Lizzie Skurnick Books will retrieve out-of-print young adult books
Writer Lizzie Skurnick hopes to help adults – particularly women – who are in search of an out-of-print book that they once loved.
Publisher Ig Books, which publishes previously out-of-print academic books as well as fiction and nonfiction, announced that it would be launching a new imprint this fall titled Lizzie Skurnick Books. The imprint, named after Skurnick – who is the author of 10 teen titles – will focus on republishing out-of-print young adult books from the 1920s to the 1980s.
“[The imprint will] bring back the very best in young adult literature, from the classics of the 1930s and 1940s, to the thrillers and social novels of the 1970s and 1980s,” Ig Publishing co-founder Robert Lasner told Publishers Weekly.
Skurnick will be in charge of all titles, completing all acquisitions as well as editing every book released under the imprint. Lizzie Skurnick Books is scheduled to release between 12 and 14 books a year.
While the books will be aimed at young adults, Skurnick told Publishers Weekly she thinks the majority of Lizzie Skurnick readers will be adults who are returning to titles they read when they were younger.
“[These books] are not for teens,” she said. “Teens’ tastes have changed. It’s for adults who want to read, re-read, and collect these books. If mothers and fathers want to share the books, great.”
The first title released under Lizzie Skurnick Books will be “Debutante Hill” by Lois Duncan, a book that originally came out in 1958. "Debutante Hill" will come out in September.
Skurnick said she was struck by how few books that were beloved by female readers in past decades are still in print, while she believes that many favorites of male readers – Skurnick singled out the Isaac Asimov novels – are still available.
“There’s an enormous group of women who wrote such important work, but these books are so hard to get,” she said. The book titles are a “shared shorthand” among women who grew up during that time period, said Skurnick.
Other books scheduled to be reprinted by Lizzie Skurnick Books include 1979’s “Happy Endings Are All Alike” by Sandra Scoppettone; “I’ll Love You When You’re More Like Me” by M.E. Kerr, which originally came out in 1977; and “To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie” by Ellen Conford, which was originally printed in 1982.
