skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Everyone in publishing in Australia knows how hard it is to garner any sort of review or publicity for children's fiction - especially if doesn't involve wizards or emo vampires. So you can only imagine how surprised and thrilled I was to get a phone call on Saturday morning to say there was a great review in the Daily Telegraph. It made my weekend.
When the call came on Sunday from another friend I simply thought that they too had seen the Saturday Telegraph, but no - there was another review in the Sun Herald. You could not ask for a better Sydney spread than to be in these two papers over one week.
A huge thank you must go to Emmeline, the publicist at Harper Collins who has somehow pulled off this impressive coup.
All I need now is to be banned from a primary school library and I'm set!
After the great news that The Trouble with Sauce was having a full reprint, I got another email on Monday saying Lab Rats in Space is getting a digital reprint. Another of the benefits of being part of the Harper Collins stable is that they are set up for digital reprints. They're only doing 300 copies, but that's the beauty of digital, they don't need to commit to a big print run and it means as long as people order my books they will be available. Apparently the colours on the cover can sometimes appear a bit different but apart from that it's indistinguishable from the regular print run.
It's great news that they've sold all the original print run in two years. For a children's book aimed at 8-12 year old boys that's not bad. I'm hoping this means they will let me revisit the second book in the series. I know the editor who read the first draft didn't like it it, but I suspect space comedies really aren't his thing anyway. There is lots to improve in the text and a few big things to change, but that's all part of the excitement for me as a writer and I would LOVE to see the full series of 3 Lab Rats books that I planned out there.
It would also mean I could have give a definite answer to all the readers who keep asking me for the second one. Belinda, the publisher said we should wait until there are some more sales figures for my first ABC/Harper Collins book before putting it forward, which makes sense. Still the word REPRINT can only help make the case. I suspect the downside to being part of the Harper Collins stable (and to be honest this will be the first one I've come across) will be they'll want to sure of higher sales before they put something out there.
The merry-go-round comes round again
And so with Trouble with Sauce out in stores, the merry-go-round comes round again and I'm back wondering how to best to make the case for my next book. Hopefully I won't get thrown off the HC merry-go-round which I suspect spins faster than the ABC. Reprint, reprint, reprint, Bruno, just keep at the mantra.
I was at a book launch last night (the first in long long time). It was for Don't Picture Me Naked by Michelle Bowden. Michelle is an expert in and course facilitator on public speaking and presenting and her book is great manual on those topics. The friend I was meeting there was running late to I was left to work the room on my own. It turned out that the room worked me instead. Full of Michelle's colleagues and friends I don't think I've ever been in such a dynamic crowd of people making excellent introductions and strong first impressions. Men boomed "Hi" in confident voices with warm smiles. Women listening intently with head bent to the side and wondered who else in the room I'd find 'useful'.
Despite years of stand up comedy, MCing vast crowds, presenting work to clients, talking to school children and generally loving public speaking I suddenly felt ill-prepared and sheepish on my opening spiel. What should be my 'impact line'? Should I talk about my fiction writing or my commercial work first? Talking about non revenue generating activities was not an option - although in hindsight if I had mentioned I'd noticed the shop on the street below was a wool shop and that I used to knit, perhaps that would have made a more lasting first impression.
My name tag simply had my name on it. Everyone else had a motion-orientated, active verb, leadership-suggesting business under their name. At the very least I should have had, as a few others did, Bruno Bouchet, Bruno Bouchet Consulting. Still my name tag was pre-printed and spelled correctly which is usually my minimum standard for comfort. I think it was everyone else that was thrown by the lack of organisation name. I was introduced to one person who immediately asked the introducer, 'Are you not going to context him?' My introducer announced that I was very capable of "contexting" myself. I panicked wondering what that might mean and then just said who I was and what I did. It must have worked, as a business card was asked for and offered. Success! I think.
The MC for the event was a man named Rowdy - although perhaps he should have been 'Rowdiest' because the only adjectives he ever used were superlatives - I wondered whether he'd set himself a personal parlour game, get through an entire speech without a comparative or simple adjective. Having said that he did the best possible job in revving the crowd for the author, who proved she could practice what she preached and gave a warm, personal, friendly and funny speech.
It was not your typical book launch doling out warm wine at the back of a bookshop. The people might have been highly energised, but the wine, supplied by Michelle's family's winery in Mudgee, was perfectly chilled and excellent.
A week ago or so I was wondering if anyone had actually read The Trouble with Sauce. Obviously someone has as I've just heard from the publishers that they are doing a reprint - already. Officially it was only launched last week, although it was in the shops before that. Kids books do have much smaller print runs that adult books but this is great news and very unexpected. Good grief, this one might actually earn out its advance!
