Aladdin Marks 35 Years of Paperback Publishing
This story originally appeared in Children's Bookshelf on February 22, 2007 Sign up now!
by Sally Lodge, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 2/22/2007
Back in February 1972, under the editorial leadership of Jean Karl, Atheneum launched Aladdin Books, a children's paperback line that debuted with reprints of 10 Atheneum hardcovers. On the inaugural list were E.L. Konigsburg's Jennifer, Hectate, Macbeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth and Shadow of a Bull by Maia Wojciechowska. In celebration of its 35th anniversary, Aladdin will issue repackaged editions of those two novels on February 27th.
Though not the first hardcover children's house to establish a paperback line, Aladdin (now an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing) was certainly in the forefront of that trend. Children's publishers at that time were more likely to license reprint rights to mass market paperback houses, among them Dell, Pocket Books and Avon. For the first years of Aladdin's existence, the imprint consisted of reprints of hardcovers published under the Atheneum imprint as well as those acquired by Margaret K. McElderry, who had her own imprint at the house.
Offering a perspective on Aladdin's early years is Neal Porter, now editorial director of Neal Porter Books at Roaring Brook Press. He became children's marketing director for Atheneum and Scribner's in 1980, not long after the two houses merged. Porter switched his focus to editorial in 1985, when Macmillan bought the company and he was put in charge of merging Aladdin and Collier, Macmillan's paperback imprint. Porter recalls that Aladdin was unusual in that from the start it incorporated middle-grade and young adult fiction into its program, rather than focus on reprinting picture books, which was the case with most hardcover houses with paperback lines.
The 1970s was clearly an auspicious time to start Aladdin, given the increasing receptivity to paperbacks on the part of review media, libraries and schools. And a clear advantage of retaining reprint rights to Atheneum books, Porter observes, was the ability to control the timing of a paperback release. "We had the luxury of waiting until a hardcover began to dip in sales before bringing it out in paper," he says. "If we licensed a book to a mass-market house, they were likely to publish a paperback edition in a year or 18 months. But if the book had, say, won a major award and continued to sell well, we were able to delay publishing an Aladdin edition and eke out hardcover sales for a longer time."
The complexion of the Aladdin list has changed significantly since the imprint's fledgling years. Ellen Krieger, v-p and associate publisher of Aladdin, who has been with the company since 1994, estimates that the imprint now releases about 165 titles each year, and that the list includes almost as many original paperbacks as reprints. The reprints are primarily books published under S&S's various children's hardcover imprints, though Krieger notes that on occasion Aladdin will license paperback rights from other houses, as in the case of Bill Wallace's books from Holiday House.
Krieger says Aladdin currently has 1500–1600 backlist titles in print. As examples of the list's picture book bestsellers, she cites Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr.; Judith Viorst's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, illustrated by Ray Cruz; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett, illustrated by Ron Barrett; and William Steig's Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. Mainstays of Aladdin's reprint fiction list are Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, Frindle by Andrew Clements, E.L. Konigsburg's From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the Shiloh trilogy by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, James Howe's Bunnicula books and D.J. MacHale's Pendragon adventures. Also strong sellers are many of Aladdin's original series, among them the Ready-to-Read beginning readers (which include the Henry & Mudge books by Cynthia Rylant and Suçie Stevenson), the perennially popular Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys capers and Charles Ogden's Edgar & Ellen tales.
 MIX launches in May with six titles, including this James Howe novel. |
And Krieger reports that in spring 2008, Aladdin will launch a line of graphic-format fiction and nonfiction titles, including adaptations of backlist titles. Among the first releases will be graphic versions of some of the fictionalized biographies in the Childhood of Famous Americans series. "We feel that the graphic format has strong retail potential and is being used increasingly in classrooms, since these books are great for reluctant readers," Krieger says. "We are planning on adapting into this format books on historical subjects that will fit well with school curricula."
S&S is touting Aladdin's 35th anniversary in the imprint's spring, summer and fall catalogues and has created a dedicated Aladdin anniversary page on www.SimonSaysKids.com. Also in celebration of this milestone, the company will issue repackaged editions of Andrew Clements' Jake Drake series this summer and of additional E.L. Konigsburg novels in the fall.
