To Reach Children, Publisher Tries Films

When the children’s book series “The Spiderwick Chronicles” became a popular Hollywood film, its publisher, Simon & Schuster, enjoyed a subsequent lift in book sales — and little else.

But under a new deal with the Gotham Group, a Los Angeles-based management firm, the next time Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing owns the film rights to a book — and that book is eventually turned into a movie — the publisher will be promised its own piece of the pie.
Simon & Schuster plans to test-drive the new deal with a middle-grade book series by the filmmaker David O. Russell, scheduled for publication in the fall of 2009.
“It’s about having more control in the process,” said Rick Richter, president and publisher of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing. “Typically publishers tend to stick their heads in the sand after the book hits Hollywood.”

In exchange for a percentage of the revenues, Simon & Schuster may agree to publish a book long before it is written, based on an assurance from the Gotham Group that it has Hollywood potential.

Read the full piece at the New York Times online, it's an interesting idea.