36 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ APRIL 6, 2020
Fast-Growing Indie Publishers
president
Christopher
Robbins.
Among the
metrics Robbins follows, sales per employee and sales per title had
large gains between 2017 and 2019. The company’s growth
drivers last year included its Lit for Little Hands series, interactive
board books, and regional titles, says marketing and public rela-
tions director Kate Farrell. A top-selling individual title was Good
Moms Have Scary Thoughts by Karen Kleiman, founder of the
Postpartum Stress Center, illustrated by Molly McIntyre.
The Road Not Taken, based on the poem by Robert Frost and
illustrated by Vivan Mineker, got a boost last year when it
received a mention in the New York Times Book Review—the first
time a Familius title made it into the NYTBR. Another solid
seller was a padded board book version of Familius’s
PW-bestselling picture book Made for Me. Big Book of Family
Games—which “provides tech-free fun and games to families,”
Farrell says—was also a hit in 2019. And The Munchy Munchy
Cookbook for Kids by Pierre Lamielle, winner of the reality cooking
show Chopped Canada, was a good performer last year, too.
Familius is now distributed by Workman, after previously
doing its own distribution. Robbins hopes the move willexpand its visibility to the trade.
Blue Star Press had immediate success when it launched
in 2015, taking advantage of the surge in interest in adult col-
oring books. Originally known as Blue Star Coloring, the pub-
lisher’s two top-selling books in the adult coloring category hit
the New York Times bestseller list, combining to sell more than
500,000 copies. That success “motivated us to charge ahead and
expand into other genres,” says Blue Star chief operating officer
Peter Licalzi, who started the company with Camden Hendricks.
Blue Star’s first move was to expand
in the creative art and wellness catego-
ries in 2016, followed by games and
other gift products in 2019, Licalzi
says. The company’s Paige Tate & Co.
imprint publishes how-tos, lifestyle
titles, devotionals, and coloring books.
Among Blue Star’s bestsellers last
year were Hand Lettering 101, Millennial Lotería, and Mind Your
Business. Early on, Licalzi says, the company worked to build rela-
tionships with independent booksellers and other bricks-and-
mortar retailers such as Hobby Lobby, Joann Fabric, and Magnolia.
Blue Star’s quick success drew the attention of Penguin Random
House, which added it as a distribution client in September 2019.