Publisher Spotlight: Gingerbread House

The year 2000 was both historic, and anticlimactic:  Historic in its significance to the world as the beginning of a new millennium, the punch line of many a “Seinfeld” or “Friends” episode, and the night teenagers were sure to get the big new years kiss.  After all, we were all going to perish because of the Y2K computer issue, so there was no time like the present.  Which leads me to its anticlimactic features:  while the ball dropped in Times Square and confetti littered the streets, life continued into the new millennium as it did the years prior, and subsequently the years since.  In retrospect, “Happy Millennium” turned out no more significant than “Happy New Year,” or even “Happy Saturday.”

But I digress:  while New Year’s Eve may have lacked the glamour and excitement (and thankfully, the projected dangers), the year itself brought exciting happenings to almost every industry, from the great media merge of America Online and Time Warner, to the sporting world’s once-in-a-blue-moon Subway Series, the TV nation’s loss of Kathy Lee, and of course that presidential election.  Publishing would not be left out of the excitement, with adult publishers creating Internet traffic by those downloading the ebook of Stephen Kings “Riding the Bullet,” and one small family on Long Island preparing to make some major noise in the world of children’s literature, as Gingerbread House planted the seeds for its humble roots.

Visualizing her house’s spare bedroom as more than just a storage space, author Josephine Nobisso saw it as the opportunity to take three of her then out of print books, and re-release them for a new set of readers.  Partnering with her then-14-year-old daughter, Maria, as the art director and operations manager, the spare bedroom made the transition to office, and Gingerbread House was born.

Logically, when these first few reprints took off, the next natural step was to do some originals:  “We decided to try originals,” Josephine said,  “reasoning that if re-issues—which are not eligible for most review and award venues—could be kept alive, it would be an exciting venture to launch titles that could go out into the world and take on surprising lives of their own.”  Gingerbread House’s next four original titles took on very successful lives of their own, recognized by hundred’s of reviewers, combining for 20 awards, and each being named to the “Children’s Book Sense 76.”

Not bad for a publishing house that, just seven years ago was, in part, started because “Maria had cut her teeth on publishing, and was a home-schooler, and we saw the launch of a family publishing house as a natural, opportune, real-life, real-time way for her to learn the myriad skills that it takes to run an intricate business.”  Seven years later, Maria has learned, and become an expert, taking these four new books and helping make them multiple award winners (“I jokingly refer to her as ‘the art dictator’ because she's so attentive to detail,” claims Josephine).

As the mother-daughter team that is Gingerbread House prepares their next releases, they also look to the future of the company and, after seven years, are leaving the spare bedroom for a bigger office space, and expanding the staff on hand:  “with room for more than 4 elbows, we'll be able to hire help, and…once all this help spoils us so that our days become shorter than 12-16 hours, we just might figure out how to disentangle ourselves from other tasks and expand again.”

Seeing an award cited next to every title on the list is not typical for any publishing company, but Josephine offers a bit of advice for anyone getting ready to tackle the business, saying  “there is so much work involved in publishing that any small house would do well to leave to the established pros whatever tasks it can,” pointing to Independent Publishers Group as their helpful distributors, and Combined Book Exhibit as their tradeshow presence.  She also points out that books can’t be reviewed if no one knows that they exist, and advises “new and smaller publishers to be generous with their review copies, because one never knows into whose hands they may land.  It's our policy at Gingerbread House to ship sample copies to any reputable asker.”

In these early months of 2007 there may not have been any historic new media mergers or political issues, but Josephine and Maria are hard at work behind the scenes of their family business, celebrating their first seven years, getting ready to release four new titles, move into a bigger office and looking to hire more employees.  All the while, Josephine will be penning new books, touring and giving workshops as a writing expert, while Maria works with illustrators, creates layouts and promotes.  They might release a new book, and that new book will most likely soon require a sticker indicating an award it’s won.  That’s pretty impressive for any publisher, but for Gingerbread House, it’s just another day in the spare bedroom.

To learn more about Gingerbread House or order their books, visit their website at www.gingerbreadbooks.com.