By Carol HinzEditorial Director, Millbrook Press Designing covers for a new series is always a challenge. One of Millbrook’s new fall series, Life in Ancient Civilizations, was especially difficult. How do you capture an entire culture on a cover? Each book’s cover needs to appeal to the target audience (grades 3-6) while also giving librarians […]Read more "The Quest for the Perfect Cover: Life in Ancient Civilizations"

By Sara HoffmannSenior Editor Every school & library publisher has its own process for coming up with series titles. At Lerner, our process tends to be very collaborative. People from many departments get into the act. The process is a little different for every series we do, but here’s how it usually goes: • The […]Read more "Titling a Series"

“What’s it going to be then, eh?” There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar […]Read more "Hearing voices"

posted by Carol Burrell, Editorial Director, Graphic Universe The first three books in the nine-book series The ElseWhere Chronicles were published in English by Graphic Universe early this spring. The story, created by the team of Bannister and Nykko (warning: links en français!), was originally published in French by Dupuis. Along with the expected complications […]Read more "GU Comics Day: Putting On a Good Face"

Over the years, I’ve been asked many times what I look for when I assess nonfiction writing for the TFCB imprint. My answer is pretty much always the same. Here’s my take on what makes good–and likely-to-be-published–nonfiction writing: –it grabs my attention with its personality and lively tone. Any piece of writing, whether fiction or […]Read more "What Makes Good Nonfiction?"

By Bob RaczkaAction Figures author The top ten things you may not know about Action Figures: Paintings of Fun, Daring and Adventure, straight from the author’s mouth: 10. This is the thirteenth book in my ongoing series, Bob Raczka’s Art Adventures, which is amazing to me. As you might guess, I do not consider the […]Read more "Action Figures Top Ten"

[Here’s a tidbit from Jennifer Garske about her trip to Maine] Sometimes you find your job really does bleed into every part of your life—in the best way possible, I mean. Recently, I was lucky enough to take a vacation to Maine. I went with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law to celebrate a birthday. As we […]Read more "Maine Tripping"

In my last Lerner blog post and in another post on the Carolrhoda blog, I wrote about social networking for authors. Social networks being, well, social, this led to some questions and comments. One astute commenter (on the syndication of this blog that runs on my personal Facebook) made many good points, and I’d like […]Read more "Addressing some more social networking questions"

[I asked Jean Reynolds to guest blog about working with Milton Meltzer, who passed away on September 19 after a long, successful career.] We publishers always know the age of our authors. It is not that we’re nosy, but we must use the author’s birth date when we apply to the Library of Congress for […]Read more "On Milton Meltzer"