and I’m cool with that.

RVC: When I think about a Paula Wiseman Books PB, the word that comes to mind is “heart.” Please explain what “heart” is for you when it comes to PBs, and how important is it in the acquisition conversation?

SF: I like to hear that! Thanks! I call “heart” a lot of different things: theme, emotional core, re-​readability factor. I worry that “heart” makes it sound like we only publish books that could be called sweet, and that isn’t the case. In essence, heart is what makes a reader come back from more. I always think about someone browsing in a bookstore. Picture books can be read in their entirety during a browsing session. If a book can be read, digested, and forgotten while the buyer is shopping, why would he or she buy it? But if a book encourages the purchaser to slow down, consider what it means, and—best of all—want to return to read it again, that increases the likelihood that he or she will buy it. So that’s what I mean by re-​readability factor: there has to be enough that is substantial and thought provoking to convince a busy parent/​aunt/​uncle/​grandparent/​whoever to drop $16.99 on this book (and make space for it on their bookshelf!) in order to share it with a kid.

People frequently share book ideas with me. “What about a book about a kitten that pretends it’s a cow?” My response to all ideas is, “Sure, write it. But what’s it about?” What I mean by that is there needs to be an emotional aspect to the story. A good example is a book I edited called Strictly No Elephants by Lisa Mantchev and Taeeun Yoo. On the surface, it’s about a boy and his pet elephant who are excluded from pet club. But the emotional core of the story is about making change, creating inclusive spaces, and celebrating difference. I want to give another example of a book that I find completely hilarious (and yes, it’s also one I edited so perhaps I am biased), called I Have a Balloon by Ariel Bernstein and Scott Magoon. The plot is that an owl has a balloon and a monkey wants it. But it’s really a book about wanting what you can’t have, negotiating, and assigning value to objects; it’s basically an economics lesson. So: heart is that extra layer of nuance and meaning. It’s what starts conversations between the person reading aloud and the child.

RVC: What’s it like working for a NY publisher but living in Colorado?

SF: Fab! I feel really lucky. Technology makes it easy. Between FaceTime, email, and UPS, I’ve got it covered. I visit the office four or five times a year for sales meetings and try to make the most of the real face time with my colleagues. I miss the bustle of being in the office every day, but overall my collaborations feel just as productive and creative as they always have. I should also add that there are benefits to having someone on the team who has a non-​NYC perspective and can cultivate relationships elsewhere. For example, it’s been really valuable (and fun!) to become involved with the Rocky Mountain SCBWI chapter and to network with the fantastic local independent bookstores (shout-​out to Boulder Book Store and Tattered Cover in particular!).

RVC: Favorite munchies to enjoy with a terrific book?

SF: I’m a sucker for chips and salsa. Mmmmmmmmm.

RVC: Instead of asking you flat-​out what you’re looking for, please share three of your titles that are a good representation of what you value in a PB submission.

SF: I’m so glad you asked!

I Have a Balloon by Ariel Bernstein and Scott Magoon

Small Walt by Elizabeth Verdick and Marc Rosenthal

Strictly No Elephants by Lisa Mantchev and Taeeun Yoo

RVC: Thank you, Sylvie!

Paula Wiseman Books

Sylvie Frank on Twitter

Sylvie Frank on LinkedIn