Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Welch.
Hi Sarah, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I’m the cofounder of Playhouse Books, an independent children’s book publisher devoted to stories that invite curiosity, imagination, and deep emotional play. We believe books are a kind of playhouse children can enter, explore, and return to again and again, finding something new each time.
I actually came to children’s book publishing from the editing side—I’ve run Inkdrop Lit, a referral-based editorial practice, for ten years, working line-by-line with novelists and nonfiction authors. Becoming a parent shifted something in me. I loved editing, but I wanted to build something of my own, on my own terms. So when my co-author and co-founder, Dottie, came to me with the concept of a Hug Bank and the idea of turning it into a book, it was one of the easiest yesses I’ve ever said.
Not long into the process, we realized neither of us wanted this to be a one-off. We both had so many great ideas for children’s books, and we loved working together. That’s how Playhouse Books started. It’s not just a home for one book—it’s an imprint that we’re excited to grow into something really special over the coming years.
How to Fill Your Hug Bank is our debut title, and it’s been an incredible one to launch with. But we’re already developing our second book, and the long-term vision is for Playhouse to be an ongoing home for the kind of picture books we believe in: warm, emotionally honest, fun, and built with the same craft I’d bring to any client manuscript.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I mean, is it ever?
The hardest part of Playhouse Books hasn’t been the writing, it’s been everything after the writing. Building sales and outreach infrastructure from scratch—pitching bookstores, doing librarian outreach, setting up bulk sales for classrooms—is a completely different skill set than storytelling, and there’s no guarantee any of it pays off. It’s not easy to pour hours into that work with a toddler at home and no certainty about the return. The creative work—actually writing the book, shaping the emotional core of it, and watching the illustrator bring it all to life—is the part that feels alive and rewarding. The sales grind is just…a grind.
The good news is we’re not starting from zero anymore. Everything we learned launching Hug Bank—what actually moved the needle with librarians, which events were worth the drive, how to streamline a bulk-sales pitch—we’re applying directly to book two. We’ve got Google Doc after Google Doc of process notes and lessons learned, and that commitment to improvement is part of what makes me confident Playhouse is a real, sustainable operation and not a one-and-done project.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Dottie and I both bring a pretty specific vision to this work: We want our books to feel fun and whimsical and genuinely childlike—not “cute” in a way adults project onto kids—while never talking down to the kids reading them. Children pick up on condescension immediately, and they deserve better than that. So we hold both things at once: playfulness on the surface, and real respect and emotional honesty underneath. That respect also shows up in our commitment to inclusivity. We want every kid who opens one of our books to feel like it was made with them in mind, not just written at them.
With Hug Bank, that meant treating the emotional architecture of the book as carefully as I’d treat any client manuscript—every line earning its place—while keeping the tone light enough that a three-year-old wants to hear it again at bedtime. What I’m most proud of is that balance: Readers and reviewers have responded to how the book manages to be silly and tender at the same time, and that’s exactly the kind of book Playhouse wants to keep making. (As a bonus, I’ve had lots of parents tell me they can read it five or six nights in a row without getting tired of it! Is there any higher praise for a kids’ book?)
Since launch, we’ve done a Studio 512 TV segment, events at BookPeople and Birdhouse Books in Austin and Interabang in Dallas, and we’ve built out a librarian outreach campaign and classroom bulk-sales program to get the book into the hands of the kids and teachers who need it. What I’m most proud of is that Playhouse isn’t a vanity project—it’s a real, growing operation, and Hug Bank is just book one.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
As cliche as it sounds, books.
When I was a kid I’d read in bed long after I was supposed to be asleep. I didn’t have a flashlight, and my lamp was on the opposite side of the bedroom. I have crystal clear memories of hearing my parents coming down the hall and straight-up launching myself all the way across the room to turn out the light before they caught me. (My mom has since gently broken it to me that she was wise to it the entire time.)
I’ve always been a reader, and nurturing a new generation of readers with really high-quality books feels like one of the most rewarding things I could do.
Pricing:
- How to Fill Your Hug Bank, Hardcover: $22.95
- How to Fill Your Hug Bank, Paperback: $12.95
- School author visits: $400-$1000
Contact Info:
- Website: thehugbank.com / playhousebooks.com
- Instagram: @fillyourhugbank
- Other: https://inkdroplit.com
