Roxburgh said namelos isn’t a “book doctor,” packager or publisher. “I’m thinking of it as an independent editorial imprint,” he said. Roxburgh explained his motivation: “Publishing is in transition and in crisis. Economics demand that publishers reduce their overhead and focus their resources on the sales and marketing part of the process. In-house editors need to attend to the market and are rewarded for acquisitions, not development, which, by its nature, is time-consuming and inefficient. Editorial development is shifting outside publishing houses.”   

October marked the soft launch of his newest PageTurner project, ReadKiddoRead.com, which replaces the awards. By December, with almost no fanfare except for a mention in an interview with Al Roker and an ad in People magazine, the site attracted 20,000 visitors. It brings together reviews for books for newborns to teens, interviews with bestselling children’s authors like Jeff Kinney and Rick Riordan, and a book blog with reading lists by children’s literature consultant Judy Freeman, author of Books Kids Will Sit Still For.  

“The expertise, enthusiasm, and resources that Media Source brings to the table will allow us to enlarge our audience while maintaining our independent viewpoint and high standards,” said Roger Sutton, The Horn Book’s editor-in-chief, in a statement. “Our print and digital publications will be refreshed, redesigned, and rethought—but always in line with founder Bertha Mahony Miller’s directive to ‘blow the horn for fine books for boys and girls.’ ”

New Alloy Unit to Offer Advances 
Alloy Entertainment, the creator of such hits as Gossip Girl and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, has launched a new unit that will accept manuscripts for publication. Up until now, Alloy has generated all of its ideas in-house, but the Alloy Entertainment Collaborative will look to acquire up to 12 books annually with an emphasis on women’s fiction, young adult, middle grade, and chapter books. The Collaborative will be headed by executive v-p Josh Bank. Bank said he hopes the initiative will strengthen Alloy in such areas as adult fiction and middle grades.

The Hunger Games came out last September, after much pre-pub buzz; it has 225,000 copies in print, with 26 foreign editions to date. Collins is currently at work writing the third and final volume in the trilogy, tentatively scheduled for 2010.

David Levithan, executive editorial director at Scholastic, says that the manuscript for Catching Fire is available in-house on a “need to read” basis only. “It’s the most secrecy I’ve had about any project I’ve ever worked on.”   

Like the hit Babymouse series, also published by Random House, the Stone Rabbit series is geared toward children ages 5 to 10, and is the same size as traditional chapter books. The first volume was released on January 13.  

The book will consist of the President’s speech (adapted for young readers—the entire speech will also be included, in the back matter), biographical notes about Obama, as well as an overview of his first 100 days in office. Graphic novelist/illustrator Ruth (Freaks of the Heartland; Sudden Gravity) had been sketching Obama throughout the Presidential campaign, and when Bowen Press publisher Brenda Bowen, who was on Ruth’s mailing list, saw additional Obama artwork that he had created on election night, she called Ruth and signed him up for this project, in anticipation of Obama’s inauguration.