November Brown Bag Lunch

The Many Adventures of Book Packaging
Featuring Sara Shandler and Josh Bank of Alloy Entertainment
Tuesday, November 21, 2006 from 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
RANDOM HOUSE: 14th Floor1745 Broadway b/w 55th and 56th st., New York, NY

The Ins and Outs of Book Packaging with Alloy Entertainment
At this November’s Brown Bag Lunch, the YPG was thrilled to have Josh Bank and Sara Shindler of Alloy Entertainment come to speak about book packaging.

With offices in New York and Los Angeles, Alloy Entertainment is a creative think tank that develops entertainment properties, including books, television series and feature films. They partner with publishers, television networks and movies studios to produce and to distribute those works. In a given year Alloy will package 35-40 books, of which 10-15 will be completely new titles/series. In 2005, 17 of Alloy’s books reached The New York Times bestseller list.

While most book packagers focus on non-fiction titles, almost all of the properties that Alloy produces are works of fiction, primarily geared to appeal to teens, tweens, young adults and families. Their best known series are Sweet Valley High and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Although there are a number of similarities between book packagers and traditional book publishers, there are a few key differences. One of them has to do with the number of cooks in the creative kitchen.

For starters, a book packager’s work begins with development meetings where a concept is presented. For example: what would Desperate Housewives look like if it were targeted toward the teen market? These meetings begin as group brainstorming sessions during which the original concept is developed into a single idea page that they then present to an author, asking her to make it her own. Alloy will then work with the author on a partial outline. After they’re satisfied with the outline, the writer will then pen a synopsis and 75-100 pages of the story, which will be presented to Alloy for revision. Alloy then submits it to a publishing house. Throughout this entire initial process, the Alloy staff racks it s collective brain to boil the book’s concept down to one solid sentence, a clear and salable vision, and if that cannot be accomplished, they have been known to scrap the project.

While Alloy may scrap a project that didn’t come together quite right, once a property is sold they—and any book packager for that matter—will follow the property throughout the entire production, marketing and sales of the book. Sara admits that they can be a little pushier than a typical editor, often presenting cover ideas with the initial pitch and negotiating a budget to shoot and produce their own jackets. When it comes to distribution rights, they want full control. Since they are working with film and television in mind, their goals may not always be wholly compatible with those of the publishing world.

Another difference between packagers and publishers is that when working with packagers the publisher’s contract is not with a writer but with the packager. Seems obvious, but there are some interesting ramifications. The packager holds the rights, and acts as a middleman of sorts. While publishing houses and writers often have close ties, the actual work (manuscripts, jackets, outlines, revisions, etc.) is always funneled through the book packager, which is particularly noticeable during the editorial process or jacket design.

Given the proven success that Alloy has had with their hands-on philosophy, it makes one wonder why packagers wouldn’t just eliminate the other middleman—the publisher—and directly distribute their books. Well, Alloy has actually tried this, and continues to discuss the pros and cons, but they have come to the conclusion that they simply aren’t publishers. What they enjoy the most is the creative aspect of publishing, and that also happens to be what they’re best at. The various publishers with whom they work with are much more successful at leveraging their infrastructure to sell and distribute the books. In other words, packagers and publishers work the best when they are allowed the freedom and opportunity to focus on their respective strengths, while utilizing the talents of one another.