Saturday, February 13, 2016

Mallory Loehr: The Big Picture Panel: Children's Publishing Now and in the Future

Mallory Loehr is Vice President, Publishing Director for the Random House, Golden Books and Doubleday children's imprints--representing everything from board books to young adult hard covers and trade books to licensed books.

With Random House Books for Young Readers since 1990, she's edited household name titles and authors including Dr. Seuss books, the Magic Treehouse series, Bruce Coville and Tamora Pierce!

Some highlights from what Mallory shared:

On the advantage Children's publishing has over adult publishing:

"Children's books backlist, which means they live on and on and on."

On Random House Books for Young Readers' mission, how they're

"thinking about that kid reader, wanting them to be totally engaged... and make them a reader for life."

and when asked what defines success for her, Mallory tells the room about an illustrator/author she discovered on Etsy, Emily Winfield Martin.

Mallory Loehr on screen talking about E


Mallory speaks of how Emily's career has grown, defining success as the growth of an author/illustrator's career. Emily's first book, a middle grade, did well but wasn't huge, her next book, a picture book, sold less than they'd hoped, and it's her current, third book, the picture book, The Wonderful Things You Will Be, that hit the Best Seller lists and has been there for 20 weeks! So it's not just the single book's success, but the growth of this author/illustrator's career--and how success will continue to happen for her--that Mallory defines as success.


The optimistic panel also discusses changes in the retail environment, ebooks, publisher expectations of their authors and illustrators and much more.

It's an amazing window into children's publishing today!



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