Conference Countdown Continues

Greg Ferguson from Egmont will be one of the featured speakers at the SCBWI Oklahoma Conference on March 27 in Oklahoma City.

This is very exciting because when other traditional publishers are downsizing and laying people off, Egmont is expanding their business. Egmont is a long-established European publisher that give a portion of their profits to children's charities. Here's an interview with Egmont publisher Elizabeth Law from the fabulous Cynthia Leitich Smith at Cynsations.

Here is a blog post from Kathleen Temean from the NJ chapter of SCBWI about Egmont and Greg Ferguson.

A recent book he edited at Egmont is The Dark Divine by Bree Despain.  I haven't read this yet. I am on the waiting list to get it from the library, but there are seven other patrons ahead of me. So, I'm probably not going to get it before the conference. :(


And here is the most exciting bit of news I could find. A couple weeks ago, he acquired a YA dystopian thriller trilogy in a six-figure deal. The author, Ilsa J. Bick, talks about it on her blog, Paperback Writer. So, yes, publishers are still buying books and making advances and that is encouraging given all the negative things we hear so often.