Page One

This is page one and day one of my blog about children's books. I have been in the publishing business for most of my adult life. I have been a reader for a lot longer than that. And I have had a passion for history and non-fiction since my grandmother read aloud to me V.M Hillyer's A Child's History of the World when I was five. I still have that book and I still enjoy reading parts of it now and then.

A few years ago, I had an idea about publishing books for boys between 10 and 14 years old. Those were the ages of my two sons at the time and I was having a hard time finding good non-fiction books for them to read. When I was that age, there was a series of books called "Landmark Books" that I read and collected. I remember devouring them and to this day certain books and passages from those books are still vivid in my mind.

What happened to that series? And are there other series like it?  Well, it turned out that only five Landmark Books were still in print (there were over 200 books in the series). Also, there had been other similar series and most of them were long gone as well. So, Flying Point Press was born as we re-published a number of these titles, re-setting them, giving them new covers, and adding maps and diagrams. More about Flying Point Press in my next blog, but suffice it to say, over 250,000 copies of our twenty-seven titles have been sold thus far. Hardly a huge success, but not bad for a start.

In coming blogs I want to discuss topics related to children's books, children's publishing, children's librarians, differences between boy readers and girl readers along with other related topics.

Stay tuned.