A big thank you to all the Harper Collins reps who clearly did a great job selling it into the book shops!
A friend tipped me off that The Trouble with Sauce was featured in a window display in Better Read than Dead, the excellent independent bookshop in Newtown. I trundled down on the weekend and was delighted to see the book was front and centre of a display protesting Parallel Importing, quoting the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd’s ocker line, Fair Shake of the Sauce Bottle asking him to give Australian authors a fair go. For once it seems timing is on my side to release a ‘sauce-themed’ book! It’s relief to see your book on the shelves in a bookshop - it’s a delight to see it in a window - especially when your publisher didn’t pay for it and every other book in the window is certified best-seller. I’ve never been in such great company. So when I said in an early post everyone should run to the shops for the book, I now amend that to run to Better Read than Dead in Newtown!
The first time you read a new work out to an audience is always nerve-wracking. Reading work out is nearest a writer gets to immediate feedback. Faces are less able to come up with something polite to express. It's even more of a worry when you are reading to children as there is no artifice and no attempts to spare your feelings - just raw reaction. So it was with some trepidation that I read out the first chapter of The Trouble with Sauce to Years 5 and 6 of St Charles Primary school in Ryde yesterday.
It was a wet day, which, as any teacher will tell you, spells trouble in school. Prior to the reading the kids had been noisy. It wasn't that they were bored, but whenever I asked a question they answered it to each other rather than to me. To make it worse the teacher librarian kept jumping in to take control and make suggestions. I was seized with panic. Lab Rats is much more obvious in its appeal for reading, there's farting and wild adventure. Suddenly Trouble felt like it was a serious work with no fun. What had I done? Where were the laughs? I began to read and they began to listen. Past the first page and they were still listening. There's always a couple of fidgeters but by and large, the library full of about 100 kids were listening. There were titters and then gasps as the teacher walks into the trap in the classroon and ends up covered in food scraps. It worked. By lunchtime after I'd talked to Years 2,3 and 4, word came down to the library that there were 'loads' of students wanting to buy The Trouble with Sauce. Hurrah! Nobody had brought their money in so I am going back with the stock tomorrow for a sales and signing session. The pic is me with Year 2 who were very well behaved.
Technically it's not officially launched until mid Aug, but The Trouble with Sauce has hit the shelves. All up it's taken a year from me pitching the idea to ABC to the book actually being on the shelves. Looking back it seems like a long, long journey, but right now it seems like nothing - from conception to being on the shelves in less time than it takes to gestate an elephant.
I haven't actually seen it on a bookshelf yet but Dymocks online already have it on their website as do Readings bookshops in Melbourne. Dymocks is an advance for me as they didn't stock Lab Rats in Space. Not sure about Angus and Robertson, the other major Australian bookseller.
Physically the book looks great. The little egg head character that got axed from one of the versions of the cover made it to the back cover which I'm delighted about. The inside front pages are also lined like a school book and fun.
All up I'm very happy with it indeed.
I have about 8 school visits lined up over the next few weeks so I'll have to see how it goes down reading wise. When I've told schools about 'my next book' and mentioned the principals gives the students pills, the kids have gasped in shock - exactly as I'd want.
In the raging debate on parallel imports the arguments have all focused on big selling authors with overseas deals. The letters you read, the comments that are quoted are all from internationally published authors. For the lowly, such as myself with no overseas deals it’s still sad news. It means publishers have even less leeway to take a risk on lesser writers that aren’t guaranteed to hit the best sellers. It’s the writers who are simply relieved to still get published at all that will really lose out. The big names may make less money, but they’ll still be published.
Who will subsidise Australian writers?
It’s about transferring money from publishers and authors to large booksellers. Yes publishers made more money under the scheme but that meant they fostered local writers such as myself without any government subsidy. It was a very efficient way of supporting a local art form at no cost to non-readers. Now that unofficial sponsorship will go to Dymocks and Angus & Robertson instead. Has anyone heard their plans to foster Australian writers during this debate?
Anyone who thinks they are going to pass on all the savings on parallel imports to customers are fooling themselves. All the price comparisons between Dymocks current price and the Amazon price suggest the Amazon price will be available here. It won’t. Book chains are duty bound to charge the most they can. They have to and they will pass as little on to the reader as they can.
Commodity Pricing
If books were cartons of milk all this wouldn’t matter but books are more than semi-skimmed beverages. They’re not just products which readers “deserve” to get as cheaply as possible. My books are my children that I have sweated, cried, cursed, laughed and been filled with pride over. There’s always a point in the publishing process when your child becomes a commodity that must be sold. It’s part of the process you have to accept it.
