New cover for revised edition publishing August 2019
Sometimes publishers get things wrong.
And our initial publication of The Doughnut of Doom is an example of this.
But what’s important is that we not only recognised it, as soon as it was pointed out, but acted on it fast.
The issue of the treatment of allergies in children’s media came to wider attention – and, honestly, to ours for the first time – when the film of Peter Rabbit was released in February of last year. As our own title, The Doughnut of Doom, came under scrutiny, we started receiving feedback in March 2018. We care intensely about feedback, and so we immediately began to carefully consider what we should do in consultation with the author/illustrator. Within a week, we contacted customers in March to withdraw the title from sale from all key customers, and we haven’t sold a copy since the end of that month. Of course, there were already books in bookshops and libraries, and not all of them sent back books, but we did our best. We pulped every single copy of the book that was returned. We also cancelled a rights sale to the USA that was planned.
The author/illustrator was very happy to address the issues, and began work on a revised version of the book, changing the text and key elements of the art. The book also has a new cover to distinguish it from the original version. We publish the new version, which eliminates all references to allergies, in August 2019. In this new version the Doughtnut simply makes himself sick from eating too much: eating Nancy, the peanut butter sandwich, redoubtable reporter and our hero, is the final straw. We see him recovered from his greed and doing a fun run at the end of the book.
