With Christmas leftovers still in the fridge and my tuxedo hanging ready to dress me for a night of debauchery this New Year’s Eve 2011, I thought it time to write a quick post summing up the year for Beachy Books.

I have little recollection of what happened earlier in the year, and I’m assuming not much significant as the only blog posts this year start in May 2011. However behind the scenes much work was happening on figuring out what our next move would be: Is Beachy Books a one book wonder? What book should we publish next? How could we sell more of our first book?

Before we had time to think, our first children’s book, Jack and Boo’s Bucket of Treasures, won the Children’s category of the DSJT Writing Magazine Publishing Award. This really gave us a boost and we had some very supportive feedback and praise from our wonderful social network Twitter crowd, who have continued to grow and be brilliant throughout the year.

To celebrate the award, we republished a new cover (unfortunately it was too late to put “Award Winning” on the cover as we’d started the process before knowing we’d won). We received helpful feedback on our first book’s cover and also on the price from various people including book sellers and industry people. The feedback was noted and we created a fresh new look that would unify the design and work across future planned Jack and Boo sequels. Crucially, we dropped the cover price from £7.99 to a winning £5.99, which we felt was a better RRP to the end consumer, but allowed less room for trade discounts.

We published Jack and Boo’s Wild Wood (the difficult second book, as we made changes after getting constructive criticism from a professional – changes we think improved the book however!), an adventure inspired by our family love of wild woodland and celebrated with a fantastic foraging walk in the local woodland where some of the photos in the book were taken. I was invited into a local school to read the book, where I did a story and book making workshop with the kids and displayed their wonderful story books at the Quay Arts Book Fair. Oh and we met our wildlife hero, Chris Packham, who kindly wrote some inspiring words about the book, which we used on the back cover. We also got some great promo for the book in a competition in the Wildlife Trusts’ Wildlife Watch magazine.

2011 saw the first time I’d been kindly asked to write guest blog posts. Some of the highlights covered my most cherished childhood picture books, how I introduced my son to the joys of Fighting Fantasy books and a ramble on book categories. Thanks to all who asked and I look forward to future offers!

We didn’t want to wait long to get on with the next book, and besides I needed something to distract me from the slog of trying to get our books into bookshops and other retail outlets – no easy task! So, In October Jack and Boo’s Snowy Day was published, just in time to go on sale for Christmas. One of the highlights was getting a call from the manager of our local Waterstone’s telling us we’d sold them all on Christmas Eve and did we have any more? Unfortunately, we didn’t have any stock in at Beachy HQ due to all our other books getting sold at various events and to other shops – doh! Must order more stock next Christmas!

To finish the year I did a reading of Jack and Boo’s Snowy Day and some activities at a local school, which was scary but an incredible experience – one I’ll be hopefully repeating in the new year.

I wonder what 2012 will bring? In spite of the world being on the “brink” of financial ruin, the planet continuing to heat up and the prospect of wall-to-wall Olympic coverage in the media, Beachy Books is going to push things further and really make our mark. To whet your appetite we have the following new year resolutions:

1. Publish a new Jack and Boo book.
2. Publish a new fiction book for children that’s nothing to do with Jack and Boo (shock!).
3. Commence an exciting publishing project with a local primary school.
4. Jack and Boo wild walks for the 2012 Isle of Wight Walking Festival.
5. Start Project X (not even I know the exact details of this).
6. Save the planet.
7. Tweet!

Happy New Year to all our friends, family, Tweeps, supporters and fans! We love you!

Last week I visited Newchurch primary school to read our new winter children’s book called Jack and Boo’s Snowy Day. In fact, it was more than reading the book, it was a half-day marathon session of discussion, questions and winter activities with four classes from reception up to year 3. I’d only read the book in a school once before, so I was still very wet behind the ears. To add to my apprehension, the headteacher had also invited in parents along to sit with their children and listen in. Eeek!

I’d prepared loads of research material, read the book aloud a few times and planned things to do, plus I’d set beeping reminders on my phone so I could dash in time from one classroom to another. Fortunately my job was made easier by the headteacher who based me in one room and arranged for each year group to shuffle in throughout the morning.

My heart was pumping as the first class from year 3 walked in along with a few parents. I had wanted to use the electronic whiteboard to display a digital copy of my book, complete with turning pages. Unfortunately – or typically – the laptop took ages to do anything and I couldn’t control the pages directly on the whiteboard. As I waited for the technician to help me sort the laptop out, the class sat in embarrassing silence on the floor – it was unbearable, so I suddenly announced, “I’ll do it the old fashioned way!” and sat down and started to read from the book. Before long, the class was captivated (mildy interested) and I was away. Soon hands fired up as I turned pages and we got into a great discussion about winter wildlife.

I got so engrossed I hadn’t realised the electronic version was now working on the whiteboard behind me, so when I saw it I proceeded to read from the book, but this time with the benefit of the huge stadium version on the board – very useful to point out things in the book dramatically. There was soon a sea of eager hands waiting to get involved.

For years 2 and 3, I used the themes in the book – winter wildlife, hibernation, migration, snow – as the basis of a quiz, which really got the kids thinking. A child threw out a great fact about stoats that I didn’t know, which prompted me to remark: “That’ll teach me to stand up here pretending to be Chris Packham!”

I ended each reading and discussion with a “make” by showing the class how to make a plastic bottle birdfeeder and gave out instructions so that the children could do the same over the Christmas holidays.

Year 1 and reception were amazing fun too. They got so involved as I read the story and it was fascinating to hear the difference in questions they had. Sometimes a hand would fly up to answer a question, I’d look at them to answer, but they’d suddenly drop their hand and say, “I’ve forgotten now!” and giggle! More often than not, a child would ignore my question and tell me an anecdote about how they made a snowman once – brilliant! I found I got so involved in talking to the children I forgot I’d read a page of the book. A particular highlight was hearing the reception children call like two tawny owls, “t-wit” and “oo-oooo!” It took me ages to get them to stop calling. Great fun.

To finish, I had brought in some ice – not just any ice, Beachy Books Christmas Ice! This was an icecream tub filled with garden leaves, berries and sticks, a few shakes of glitter and then popped into the freezer over night. I was suddenly surrounded by a sea of hands all wanting to touch the ice. They went mad! One boy asked me, “Is it REAL ice?” It was even more impressive when I removed it from the tub and held it aloft for all to see the frozen layers while melting water dripped into a bucket on the floor. Before long we got into a mini science lesson discussing what was happening to the ice and how it felt to touch.

And so, before I knew it, the half day was over, and the last class skipped out chanting “Jack and Boo! Jack and Boo! Jack and Boo!” – I kid you not! I got some great complimentary feedback from the headteacher, teachers and parents and I even sold a few books to parents for Christmas surprises. Later in the day I had children greeting me as “Hello, Mr Bell!” which was very odd and a few saying they’d enjoyed it, so I guess I must have made an impact. I only hope the children learned as much as I did. To paraphrase Bruce Forsyth: “Keeeeeeeeeeeeep learning!”

Look out for Jack and Boo visiting more primary schools in the new year.