However, this ruling says I was always fooling myself - Beauty of Truth, French Letters, Lab Rats, The Trouble with Sauce were never my lovely children, they were simply the milk I squirted out to be packaged and stacked on shelves.
Finally, after all these years I’ve been awarded the accolade of being studied in school. In advance of my visit in September, some students at John the Baptist Primary in Bonnyrigg are doing a novel study on Ta-Da! I’m thrilled. I’ve never been studied before. It’s schools schools schools for me over the next two months as Sauce gets released. I had an excellent visit to Cromer Public last week - the kids were great and very enthusiastic. Thanks to everyone there for making me so welcome. Well, almost everyone, the little girl who told me I looked older than on my website doesn’t get any thanks at all.
It was the blended family’s first test run, would we be the Brady Bunch or guests on Jerry Springer?
On Tuesday night I attended the drinks to celebrate the union of Harper Collins and ABC Books. Even the invitation characterised it as a marriage with a male and female hand. The event was in the Quay Grand, overlooking Sydney Harbour - immediately marking it as an important occasion worthy of pre-GFC excess. As an ABC author I was meant to sit on the bride’s side. On arriving I was greeted with an ‘Oh you’re Bruno Bouchet!’ - the publicist did a very convincing job of persuading me she knew who I was which immediately made me feel important.
‘Now who do you know in there?’ With a reflective glass wall between where we stood and the other guests, it was a hard question to answer.
Delivering the parcel
‘Belinda Bolliger!’ she answered for me, remember the ABC children’s publisher. I was handed over to an assistant, ‘Deliver him to Belinda!’
Duly delivered and issued with wine I found myself in an ABC children’s authors enclave. Every time I tried to speak to someone different, fresh deliveries of more ABC authors arrived for Belinda. Eventually I spoke to a non-author, but even she was from the ABC, running the shops. She got embarrassed on learning I was an author as she had no idea who I was. She recovered brilliantly by knowing my books. ‘Isn’t it funny, adult books are usually sold on the author but children’s are sold on the title?’ she said. She was right, even JK Rowling is sold on the title.
Seek out the marketers
I plunged off to find the most important people to impress - the Harper Collins marketing department and found Emmeline, the beautifully named publicist in charge of The Trouble with Sauce, along with her fellow publicists .This was much better - I was surrounded by the groom’s family. We were chatting pleasantly when the doors were closed from the outside. It was time for speeches and clearly no-one was to leave.
The Godfather moment
I wondered for a moment that a helicopter was about to appear outside the window and spray the room with bullets. That didn’t happen, instead the CEO of Harper Collins, Michael Moynahan spoke and did so really well. I was a bit pissed by this stage so I was ready to be seduced, but he was a great speaker that clearly loved publishing. Belinda had prepped me on this by saying ‘He’s wonderful, he actually loves books!’ - a sadly rare quality in a publishing CEO. Michael’s short and effective speech was followed by Mark Scott, Managing Director of ABC Board. Less inspiring, he span the right lines for the occasion but was also quick about it. Strangely the scion of the evil Murdoch empire spoke with greater non-commercial passion than the head of Australia’s most beloved public organisation.
Let the blending begin
After the speeches, the serious mingling started. Speeches are a wheat from the chaff moment at funcitons. People that are only there because they have to be, can leave with impunity. Those that actually want to be there, stay. I stayed, finding people who knew people I knew: sales managers, editors, marketing people. I even spoke to Michael the CEO until Mark Scott dragged him off for a heavy private discussion outside. It was happening, the two parties were talking, getting to know each other and becoming one extended family.
Grab the bag
As the room thinned out I decided it was time to leave, mainly because the goody bags for the authors might run out. I had been briefed by the publicists to secure a Little Ted bag, much better than the Jemima bag. Little Ted came with a Moleskin notebook, the perfect present for an author. However the most impressive thing in the bag was the Welcome to Harper Collins booklet for new authors. Sent to every author the first time they sign with Harper Collins it featured what happens in the whole publishing process: editing conventions; what mark up symbols to use; the design and layout of books. Miracle of miracles it even included a guide to reading royalty statements. Finally I might actually understand a royalty statement!
Two thumbs up
This is the first time I’ve ever received such a publication and it was a delight - a simple easy item that really made you feel welcome. It capped off an evening that could not have been better engineered to have me walking away thinking lovely things about Harper Collins. Of course, I reserve the right to curse, swear and bemoan the shameless treatment of authors further down the track, but so far so excellent. Consider me blended.
