On Monday this week I visited Newchurch Primary School in Isle of Wight to read our new Jack and Boo’s Wild Wood children’s picture book to a class of 7yos and then get them thinking about making and writing their own stories.

I had never read any of our books to anyone other than my own children – two of the harshest critics ever born – and small groups of children at various book signings. Reading to a class of children sitting on the carpet in front of me, their teacher and classroom assistant sitting behind them, was daunting, but I’m happy to say my nerves were soon quenched by the enthusiasm of youth. They got so involved as I turned the pages, stopping to ask questions about the wildlife illustrated in the book, and eagerly raising hands to win my attention to tell me the right – or wrong – answer.

We had a great discussion about going out into nature and spotting wildlife. I was heartened that most of the children could identify a bluebell and had tasted a wild blackberry. The questions came think and fast. The discussion led onto talking about the writing process and how writing is really all about rewriting, redrafting, until you are happy (some writers are never happy). The copy of Jack and Boo’s Wild Wood I read was a proof copy and had some mistakes, which I got the class to try and identify.Children love to discover adults get things wrong too!

After reading, I showed them how to fold paper into a mini book and on each panel I’d written some basic writing tips to get them started on a simple picture book story. I covered titles, begginings, middles and ends and I was also pleased they all knew about writing good book blurbs on the back cover.

I think I must have confused the children at one point when I told them not to do the title/cover page first, because most writers don’t come up with a title until they’ve written the book, as they don’t know what it’s going to be about yet. One little boy found this most annoying and asked that he must do the title first as he couldn’t start his story without it! It taught me that writing has no rules, just good and bad advice. In the end you have to find your own way.

There was much noise and folding and writing and drawing. Some of the children had immediate ideas about what to write, while others needed some ideas. I told them to use their own experiences and adventures to find something truly original. It must have worked, because, by the end of the session, all the children were deep in thought, writing.

I’d like to say thanks to the teachers and children at Newchurch school. I can report the future is in very safe hands judging by the intelligent children I met.

And if you want to see the finished books and have a go at making one yourself, then come along to Quay Arts, Newport IOW, at the Artists’ Book Fair on Saturday 28th May between 11am and 4pm. I’ll be signing copies of the “old style” Jack and Boo’s Bucket of Treasures, before the new cover version is published this summer – so that’ll make them even more valuable and rare one day. Here’s hoping…

By now the whole world will know we’ve won the children’s book category of the David St John Thomas Self publishing Award 2011, in collaboration with Writers’ News and Writing Magazine, in London on Wednesday 11th May. Did you get the memo? This is my account of the day, lessons learned, the future…

I travelled by Bongo, Catamaran and train to the fabled North Island alone from our secret base on the Isle of Wight. I passed the time by reading the next book for my fabled #wightbook twitter book group – a book I cannot speak of as I’d violate the first rule of the book club. Anyway, I digress. I got to London, wide-eyed, staring up at landmarks I’d seen on TV (OK, I’m milking it here – I did work in London for years) spotting Ian Lee and Paddy Ashdown on my walk to the venue for the awards. No doubt my entire journey past The London Eye, across Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, captured in the foregrounds of a million snapping tourists’ holiday photos.

And then the wait. I’d got there too early so I had my first coffee of the day in a boring chain coffee shop. A mistake, as little did I know that at the end of the day I’d pay for all the coffees I drank as it kept me awake half the night and did serious damage to my guts. And I read and started to daydream about winning and getting up to address a stadium-sized hall of thousands of publishing professionals and authors. The DSJT Awards couldn’t have been further from my fantasy, set in a conference hall laid out with chairs for around 100 people or so, with the judges sitting, like judges, behind a long desk on a raised platform. It wasn’t the BAFTAS but all jokes aside this was a well established event, started some 20 years ago by David St John Thomas Charitable Trust, who, along with charity work overseas, was created to encourage writers and self publishers. I remember seeing photos of previous winners years ago in Writers’ News and Writing Magazine, so I immediately recognised David, a tall well spoken and humorous man, now some 82 years young.

