2.12: Book Packaging: Why You're Wrong About Goosebumps

The Ink Sink

Books like Gossip Girl, Goosebumps, and Star Wars novelizations all come from the same industry. Today, we dive into the controversial “book packaging” business. But first, you can subscribe, support, and snoop on us wherever you get your socials and podcasts! https://linktr.ee/inksinkpodcast Warning, we do some cursing in this episode. We talk about things you should NOT say to an eight-year-old. Our sources for this episode: Oh yes, the Two of a Kind books were real. With titles like “How to Flunk Your First Date,” how could eight-year-old Annie resist? https://www.fictiondb.com/series/mary-kate-and-ashley-two-of-a-kind~15612.htm A brief look at how James Patterson runs his factory: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/10711191/James-Patterson-how-the-bestseller-factory-works.html If you want to know more about Kaavya Viswanathan and her disastrous deal with Alloy (plus a good dive into predatory contracts), you can listen to this episode of the Missing Pages podcast: https://podglomerate.com/shows/missing-pages/kaavya-viswanathan-the-untold-story/ Our AI episode has some good information on the possible future of freelance-written books: https://theinksink.substack.com/p/buzzfeed-falls-and-ai-rises John Barlow described his failed attempt at becoming a writer for a book packager in an article he published in Slate in 2006 when Kaavya Viswanathan was first everyone’s darling, and then a cautionary tale against plagiarism.: https://web.archive.org/web/20120128044104/http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2006/04/i_coulda_been_a_pretender.html In an article published by the International Herald Tribune in 2006, Motoko Rich and Dinitia Smith also discussed the scandal and added a little more context around book packaging and the company that worked with that young author: https://web.archive.org/web/20070127045606/http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/27/news/pack.php A more recent article in Bustle from 2017 seconds the direct comparison to workshopping ideas in a writers' room for movies and traditional authoring: https://www.bustle.com/p/what-is-book-packaging-its-ideal-career-path-for-ambitious-readers-66339 An interview with Matt Baehr, Executive Director of the Book Manufacturing Institute, in which he discusses why publishers use book packagers, and it’s essentially the reason any major group outsources: specialty work that they don’t have, nor desire to have, an in-house team for: https://whattheythink.com/video/115149-trends-book-manufacturing/ So what are the issues with BP? Sabaa Tahir in Anonymous Author breaks down some of them, and it’s largely the same sort of issue you might have read about in (again) the film industry. https://sabaatahir.medium.com/anonymous-author-2da5e017d3a6 The NYT published a piece as an obit of Paul Steiner, an immigrant who opened Chanticleer Press, regarded as the first book packager in the United States, as a branch of a London-based packaging company: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/11/nyregion/paul-steiner-who-popularized-coffee-table-books-dies-at-83.html Chanticleer Press published its first book in 1807, according to Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/publishers/Chanticleer_Press Annika Barranti Klein with Book Riot dug into the history in an article from July 2022: https://bookriot.com/the-stratemeyer-syndicate/ Of the first four Nancy Drew novels, which have gone on to sell more than 70 million copies according to Penguin Random House: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/NAD/nancy-drew You won’t find more from this particular packager because following the death of the Stratemeyer immediate family, it was ultimately sold to Simon & Schuster. https://abpaonline.org/find-book-producer/ Buy us a coffee on Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/inksinkpodcast#checkoutModal Check out all the books we talk about on our Bookshop page: https://bookshop.org/shop/theinksink --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-ink-sink/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-ink-sink/support