Decades-old childrens’ books on rebound

Using a concept known as the “long tail,” an Iowa company is reproducing and selling eight nostalgic children’s books, hoping to introduce the books to young parents familiar with the books from their own childhoods and who now want to read the same stories to their children.

The books had originally sold millions of copies each in their hey-day 30 years ago, but parents looking for them now usually got the same response: Try a used-book store.

“I still get calls at night from parents and grandparents wondering where they can buy the ‘Henry the Duck’ series,” said New York-based author Robert Quackenbush, whose books are among those being reprinted by CQ Products.

Using modern printing technology and sales techniques, CQ is creating a “long tail” for the books, developing a niche market that will benefit a handful of authors who did not receive royalties from the original sales. The books are selling for $8 a copy.

Andrea Ramker, 29, is the sales and marketing manager at CQ Products, a division of G&R Publishing, a company that prints cookbooks, perpetual calendars and other items sold in gift stores. The entire operation employs about 50 people.

Last spring, Ramker and fellow employees were trying to identify new products. “We got to thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to share some of our favorite books from our childhoods with our kids?’ ” she said.

They could do that, Ramker said, because family-owned G&R operates a small-scale printing and binding business.

“We started figuring out which books we wanted to print. We narrowed the list, and I started contacting authors,” she said.

Ramker discovered that several favorites were originally published by Parents Magazine Press. It went out of business several years ago, and the copyrights reverted to authors. That simplified things. CQ Products cut deals with four authors to reprint eight books.

“We only had the original art for two books,” Ramker said. But digital scanning technology allowed them to scan copies of the other books and touch up the art to make it as good as new.

The press runs began in August. Just 2,000 copies of each book were initially printed. Orders were taken from a nationwide network of gift shops, and retail sales are made from company’s Web site, www.cqproducts.com.

Quackenbush, who is 77, said he received so many requests for Henry books that he republished the most popular book, “Henry’s Awful Mistake,” a few years ago and was planning to self-publish others when Ramker contacted him.

He happily gave the Iowa publisher permission to republish four Henry books and will receive royalties from sales.

“I took a flat fee” from Parents Magazine Press when the original books were printed, he said. “I had no idea they would sell so well.”

The four Henry books published by Parents Magazine sold more than 5 million copies each, Quackenbush said.

Parents Magazine sold children’s books through a book club and had a separate marketing deal to place the same books in the offices of doctors and dentists nationwide.

Those books are back on the shelves of gift stores now, Ramker said, because “we can print in really small quantities and warehouse in small quantities.”

That has made it possible for CQ Products to take advantage of the long tail of retail demand that follows authors like Quackenbush.

“I couldn’t be happier,” Quackenbush said. “They’ve done a wonderful job.”