Packagers

It's Book Business Friday. So, what's the deal with book packagers? Well, for starters, they're also called book developers or book producers. They do the work of putting the book together-writing, editing, etc.-- through freelancers or their own staff. They may originate the story or series concepts which they sell to a publisher. Or, a publishing company may outsource the work involved in putting together a book or series, which they have created, to a book packager. Basically, the book packaging company creates the book, like a Sweet Valley High product, and then they sell the book to the publishing company which then puts it out into the marketplace. A nice overview is here on right-writing.com. A more personal "here's-what-happened-to-me" discussion by an author can be found here on slate.com. Read these and you'll have a pretty good idea about this rather large component of the book business.