The Bookseller.com

2nd December 2008

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Scholastic m.d. admits errors in age guidance row

02.09.08

The group managing director of Scholastic has admitted errors in how age guidance was introduced to children's books, reports the Guardian.

Speaking at last weekend's Children's Writers and Illustrators conference, Kate Wilson said that while guidance "isn't perfect...it is another ingredient added to the marketing mix that the majority of book buyers surveyed said they'd welcome". The Publisher's Association initiative for guidance printed on the back of children's titles prompted a row with authors such as Philip Pullman, Anne Fine and JK Rowling signing a petition in protest along with more than 800 other signatories.

"I would suggest – and I am speaking entirely as myself, rather than as the representative of anyone else or anybody here – that there were some regrettable errors in how publishers went about the introduction of age guidance," said Wilson. "I think most of them, if they had their time again, would do it differently and in greater consultation with authors."

Fine claimed that "people are prepared to burn their boats with their publishers over this". "They say they have never felt so bullied in their entire publishing lives," she said. "Everyone who has gone back with determination to the publisher has won the right not to have age banding."

The Guardian

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