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All Hail – KNIGHTS OF

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Aimée Felone and David Stevens, former Scholastic colleagues, have co-founded a new children’s publisher, KNIGHTS OF, which will publish commercial fiction for 5 – 15 year olds.

from the press release:

KNIGHTS OF intends to focus on commissioning writers and illustrators from a diverse range of backgrounds. The company also pledges its commitment to a similarly inclusive approach to recruitment. A key imperative for KNIGHTS OF is to actively connect with UK BAME and working class networks and communities.

KNIGHTS OF will operate as transparently as possible in its relationship with contributors, partners and readers. Ensuring its books reach the widest audience possible will be central to the KNIGHTS OF strategy, and it will guarantee a significant minimum marketing spend per title.

KNIGHTS OF will offer unique and immediate access to all sides of the business using online live chat via its homepage (www.knightsof.media). Using this application, anyone will be able to contact the company and get an instant response to queries 9am – 6pm.

The launch campaign includes an online community #BooksMadeBetter (booksmadebetter.com), using social publishing platform Medium. #BooksMadeBetter allows established authors and underrepresented voices to champion each other, offering a safe space for articles, opinions and reviews from across children’s books, ensuring that all contributors are paid.

KNIGHTS OF is open to submissions via its live chat mechanism from today. There are no barriers tosubmitting, both unrepresented and agented writers and illustrators are encouraged but should refer to the submission guidelines on the website.

Felone and Stevens have reached an agreement with independent publisher Little Tiger Group who will support KNIGHTS OF with a broad range of industry
expertise, including design and production.

KNIGHTS OF Co-founder Aimée Felone said: “KNIGHTS OF was born out of a frustration with the lack of representative voices and narratives in children’s fiction. With KNIGHTS OF we can publish uniquely -putting our differences first and celebrating them, making it central to our business. The industry fails to publish and hire inclusively enough, we want to give new writers the start they deserve while building a more representative workforce. We are fortunate to have found incredible support in Little Tiger Group, who we have long admired, to help us bring our books to market in 2018/19. Our hope is that industry-wide support will follow, enabling us to go much, much further.”

ACHUKA wishes the venture every success and we look forward to playing our part in helping to promote the books on the new list.

Lois Duncan, young-adult fiction writer, dies aged 82

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la times

Lois Duncan, a prolific writer of suspense novels for young adults who also chronicled her decades-long inquiry into the unsolved homicide of her own daughter, has died. She was 82.Albuquerque-based private investigator Pat Caristo said Thursday that Duncan had died at her home near Sarasota, Fla. Duncan’s husband announced on Facebook that she had collapsed in their kitchen on Wednesday.Duncan was best known for suspense novels for young adult readers as well as children’s books that were among nearly 50 published titles. Her thriller "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and kids adventure "Hotel for Dogs" were turned into movies.

via Lois Duncan, young-adult fiction writer, dies at 82 – LA Times.

New Children’s Books Imprint

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kuperard

Kuperard Publishing has just announced a fresh direction in its titles by introducing Children’s Books under a new imprint, Hutton Grove.

Launching in June 2015, Hutton Grove will specialise in beautifully illustrated picture books and will initially publish nine titles for 2-7 year olds, including Eva Montanari’s  A Wolf’s Tale and Witches and Fairies, Vegetable Glue (written by Susan Chandler and illustrated by Elena Odriozola) and Munch (written and illustrated by Emma McCann).

The first nine titles will be followed by another eight in Autumn 2015, when the line will also be introduced into the US market with distribution partners Lerner Publisher Group.

“With the addition of Hutton Grove, Lerner Publisher Services expands its offerings by adding a high quality line of picture books with full-colour illustrations and original artwork that will actively engage enthusiastic young picture book readers,” said David Wexler, Executive Vice-President of Sales for Lerner Publishing Group.

The books will be available in all good bookshops from 25th June 2015.

Kuperard are known as the publishers of the Culture Smart! series of guides to the customs and etiquette of nearly 100 countries across the globe, which have already sold more than one million copies worldwide.

