I also want to help kids have a wider variety of great books to choose from, especially those that deal with world mythology, and for all kinds of young readers to see themselves reflected in the books that they read. I want to use my platform to help other writers get a wider audience. I am not doing this for money.įor me this is a way to give back for my success. The authors own their own intellectual property and negotiate contracts with Disney as they would with any publishing deal. *Suspicious Sideways Glance* So what’s in it for you?ĭisney is paying me a nominal fee to write an introduction for each book, help edit and promote it, etc., but that’s the limit of my monetary involvement. They are not extensions of Percy Jackson’s world, but I can safely say that if you like my books, you will probably love these. These are original stories generated by the authors – their intellectual property, told their way, with their characters and their sense of humor. This is not like using a ghost writer or ‘assistant writer’ to write my ideas. I am not writing the books and I don’t tell the authors what to write.

No! My job is to help edit the books where it seems appropriate, to offer advice and guidance where I can, and to promote the great books we publish. (*And when I use the term myth, I use it in its first and most basic sense: a traditional story about gods and heroes, not in its later, more secondary connotation as something false or made up.)Īre the Rick Riordan Presents connected to Percy Jackson’s world? Let them tell their own stories, and I would do whatever I could to help those books find a wide audience! Much better, I thought, to use my experience and my platform at Disney to put the spotlight on other great writers who are actually from those cultures and know the mythologies* better than I do.

Over the years, I’ve gotten many questions from my fans about whether I might write about various world mythologies, but in most cases I knew I wasn’t the best person to write those books. Our goal is to publish great middle grade authors from underrepresented cultures and backgrounds, to let them tell their own stories inspired by the mythology and folklore of their own heritage. In other words, they will probably be some type of middle grade adventure, with lots of humor and action, and probably draw on myth or folklore in some way. All these will be books that my editor Stephanie Lurie and I feel will appeal to kids who like my books. We aim to publish about four books a year. Rick Riordan Presents is one small branch of the Disney-Hyperion Publishing family. What is the ‘Rick Riordan Presents’ Imprint?

The Last Fallen Star by Graci Kim