Scholastic Launching New Transmedia Imprint With Ruckus Media Group

Posted on September 8, 2011

Scholastic announced that it has teamed up with Ruckus Media Group to launch a new children's transmedia imprint. Rucku is an independent digital publisher which creates interactive stories and learning games. Transmedia is the future: books can be sold across many platforms, including games, comics, films, ebooks and enhanced ebooks. Scholastic's release didn't mention comics or films, but did say that the new imprint, called Scholastic Ruckus, and will publish children's authors in all platforms, front print to ebooks.

The imprint already has more than a dozen projects in development. The first project will be released in 2012. The titles will be sold through Scolastic's school-based book clubs and book fairs channels and through retail and libraries. The properties will be managed worldwide by Scholastic, which is a change from the way rights for children's books used to be handled. The titles will be aimed at a broad range of readers: from infants to teens. Scholastic is also currently acquiring rights to out-of-print backlist titles to publish in print or in e-book formats to be distributed by Scholastic under the Ruckus imprint.

"Building on our success with multi-platform publishing, Scholastic is delighted to be working with Ruckus Media Group and Rick Richter in the rapidly growing area of children's transmedia properties," said Ellie Berger, President, Scholastic Trade Publishing. "Under the Ruckus imprint, we will expand the scope of our offerings to meet the rapidly growing demand for multi-platform properties that parents can trust and kids love."

Ruckus is clearly on trend with the way the publishing industry is moving. The digital world has made rights sales very tricky. Ruckus will simply buy worldwide rights to print and digital: it sounds like a package deal. It's unclear from the release whether film, games and comics rights are included.

It's a great name for a kids' imprint. What kid doesn't want to cause a ruckus?