test heading Here at First Second, we believe that stories don't always need morals or lessons. Don't get us wrong! Morals and lessons are great, and there are lots of absolutely fantastic books that teach you that genocide is bad, that sharing is kind, that everyone is good at heart, etc. in more and less [...]
test heading "There’s no moral to this story, no lesson to be taken away and pondered. It’s just a blast. . . . And here’s to the books that bring us such laughs right when we need them," said Julie Danielson recently, in this Kirkus Reviews round-up of funny books for kids. (Humpty Dumpty laughing [...]
test heading (My current bookshelf. I'm just waiting for one of the shelves to collapse.) There are a lot of small parts of books that often pass unnoticed for most readers. If you're an aspiring book-creator, these can be good things to watch out for when you're in the 'read all the books for reference' [...]
test heading (some early art from Faith Erin Hicks' upcoming graphic novel, The Nameless City -- which she shared on her tumblr in a discussion of paper vs. digital art creation processes) When you have a book contract, it is time to rejoice! Your book will be published! By a publisher! It will go out into [...]
test heading (or, why a publisher almost never responds to a book pitch at a show by saying, 'sold!' and producing a contract right then and there.) (us at last week's MoCCA Festival, at which we saw lots of great writers and artists -- but did not agree to publish any books by them at [...]
test heading Let's go with the most depressing reason possible: sometimes, authors die. Sometimes (less depressingly) they give up writing or drawing because they feel like their books aren't reaching people. Sometimes, they get depressed and have bad days and wonder why they're struggling along in this challenging industry. We all love books because they [...]
test heading This year is an exciting year for us with ISBNs. (If you don't already know, ISBNs are an identifying number for books -- each book has its own, so that it can be identified numerically. This is helpful for things like being scanned in a store or a library and registering in a [...]
test heading (This post is inspired by the person on tumblr who commented that doing all the stuff we talked about previously to get your work out there was difficult when you're a person who is shy. Thanks for your topic suggestion!) We write a very aspirational blog. What's the best possible thing that you [...]
test heading We get a lot of job application e-mails. A lot of them are really flattering! People send us great e-mails about how much they like our books and would really like to work here, which is exactly the sort of e-mail that a person should send if they are endeavoring to get a [...]
test heading (This is more of a general purpose post than one that's specifically applicable to First Second. Because we've only got two people on staff who edit books, there's not as much of a hierarchy here than there is at a lot of other publishers.) When you're submitting a project to a publisher, it's [...]
