Papadopoulos Publishing Launches UK Children’s Book Imprint

After more than 70 years of publishing books in Greece, the Greek publishing house Papadopoulos Publishing is launching an imprint this February in the U.K. called Faros Books. The new imprint will focus on children’ books.

A majority of the books currently in line to be published will be those translated from Greek into English by Allison Falkonakis, an English author living in Athens, Greece.

The exciting new venture came as the managing director of Papadopoulos Publishing, Ioannis Papadopoulos, saw that there was a ready market for Greek books in the English language abroad, according to thebookseller.com.

“The decision to become English-language publishers in the first place came after we realized that many of our Greek language picture books were being … published successfully in other languages, but too few among them in English,” Papadopoulos said.

“English-language book output is so huge that very seldom do publishers there seek to translate books (especially children’s’) from other languages. Thus we took the task upon ourselves!” he noted proudly.

Faros Books plans to publish two books in February and March, 2019, including Around the World in 80 Days in February and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in March. The original works were written by Jules Verne, with Greek translations by Antonis Papatheodoulou and illustrations by Iris Samartzil.

Next, Faros will publish two books on Greek myths by author Philippos Mandilaras and illustrated by Natalia Kapatsoulia. February will see the publication of Twelve Gods of Olympus, and Odysseus’s Journey will be released in March. Following these, the book Don’t be Silly – Wrong Leg, Billy! by Antonis Papatheodoulou, with illustrations by Petros Bouloubasis, will be published in April.

The initial goal of the publishing house is to release ten titles in the first year following the launch of Faros Books in the U.K. in February. Hopefully the firm will be able to publish 10-14 books during the following year. Faros Books has also set an ambitious long-term future goal of publishing 15-20 books for the year 2024.