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George Nicholson started the panel by saying "We are in desperate times when our authors and illustrators are considered merely 'content providers.'"

A little bit of background, George began on the publishing side many years ago. As a young editor, he took part in all aspects of book production, eventually founding Delacorte and Yearling.

He transitioned to being an agent about 15 years ago just as the corporatization of publishing was starting to happen and credits his former wife for helping him make the decision:

"For heaven's sake, George, the only reason you're in this job is because you care about people."

"Have a raging sense of humor for every turn [in this business] if you can."

Some of George's clients include: Barbara Bader, Joan Bauer, Kevin Emerson, Leonard Marcus, Alice Provensen, and Susan Goldman Rubin

George says the most important thing is to be willing to reinvent yourself and be continually willing to do so. Not just your style or genre, but think about new digital platforms and media opportunities.

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Tina Stared with a confession: She did want to work at ICM--she pictured an Entourage-type environment. But she was pleasantly surprised at the book-y atmosphere she discovered instead.

Remember why we're in this room: because we love books,

--POSTED BY ALICE

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--Posted by Lee Wind

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Peter is telling jokes and amazing stories about 10 anecdotes every 5 seconds. I am only getting the tip of the iceberg, sorry:

As a child, Peter's parents encouraged him to paint and draw, his father was a film maker.

When Peter was four, his father was drafted into military service for 19 months where he met the young Dalai Lama! He had a photo up of him on the slide show, but I am too slow with my camera.

Here's a picture of a light switch in Peter's childhood home in Prague. He painted the chairs and the refrigerator, too! Except he forgot to tell his mother and her friends that had just come over to visit that the chair was not yet dry...

In school, Peter learned how to do illustration, film posters, costume design, animation, Communist-era album covers, basically any practical application of the arts.

In his early twenties, Peter wanted to be an animator and focused on building his career in that direction. In Eastern Europe at that time, animation didn't mean Tom & Jerry, but more like arty short films. Here's a shot of Peter's first short film. Peter did the 1984 Olympics commercial animations and was soon tapped by MTV in Los Angeles to do some animations.

That MTV work didn't go well, and Peter was stuck in America without a paying job, so he started teaching art. Peter didn't last as a teacher very long as his mantra for his students was, "You want to do art, you will have to suffer for your art." (He'd give them an assignment the day before it was due so they'd have to stay up all night working on it in proper Czech Art School Fashion.)

He ended up painting eggs in LA until he got a collect phone call from Maurice Sendak who convinced him to move to the East Coast, get into children's books, and attend things like ALA.


With the money Peter made for doing the AMADEUS poster he bought an old Mustang and WITHOUT A MAP started driving cross country from LA.

Peter says, when he got to San Antonio he thought he should turn left and asked a patrol car there for directions.

!

He finally did get to New York and started doing editorial illustration work. He wanted his work to stand out to companies like the NYT and so that is how he came up with the fine, dotted style he's famous for.

Peter says, twenty-five years later and with a pinched nerve, that that style idea was the wrong life move. I'm sure we all disagree with that, but do feel bad about the pinched nerve.

Peter used Tomi Ungerer as a career path model and hoped to, like Tomi, be earning a living as an illustrator in seven years (not knowing that Tomi had actually made s

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MUPPET IN THE HOUSE! You all should know by now that Laurent Linn worked for the Muppets for about eleven years starting when he was seven years old. Even though he's now a seasoned art director for Simon & Schuster, he can still speak Cookie Monster (and yet he doesn't follow Sesame Street tweets!)

Muppet talk aside, Laurent started with a mini-slide show of hypothetical good and bad illustrator postcard art samples using some famous artists.

For example, Renoir is the bomb, but his paintings don't leave you wondering what will happen next,


say like John Tenniel's illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Posted by Jaime

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His keynote is called "Making Sense of Life Through Books"

He is happy to be here in our big group because he feels like he belongs -- and is otherwise home alone all day making pictures.

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That's how he felt when he read Jay Asher's 13 Reasons Why. How he felt when he read that dream story manuscript. And how he felt when he read Suzanne Young's debut "The Naughty List" (yes, Suzanne Young of our very own SCBWI Team Blog), which comes out this week!

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A knockout first session with the VP and Publisher of Simon & Schuster's Beach Lane Books. Allyn spent the session talking only about the words in a picture book with a focus on great opening lines. She handmade a bazillion blank dummies which the audience borrowed. As a group we turned the 'pages' of the books that Allyn read aloud which helped us all experience the rhythm and pacing of each picture book.

Some of the titles Allyn read (she is a SUPERB storyteller!) included:
Mem Fox's HATTIE AND THE FOX, Debra Frasier's ON THE DAY YOU WERE BORN, and Laurie Keller's SCRAMBLED STATES OF AMERICA

Allyn stressed that all of the titles above were gifts to the adult reader, setting them up to be mesmerizing tale tellers for our target audience. She asked that everyone read READING MAGIC by Mem Fox
For Allyn, "Picture books are an extremely emotional art form. When they work – why they work, is because they make you feel something." She then quoted Mem Fox, "You want the audience's emotional temperature to be changed throughout the reading experience."

Allyn mentioned a great new interview with faboo Marla Frazee which you should all read.

--Posted by Jaime

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All the factors that went into success of "13 Reasons Why" (Jay Asher's amazing YA debut, which has sold nearly half a million copies!)

"Strong package" good image, nice tape branding of cover, great backcover copy

Jay the author is great, charming, with an enormous ability to promote himself

House - Ben's imprint, recognized word of mouth building and supported that with appropriate marketing.

Book hits the NYTimes list 20 weeks in... and stayed there.

Marketplace where issue of bullying very much in consciousness - this book came at it in a strange way - book and national consciousness hit at same time.

Even after you get everything right - the change of a book hitting at this level, where he feels the book with be the "Go Ask Alice" of it's generation, like "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson will be the book of its generation.

The odds of something like that happening are like 1 in 100,000.


--Posted by Lee Wind

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Many editors want to hit the sweet spot of a combination of both literary and commercial.

HOLES by Louis Sachar is a good example.

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Ben Schrank is the publisher of Razorbill, and he's sharing the true dream story of why he acquired a book...

what grabbed him:

he loved it - original opening, emotionally riviting, keeps him still reading. There's no time for it, but he's still reading.

started sharing with colleagues.

knew it was big. special.

started sharing it with more.

he finished it at home that night.

phone messages from others - we loved it. fantastic.

called agent. He was first, but it wasn't necessarily "his."

Ben offered to pre-empt it (to agree on an amount to keep project to go for auction) And in addition to that, explained his vision for how he wanted to publish the novel.

They negotiated a deal to get it.

And he got it. That all happened Tuesday - Thursday.

The writer wrote it, critiqued it online with other writers, she did all the right things. When she was absolutely ready (and not before), she reached out to 30 agents - signed with one she liked. Did a revision with the agent,

Submitted to him.

He bought it.

Wow - that's the dream all right!

The dream story continues: Ben sold the book to Razorbill in the U.K., sold in German, France, Spain, and it continues...

He went to ALA midwinter and a scout for a film company approached him. "I know about the book."

The moral:

The writer sat on it in her small town until it was ready. And once it was ready, she put it out there and it's going to be HUGE.

There's gotta be something special in the book. And that book had it.

--Posted by Lee Wind

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