Scholastic Media President Deborah Forte: Early Days for Children’s E-Books

April 3, 2012 | 

By Jeremy Greenfield, Editorial Director, Digital Book World, @JDGsaid

The time for children’s digital reading may have finally come.
After years of lagging behind digital growth in the adult-trade book segment, children’s e-books posted 475% growth in January 2012 over January 2011, going from a $3.9 million-a-month business to a $22.6 million-a-month business in just a year.
One of the publishing executives leading the charge is Deborah Forte, president of Scholastic Media, the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books. (Outside of children’s book, publicly traded, New York-based Scholastic is having a pretty good fiscal-year 2012 with the runaway success of The Hunger Games trilogy, which topped most best-seller lists in 2011 and 2012 and is currently showing as a theatrical release to record-breaking audiences in movie theaters around the U.S.)
Forte got her start in publishing at Viking 1976 as an assistant. Within months, Viking, a respected hardcover fiction house, was acquired by Penguin, the world’s largest paperback publisher at the time. In seven years at Viking-Penguin, Forte was able to learn about many facets of the business, including art-book publishing and children’s publishing.
In 1983, she left Penguin as a director of special markets and was recruited by Scholastic. Given a choice between joining the company’s publishing arm or going into its television production business, she chose television, experience she says helped her build Scholastic’s software business in the ‘90s and its app business today. By 2003, Forte had greatly expanded the Scholastic television production business and consolidated all of the company’s media operations under one roof, which was then re-named Scholastic Media.
Along the way, Forte has picked up numerous awards, including an Oscar and several Emmys. She graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. in 1975.
We spoke with Forte about the recent explosive growth in children’s e-books, Scholastic’s new e-book-selling platform Storia, and the publisher’s pricing strategy.
Read the interview at DBW.