Happy Birthday, Book!

One idea from Weldon Owen's CEO Terry Newell: Give books birthday parties. On the book's first birthday, have a post-mortem. (In thinking about wanting to fatten up our backlist sales, this appeals. And also, I like cake.)


And in other Weldon Owen news: John Owen let us know that he will be part of a new venture that they're calling HOT HOUSE. The idea is that they'll have a team of five or six people located in the UK that will just come up with new products--a greenhouse of ideas, if you will. This team will develop the ideas, then once the product sells to a publisher, the title will move in-house. (My question is: How does it feel to be on the receiving end of a Hot House idea? How will the Hot House work with the rest of the staff?) It's so new that when I asked Owen how this hot house-y thing will work, he laughed and said, "I wish I knew!" Always interesting to see how others embark on new idea-generating initiatives.