Industry Panel: Wendy Loggia

Wendy Loggia is VP and publisher at Delacorte Press for Young Readers where she's worked for over 25 years. She's just moved into the publisher role. Delacorte publishes middle grade and young adult fiction. They see themselves as a boutique imprint, where commercial and literary intersect. 

On trends

For Delacorte, especially in YA they are thinking about book as object as a big trend: books with beautiful sprayed edges, foiled cases, etc.  Books as collectable items. 

On submissions

Delacorte is actively looking and acquiring manuscripts. 

What's the mark of a good agent? 

Wendy thinks a good agent is a person you want to represent you in a room where you are not present. It's a relationship of true collaboration and partnership. Wendy likes to work with an agent who is nice to work with. 

On professionalism

Delacorte wants to have good communication with their authors. They work hard to anticipate any questions they might have a long the way and they have tools they've created to help their authors. 

On teamwork

There are so many people who work on each individual book. THE LAST BOOKSTORE ON EARTH which was written by an author who, at the time, was a senior in high school. Along the way it has had so many internal layers of thumbprints on it--so many people involved. Not all have as many, but so many people are involved in the making of a book. 

On awards

Awards fall under the purview of school and library department. On the editor side, while they would love for one of their books to get any award, it's not what they are focused on. 

In the spirit of fun, if we looked at your social media without book, what would we see?

Cocktails and the beach. If Wendy wasn't working on books, she'd be at the beach. 

With social media, are you finding people there? Specifically illustrators. 

If Wendy is on Instagram and she sees something she likes, she will save it, but the art department is really on top of it. More often she's not the one discovering the talent. 

None of us get to where we are without help. Can you talk about your mentors? Also your mentees?

Wendy's best mentors where her childhood librarians. Recently when her Little Golden Book came out, Wendy's 8th grade librarian emailed her to tell her how proud she was of her.

In publishing Wendy's mentor was Beverly Horowitz, who was the publisher at Delacorte. Right before Beverly retired, she gave a two-hour class for the company on the history of paperback publishing that was incredible. When she finished people were in awe and didn't want her to leave. Wendy has been privy to that wisdom for the last 25 years. Beverly left such a great legacy, the team now is trying to carry on and pass that down that spirit to the newer team members. 

The legacy you want to leave in one word.

A difference