Sunday, August 10, 2008

Kid-lit

We've finally collected an online gallery of Flora's 20 children's books (17 of which he authored). They're up for viewing at JimFloraArt.com, the Flora family website.

While you're there, the site has had a makeover and includes three pages of original Flora art from the 1990s that's being offered for sale.

5 comments:

Ernie said...

Ummm, does that bear know there's a rather large fish chomping on his tail? Just wondering...

Jeffrey Alexander Lewonczyk said...

Wow! I have deep, primal memories of poring over "Grandpa's Ghost Stories" as a kid - I didn't know until this moment it was a Jim Flora project. Are there any plans to reissue any of these books? I want them all!

Irwin Chusid said...

We pitched six publishers on reprinting Flora's kid-lit — the whole catalog, or at least what we consider his best four or five books. All expressed sincere interest, some had initiated the contact. They all took months to arrive at the same decision: Thanks, but no thanks. Maybe later. We remain undeterred. We welcome publisher inquiries. Drop us a line.

Ernie said...

I'm sure they've considered it, but could the Flora family self-publish them? Do they own the rights?

Irwin Chusid said...

The Flora family owns all rights. However, self-publishing is a huge financial investment, as well as labor-intensive. And once the books are printed, who distributes them? Even print-on-demand requires a lot of work, and we don't have a staff. It's a complex process, and self-publishing, under the circumstances, is unfortunately not an option. If someone wants to prove me wrong, we're open to suggestions. But a basic understanding of publication, production and distribution -- the business side of kid-lit -- points to the difficulties of such a project. And that's assuming there's a market for the books -- and that the market can be reached, which involves promotion and publicity. It's a mammoth undertaking.