A number of weeks after launching its Hear Your Story imprint, Sourcebooks introduced on Thursday the launch of one other new imprint, its nineteenth to this point: Stonefruit Studio. Stonefruit Studio will, in response to a launch, publish “distinctively inventive kids’s books throughout all age classes and codecs.” The imprint will publish 16-24 titles yearly, together with image books, center grade, YA fiction, graphic novels, and nonfiction, with the frequent denominator being books whose “authors and illustrators can showcase their daring narrative voices and distinct types that deliver the enjoyment of studying to kids of all ages.”
Ben Rosenthal and Mabel Hsu, Stonefruit Studio’s editorial administrators, are two trade veterans employed away from HarperCollins this previous spring to construct this imprint. Rosenthal was editorial director at HarperCollins’s Katherine Tegen kids’s imprint, and Hsu was that imprint’s govt editor. The duo report back to Jenne Abramowitz, editorial director for the Sourcebooks Fireplace, Younger Readers, and Jabberwocky imprints that comprise the youngsters’s publishing division of the multifaceted, multimedia firm, which is headquartered in Naperville, Unwell. Senior artwork director Celeste Knudsen and editorial assistant Mikaela Luke spherical out the Stonefruit Studio workforce.
“Stonefruit Studio is about celebrating tales which can be contemporary, numerous, and surprising— in different phrases, ‘tales that refuse to be eaten politely’,” Rosenthal mentioned. “We’re constructing an area the place authors and illustrators can discover huge concepts and take inventive dangers.”
Hsu added that “Stonefruit’s method will probably be extremely collaborative, which suggests we’re in search of creators who wish to associate [with us to] edit, design, produce, market, and publish these books collectively.”
Stonefruit Studio’s inaugural record will debut in summer season 2026 with three releases which can be to this point untitled: an image guide by Matthew J. Burgess, illustrated by Matthew Forsythe, that celebrates imaginative dreaming; a center grade learn that’s “a spooky, tech-twisted” collection by Newbery Medalist Erin Entrada Kelly and Eliot Schrefer; and, for YA readers, an “Enola Holmes-meets-Buffy fantasy journey” by J.A. Morgenstein.
Books to be launched in subsequent seasons throughout the imprint’s first 12 months embody, in image books, “a hilarious story” a few princess pony by Jordan Morris, illustrated by Charlie Mylie; the adventures of the final residing dinosaur by Skylar Hogan; and a “surreal chess-themed story” by Jacob Sager Weinstein, illustrated by Victo Ngai. Center-grade releases in 2026 will embody “a wildly reimagined hero’s journey” by Printz Award-winner Daniel Nayeri; a “humorous” graphic novel a few secret group of pests by Michelle Sumovich; and an “adventurous” graphic novel a few household taking over the Aztec underworld by Yehudi Mercado. For YA readers, Stonefruit Studio’s first 12 months choices will embody Firstborn, the primary in a romantasy trilogy by debut novelist M.J. Hastings.
Sourcebooks has moved aggressively into the youngsters’s guide market in recent times, and has been very profitable: in fiscal 12 months 2023, kids’s books accounted for 32% of the corporate’s complete web revenues; 51% of Sourcebooks’ releases in 2023 had been kids’s books. Sourcebooks doesn’t have statistics but for fiscal 12 months 2024, however Heather Moore, govt director, affect advertising and marketing for Sourcebooks Children, famous that NPD BookScan reveals Sourcebooks is up 30% in POS of kids’s and YA books.
“Stonefruit Studio exemplifies what Sourcebooks does finest: empowering tales and their creators to attach with readers in profound methods,” mentioned Sourcebooks CEO and writer Dominique Raccah, who based the corporate in 1987. “I’m so thrilled to see this gifted workforce deliver their ardour and creativity to life with this new imprint!” Jennifer Gonzalez, writer of kids’s books at Sourcebooks, who joined the corporate in January, added, “Ben and Mabel are creating one thing actually particular, bringing an thrilling array of tales that can encourage and captivate younger readers. We’re excited to supply a dynamic platform for authors and illustrators to push boundaries and redefine the panorama of kids’s books.”
