Souvenir rush-publishes Brown academic's guide to kids after four-way auction

Souvenir Press is rush-publishing a New York Times bestseller childcare guide, Cribsheet, by Brown University professor Emily Oster following a four-publisher auction.

A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting from Birth to Preschool Cribsheet immediately entered the New York Times bestseller list and the Amazon US Top Ten on publication in the US earlier this year. Souvenir Press publisher Rebecca Gray bought UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada from Matilda Forbes Watson at WME after a four-way auction. The UK publication is scheduled for 30th May to tie-in with Oster visiting the UK. 

The synopsis reads: “With her previous book Expecting Better (Orion) Oster showed us—by digging into the data—that much of the conventional pregnancy wisdom was wrong. In Cribsheet, she now tackles an even greater challenge: decision-making in the early years of parenting.

“Armed with the data, Oster debunks myths [and] also shows parents how to think through freighted questions like if and how to go back to work, how to think about toddler discipline, and how to have a relationship and parent at the same time.” 

Oster is a professor of economics at Brown University in America, and an award-winning economist. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Esquire. 

“The author is a trained expert who can empower parents to make better, less fraught decisions and stay sane in the years before preschool,” Souvenir said. “In the words of Amy Schumer, she is ‘the non-judgmental girlfriend holding our hand and guiding us through pregnancy and motherhood. She has done the work to get us the hard facts in a soft, understandable way'.”

Gray said: “Emily Oster has many fans at Souvenir on the basis of her brilliant, transformative book Expecting Better. Now with Cribsheet, she is empowering parents to make informed decisions for their families, without judging ourselves or others."

Oster revealed that she hopes with Souvenir she can “bring some informed, relaxed, less-judgmental parenting to UK mums and babies”.

Profile Books took over operations of Souvenir Press following the death of its founder, Ernest Hecht, last year. In March this year Gray, formerly an associate publisher at Profile and Serpent’s Tail, was promoted to publisher of Souvenir Press to develop it into a “dynamic” lifestyle imprint.