Alloy snaps up Girl Press

Hoping to bolster its publishing business, girls apparel e-tailer Alloy Online (Alloy.com) has purchased L.A.-based pubco Girl Press, publisher of the advice guide The Real Rules for Girls and other nonfiction how-to books for the tween and teen girl set.

‘Girl Press’s books are hip, irreverent and empowering, which fits perfectly with our customer base,’ says Alloy Entertainment president Leslie Morgenstein. Acquiring Girl Press will complement Alloy’s own burgeoning publishing endeavors, and will give its titles added distribution at large book retailers such as Barnes & Noble and Borders.

Girl Press is the second pubco Alloy has purchased in the last year. In 2000, it bought out 17th Street Productions, a book packager that has developed series for Simon & Schuster (Fearless and Roswell) and HarperCollins (Fingerprints), and that controls the rights to 1,000 out-of-print teen-skewing fiction and nonfiction titles, many it plans to publish and distribute through Girl Press’s network starting this year.

Alloy will promote and sell Girl Press titles on its site and through its catalog, starting in April with the release of Girl Director, a guide for young women who aspire to enter the film and TV industry. As with all of its products, Alloy will try to leverage its relationships with relevant client advertisers to promote its books on-line. With Girl Director, for example, Alloy is planning to bring on Universal Studios and Sony as promotional partners for a contest it’s coordinating in support of the title, says Morgenstein.

In addition to Girl Director, Girl Press will release nine other titles this year, including a follow-up to its Cool Women book, a compendium of mini bios on important women throughout history that was developed into a TV special that aired last year on AMC.

Scholastic picks up Pfeifer-Hamilton’s kids books

Scholastic has purchased rights to all of Duluth, Minnesota-based pubco Pfeifer-Hamilton’s kids books. Starting February 15, Scholastic will begin marketing all nine of Pfeifer-Hamilton’s values-based picture books under the Scholastic imprint, including its most popular title, the American Booksellers Association Book of the Year award winner Old Turtle by Douglas Wood. Scholastic, in turn, will be able to bring the books to a wider audience and plans to distribute them through all of its key channels, including its book clubs and retail accounts. Under the terms of the deal, Scholastic will be free to collaborate on future titles with all of the kids authors who were previously published by Pfeifer-Hamilton.