| Status: | Active |
| Founder: | David Salariya |
| Headquarters: | Brighton |
| Distribution: | Orca Book Services (UK)[1] Sterling Publishing (US)[2] |
| Publications: | Books |
| Topics: | Children's non-fiction, fiction and baby books |
| Imprints: | Book House, Scribblers and Scribo |
| Url: | salariya.com |
The Salariya Book Company is an independent publishing house based in Brighton, United Kingdom, which publishes children’s non-fiction, fiction and baby books both domestically and internationally.[3] Salariya books are published in the UK through its Book House, Scribblers and Scribo imprints.
The Salariya Book Company was founded by David Salariya as a book-packaging company in 1989 in Brighton, England. In 2002, it started publishing under its imprint Book House, going on to launch the imprint Scribblers (designed to develop key learning skills for babies and pre-school children)[4] in 2007 and the children’s fiction imprint Scribo in 2009.
David Salariya was born in Dundee, Scotland in 1954. He attended Ancrum Road Primary School then Harris Academy, before studying illustration and printmaking at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee, specialising in book design in his postgraduate year.[5] He worked as a freelance illustrator and designer before founding The Salariya Book Company in 1989. He lives in Brighton with his wife Shirley and their son Jonathan.
Book series publishing by The Salariya Book Company include You Wouldn’t Want To Be (published as The Danger Zone in the UK), a series of more than 50 illustrated historical non-fiction titles told using a first-person narrative,[6] and Graffex, classic novels adapted into the graphic novel format.[7] In 2009, the company bought the rights to the popular French-Canadian fantasy fiction series Amos Daragon, an animation of which is being developed by Spectra Animation in Canada.[8]
In 2009, The Salariya Book Company was one of three publishers shortlisted for the Independent Publishers Guild's Children’s Publisher of the Year award.[9] In 2010, the Company went one better, beating Walker Books and Top That! to win the Children's Publisher of the Year award.[10]
Graffex is a series of books published in the UK by Book House and available in numerous languages worldwide. The series takes famous literary classics and retells them in a graphic novel format. Each title is an abridged version of the original book, and is designed to engage young readers through the use of simplified narratives and colourful visual aids.
Most of the titles are illustrated by Penko Gelev, although Li Sidong, Nick Spender and Romano Felmang have also contributed to the series. Titles in the series include:
A Very Peculiar History is a series of illustrated non-fiction books published in the United Kingdom by Salariya under the "Book House" name. The series is intended to interest adults and young people in history by compressing many facts and curiosities into 192 pages. The books are designed with multiple entry points (fact boxes, lists, recipes etc.) so they can be 'dipped into'. The emphasis is on highlighting little-known and bizarre stories and facts, while covering the known history of the subject and debunking popular urban myths.
The books are written by different authors, including Fiona Macdonald, Jim Pipe, David Arscott, Ian Graham and Jacqueline Morley.
Titles in the series include:
2013 will see the release of ebook editions of the "A Very Peculiar History" series.