Janetta Otter-Barry To Set Up Own Publishing Company

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A new company, Otter-Barry Books, is to be set up by Janetta Otter-Barry, well known as an award-winning publisher of children’s books. Formerly editorial director of Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, she has, for the last six years, published her own children’s list under the Frances Lincoln imprint, winning numerous awards such as the SLA Information Book Award, the English 4-11 Award and the CLPE Poetry Prize. Now Otter-Barry is going fully independent with a team including board Directors Jon Rippon (Finance) and Gail Lynch (Sales and Marketing), alongside Judith Escreet as Art Director and Caterina Favaretto heading up Foreign and Subsidiary Rights. Rippon Publishing Management assisted Janetta with the set-up, and the company is financed by three private investors. Sales and distribution will be provided by Bounce Sales and Marketing and GBS, Australia and New Zealand will be handled by Walker Books Australia. Arrangements in North America will be announced shortly.
Janetta Otter-Barry says, "This is something I have wanted to do for a long time, inspired by Frances Lincoln herself, and now feels like the perfect time for me, with secure financing in place and a "dream team" of talented colleagues. I intend to publish books that make a difference and challenge boundaries. Watch this space!"

via Book Trade Announcements – Janetta Otter-Barry To Set Up Own Publishing Company.

SuperAwesome to play matchmaker for Scholastic

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Interesting news, in the light of the just-published interview with Scholastic’s commissioning editor, David Maybury…

A new partnership between Scholastic UK and London-based SuperAwesome will see the publishing powerhouse tap into the world’s largest kids advertising network to find the next generation of authors and IP creators.

Marking a shift in the conventional ways publishers and authors connect, SuperAwesome will scour its extensive databases to hook Scholastic up with media, animation and indie game developers for publishing and licensing opportunities.

via SuperAwesome to play matchmaker for Scholastic » Kidscreen.

ACHUKA Announcement

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ACHUKA

I have temporarily removed the links to our books pages (with the exception of our own ACHUKAbooks ebooks) pending a refocusing and relaunch of the site in the New Year.

ACHUKA will be returning to its founding purpose of focusing on children’s and ‘young adult’ books. Whilst it was personally interesting to broaden the focus of our book selection pages to adult books (with the inclusion of biographies, fiction in translation etc.) it hasn’t resulted in a broader audience for the site, which was the main purpose for the original move.

So from January, with rare exceptions, we will only be recommending books published for the bouyant children’s and YA market.

As the site’s homepage suggests [see screenshot above], since leaving education the focus of my time is divided three ways:
1. Maintaining a daily watch on children’s books news, updating the blog accordingly, and tweeting the newslinks.
2. Surveying, selecting and reviewing the published books that are sent in to ACHUKA, keeping a watchful eye on publications that we don’t receive copies of and publishing our own imprint of ebooks (more on that below).
3. Working as a freelance photographer, web designer and copy writer. I am actively seeking commissions for 2015. As a photographer I specialise in portraiture and event work. As a web designer my focus is on making sites mobile-friendly. Too many author sites were designed at a time when all web browsing was done on a laptop or larger screen – they need adapting or redesigning to make them fit for purpose on mobile phones and tablets.

Attempting to publish ebooks has proved difficult. As a result of my experience I have come to the conclusion that it is easier from a promotional point of view for authors to self-publish than to go through a third-party ebook ‘publisher’. For a publisher to push, publicise and recommend their titles on online forums is somehow frowned upon and viewed as spam, whereas it is seen as fine for the authors themselves to do so.

I haven’t given up on ACHUKAbooks, though – far from it. In the New Year there will be a wonderful Wes Anderson-esque new novel from Bill Nagelkerke and the first in a sequence of short 15-minute read-aloud adventures for the 7-10 age group featuring an unlikely hero called Mr Hot Chilly. And there will be renewed efforts to push the backlist.

Unlike the website, the ACHUKAbooks imprint will continue to publish for both children and adults.

I’m already rather excited about 2015.

http://www.achuka.co.uk/