I sat nervously while they went through the awards, reading out highlights and a summaries of the various nominees’ major achievements, runners up and then winners announced in each category. And they got to the children’s award and I got really nervous. When they announced the runner-up I knew I’d won, my heart raced. I wiped my sweating hands on my trousers so I’d not disgust the judges when they shook my warm wet hand. They got to us, and it felt so strange other people talking about our book. The room erupted – there was some applause – and I got up to collect my award, a certificate and cheque for £250. Am I sounding ungrateful? No, an award is an award – the recognition that we’d written and published a book that well respected judges had chosen to win was incredible. I felt good.

We were also “highly commended” and seriously considered for the two other awards for Self Publisher of the Year, which went to a historical novel, and Winner of Winners, which went to an anthology produced by a writers’ group. Maybe next year we could scoop those two?

After photos were taken of all the winners together – a feat of endurance smiling I’d not accomplished since my own wedding photos – we had refreshments and a chance to network and sell a few books we’d all brought. It was interesting to note not many of the authors bought many books – my sales came from people who hadn’t self published, guests, etc. Just shows, networking with other writers and self publishers won’t necessarily boost your sales.

I had a chat to a few authors who, on the face of it, had done remarkably well selling their books, sometimes in their thousands, but they still seemed very negative – or should I say jaded? – about the whole self publishing process. They told me how difficult they had found it to get into bookshops, and even selling direct had not yielded the expected sales for them. I cannot say I felt the same as I’d not gone into self publishing with any great expectations of big sales – or even any – although there was a part of me, an arrogant, naive one, that felt I could compete with the big publishers and “do it better”.

With “some” experience behind us now, I have a more realistic view of what can be achieved with self publishing, and a better idea of how to take advantage of it. Firstly, it’s crazy to compete with other established publishing companies – learn from them for sure, but to compete in the same market, where even they are under pressure to sell books, is folly. In my view the benefits of being wholly independent and able to make all the decisions ourselves, the ability to react to the market – and our readers – quickly and target sales in areas that the main publishers don’t compete in is our advantage.

We hoped Jack and Boo’s adventure would appeal to children and families, but it wasn’t until we sold books and began to get genuine positive feedback from children and families telling us how much they’d enjoyed the book that we realised it really did appeal to others. Learning how children were inspired or families learned new things was our biggest reward in this whole process and has spurred us on to complete our next Jack and Boo adventure, out in the coming months.

We’d like to thank the David St John Thomas Charitable Trust for running these competitions, for choosing us as winners and encouraging other self publishers – you’ve certainly encouraged us! Importantly, a big thanks to everybody who has bought and reviewed our book and all the great friends and contacts who’ve supported us along the way. Winning this children’s award is just the start of even better beachy books to come.

They say, don’t judge a book by its cover, but everybody does. It’s usually the first thing you see and has a massive impact on influencing a person’s decision to pick up a book,  let alone buy it.

A year on from its publication, I thought it a good time to reflect on our first book’s cover: What reasons led us to choosing this cover, how this impacted sales, and lessons learned.

In order to get some objective comments, all be it unscientific and loosely qualitative,  I elicited feedback from our wonderful Twitter followers, made up of parents, teachers, writers and publishing professionals.

The book had gone through a few initial sizes and designs before we settled on the final format shown above. The cover was designed last. I’d love to say it was thought out in great detail, but it wasn’t. That’s not to say it didn’t go through many iterations and layouts, before arriving at the finished cover, but we didn’t have an overall strategy, apart from wanting to ensure it looked “professional”. We didn’t want the fact it was “self-published” to set it apart from picture book’s published by established publishing houses. And let’s face it, the design and cover of many self-published books is dreadful.

