Mathew Price Launches U.S. List

By Judith Rosen -- Publishers Weekly, 8/21/2008

Twenty-five-year-old Mathew Price Ltd. is the latest U.K. children’s publisher to expand into the U.S. by opening an office on this side of the pond. Like Barefoot Books and Candlewick Press (sister company to Walker Books), the company initially got a toehold in this market by selling U.S. rights to individual titles before deciding to go it alone. But unlike them, Mathew Price closed its U.K. office, and has shifted its global home to the U.S.—to Denton, Tex., 37 miles northwest of Dallas, to be exact.

“I think we’ll be based in Texas for a long time,” predicts Mathew Price, founder of the eponymous book packager and publishing house, and children’s book author. “International is still a strong part of the business. From that point of view you can be anywhere.” And so can staff. Both designer Gary Tooth and marketing head Janey Tannenbaum plan to telecommute from New York. New fall titles like Price’s own Room for One More (Nov.), illustrated by Ian P. Benfold Haywood, will be published simultaneously in both countries. However, some titles being issued in the U.S. are already available in the U.K.

The company’s initial U.S. list of 11 books, which is being distributed to the trade by Consortium, combines re-releases like John Norris Wood and Kevin Dean’s Nature Hide & Seek: Jungles (Dec.), which PW called “a powerful little picture book with tantalizing fold-outs and dazzling displays,” and new titles like Price’s Mommy Is That You? (Dec.), illustrated by Atsuko Morozumi. The company will also relaunch Soccer Bear (Sept.), Colin McNaughton’s 1980 illustrated book about a bear who longs to join the local soccer team.In the spring, Mathew Price will publish as many 22 books, which includes four sets of board books. Next fall it will issue its first list with books in both Spanish and Korean.

Despite the shift in location, Price has no plans to change the emphasis of the publishing program, which is summed up by the company’s longtime motto: “Education through delight.” “I don’t mind where the delight comes from,” says Price, whose lists typically include many pop-up and lift-the-flap books. However, he is concerned about keeping prices as low as possible in the face of steep increases in printing costs in China. “I grew up in a bookshop,” he says. “I was there five and a half years, and it made me constitutionally averse to do things at the wrong price,” he says.