The fonts had been chosen  to give a “seaside” or “pirate” feel, and we wanted the “Jack & Boo’s” to suggest a brand, a continuation of sequels that we had planned. It does use 3 different fonts, which I know is a graphic design sin, however I felt they didn’t compete and all had their jobs to do, as a title, body text and brand font. I’d done some research on cover design in the book trade, knowing that it was de-rigour to keep unknown author names smaller, and to allow more space for the title and images. I guess, looking at it now, the Jack and Boo illustration was us trying to establish a brand for Beachy Books. It was the image we’d chosen in the logo for Beachy Books. My main reason for choosing this illustration for the cover was, I thought it summed up the essence of the book: two children treasure hunting on a beach. I admit the image is simple and almost anonymous, with detailed faces kept to a minimum. Some feedback has suggested they don’t even know what the two characters are doing though. In hindsight, we should have chosen a more interesting image, showing Jack & Boo’s faces.

I used simple graphic elements to break up the areas, making the title stand-out and suggesting a graphic representation of sand and blue sky. I’d tried using some of the photographic images inside, but for some reason we rejected them, in favour of keeping it very simple and graphic. In hindsight, I think we should have shown the photographic/illustrative mix on the cover because it’s a key original feature that makes our book look look different. Also I wish I’d chosen more exciting poses and chosen ones showing faces. I’m a bit of a fan of keeping it simple and graphic, hence the cover we ended up with.

Anyway, a year on, how has our cover effected sales of our book? Hmmm, this is tricky to quantify as not everybody that bought the book had to make a judgement through just the cover. We got many of our sales on-line, where customers could look inside the book on our website before buying. At book signings we got to chat to families and children, which helped sell copies. But of the copies in bookshops, such as Waterstone’s, we’ve not had as good sales as we hoped. Of course there are other contributing factors that influence people, such as the high cover price compared to competitive books ( something we are addressing on future books) and, in some outlets, the book hasn’t been positioned in a prime eye-line position, cover facing out.

I asked some Twitter followers what they thought of the cover to get some objectivity. Most liked it, although were not blown away. A surprising amount said it was “retro” or “70s” and reminded them of books from their childhood. This was never our intention. Ours is a picture book that just happens to have a boy and girl coloured using primary colours, that’s where the similarity ends. In any case, it shows people are also heavily influenced by the books they read as children, which the publishing industry has tapped into heavily over the past few years by releasing a succession retro children’s style books into the market.

In any case the cover did seem to resonate with adults, who ultimately have to decide to buy a book for a child, so I’m not sure that reason put people off. I have looked at it so many times I’m unsure of my judgement any more, but seeing the whole one piece cover, the more interesting illustrations, pirate and mermaid, are the ones used on the back cover, and perhaps would have worked better on the front cover.

Another big factor influencing book buyers is advertising, be it direct or more subliminal. Most book buyers have already made a decision about the book title (or type) of book they want, before entering the shop, as they’ve been exposed to adverts, reviews and word of mouth recommendations, or because they have already bought a book from a favourite author they’ll be more inclined to buy a sequel. Obviously 3 for 2 book deals and cheap best sellers in the window and front of shop help persuade a person to buy an unexpected book, along with the books they had already intended buying.

So, that said, what have we learned?

• Do more research into similar children’s picture book covers. What are the latest trends in cover design?
• Design to attract the target audience. In our case, initially parents, but must also capture a child’s imagination.
• Canvass some feedback from potential customers and professionals, before going to press.
• Get the technical typography, colours and graphic design bang on.
• Don’t print the price on the back – if you want to change the price, it’ll mean a new cover, costing more than a simple price change.
• Make the cover image or photography exciting. Easier said than done. Entice the reader to pick up the book, look at the book and take a peek inside.
• Taking all the above into account, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Learn from your mistakes, be proud of what you have achieved so far, then move on…

While sorting some things out I found the “original” copy of our book, then named The Bucket of Treasures, printed via Lulu as a test, back in November 2008. The format is 9 by 7 inches landscape and, looking back, I do like the original image used and the shadows, which also feature in the interior pages. It feels more intriguing, makes me want to see where Jack is walking too. I like the offset design, the way the title leads you into the image. Perhaps if we ever get famous, this early original could be worth something…or maybe not!?