Nosy Crow tag

Mega Mash-up: Aliens v Mad Scientists under the Ocean - some feedback

Posted by Kate on Jul 05, 2011

Two weeks ago, we published the third of Nikalas Catlow and Tim Wesson’s funny, clever and innovative new Mega Mash-up series of Draw-Your-Own-Adventure books, Mega Mash-up: Aliens v Mad Scientists under the Ocean.

An alien and a mad scientist eye one another suspiciously.

We always want to know what people think about our books and apps, whoever they are.

This time, we have had some terrific feedback from a friendly bookseller. Matt Black (pictured doodling above) is Children’s Bookseller at Waterstone’s High Street Birmingham. We know him from Twitter (where he rejoices in the name @marquiscarabas). Here’s what he says:

“Mega Mash-Up: Aliens v Mad Scientists Under The Ocean is by Nikalas Catlow and Tim Wesson and well, you when you add to the pictures! If you haven’t seen any of the previous books in this fab series, then you are in for a treat. The whole point of these great stories is to bring the reader in on the action: you get to make up parts of the narrative as the story progresses, creating and illustrating elements of the story yourself. Using pencils, pens and felt tips (with hints on how you might want to do so from the authors) you can fill in the gaps in the story and pictures and make it your own little adventure.

This makes a great alternative to the usual doodle books available, which don’t have stories. Here, the narrative adds so much more to the book, making interacting with it much more fun. Also the illustration is very loose and simple – very child-friendly – which, I think, helps to encourage children to draw and to use their own imagination.

I love the idea of aliens and mad scientists being put together in one book set under the ocean: just such a good idea! Why just doodle, when you can create?”

We really like to hear from booksellers, whose role in getting our books into the hands of readers is so important… but it’s also great to hear from readers – or their parents – themselves. Yesterday, we got an email from a mum who had taken the trouble to contact Nosy Crow via our website after Nikalas and Tim did an event at her child’s school. This is what she says:

“Hi I just wanted to send you guys a quick email to say thank you for doing a talk at my son’s school, Bellenden Primary School, last Friday. He was shy about talking to you after school when we bought a couple of your books, but then was full of excitement and enthusiasm telling me all about your talk to the children and about your drawings, and all weekend he has been drawing aliens, asteroids, smelly socks and sound effects like “ZAP!”: he is totally inspired and loves your website and your books. The kitchen table is covered with his drawings and I will keep them all.

It does make a difference when you talk in a school. It gets kids excited about reading and drawing as well as making for a bit of fun!”

The first books in the Mega Mash-up series have reprinted, and rights have been sold to the US, France, Germany, Korea and Israel so far. We publish the fourth book, Pirates v Ancient Egyptians in a Haunted Museum, in September, and three more next year.

Tagged with best books for 7 year-olds, best books for 7 year old boys, best books for boys, booksellers, bookselling, books for boys, bookshops, children's drawing, children and reading, illustrations, illustrators, mega-mash-up, nikalas catlow and tim wesson, twitter, waterstone

Why it was fine that Sainsbury's won The General or Chain Bookseller of the Year Award

Posted by Kate on Jun 08, 2011

Children’s and YA author Nicola Morgan has written a funny and interesting blog post about Sainsbury’s and the injustice of it winning the Martina Cole General or Chain Bookseller of the Year Award at the Bookseller Industry Awards this year.

This was, I’m pretty sure, the first time that the award had gone to a supermarket chain, and even in the course of the award event there was scorn being poured on the judging panel’s decision by various people on Twitter. The most cursory Googling reveals that the controversy continued the next day and beyond, and The Bookseller felt it had to justify the decision of the judging panel. But while I admire Nicola Morgan’s books and idealism, I have to disagree with her. I think Sainsbury’s, who managed to create a really big jump in book sales in a very challenging market, was a worthy winner of this particular award (and there are other awards that go to other, and other kinds of booksellers, in the same awards ceremony).

Don’t get me wrong. At Nosy Crow, we love all our retail customers and recognise and celebrate daily the role they play in the complicated and expensive business of getting physical copies of our books in front of parents and children. And we love an independent bookstore and a specialist bookselling chain at least as much as the next person.

However, it is undeniably impressive that Sainsbury’s achieved a significant increase in physical book sales predominantly from bricks-and-mortar shops at a time in which print sales are falling; one in every four books (and one in every five children’s books) is bought online in the UK; and ebook sales are growing rapidly and appearing to displace print sales.

Being a chain bookseller is exceptionally tough at the moment. Waterstones was, at the time the prize was awarded, for sale. Foyles (who won last year) and WHS (whose corporate goal is to be the nation’s most popular newsagent and stationer as well as bookshop, so isn’t quite as specialist as the other book retailers in this paragraph) are, of course, real contenders. Happily (very happily) for the book industry in the UK, Waterstones looks likely to be a powerful contender for the future as the acquisition of the chain progresses. Ottakars, Borders/Books Etc and British Bookshops and Stationers are no longer with us. Other book book specialist alternatives might have been Book Warehouse (who sell mainly but not exclusively remainder books) or Oxfam Bookshops (who sell mainly but not exclusively second-hand books), but I can’t imagine that Nicola Morgan would have celebrated either of those chains winning.

And the challenges to chain bookselling are not unique to the UK: Barnes & Noble is changing hands and Borders filed for bankruptcy in the US, and the Red Group (owners of Angus and Robertson and Borders) is in administration in Australia.

Just to remind ourselves of what the bookselling landscape is looking like at the moment (and the importance of supermarkets), here’s the graph of books purchased in the UK by source of purchase (with thanks to Books and Consumers):

This graph also points up the relative strength of Sainsbury’s bookselling performance relative to the performance of supermarkets in general between 2009 and 2010.

In this context, the growing role of Sainsbury in the UK bookselling market is an important one. The decision by Sainsbury – or any other supermarket – to back a book can entirely transform the financial fortunes of a book. At Nosy Crow, we were really delighted and excited when the small team of dedicated children’s book buyers at Sainsbury’s backed several of our first titles, including risky ones: a debut novel (Small Blue Thing) and a series that is an innovative mix of fiction and doodling from an author/illustrator team with a limited track-record (Mega Mash-up). We’ll make more money on these books and so will the authors: we committed to more Mega
Mash-ups on the basis of retailer response to the first titles and Sainsbury’s was part of that.

Yes, the discounts to supermarkets are deep, but the volumes are high. The advances paid to adult blockbuster authors in particular are entirely predicated on strong supermarket sales. As a very rough estimate, I’d say that children’s authors/illustrators are earning perhaps 30p on most books sold via Sainsbury’s, so a sale of 3,000 copies might represent £900 in royalty earnings – which has to be seen in the context of the ALCS’s finding that the median annual author wage is £4,000 (and less, I would think, for children’s authors). This compares with 45p per book if the same book were sold via an independent, so the same author would have to sell 2,000 through that channel to make the same £900.

Sainsbury’s doesn’t make any claims to be promoting literacy or increasing access to books on its website statement of its goals (though, for the record it sponsored Book Start at a point when the scheme was under threat before the government funded it). From my perspective, though, anything that increases access to books (and I am writing this in the context of the recent report that three in ten households don’t contain a book, and one in three London children doesn’t own a book) and that makes buying books as easy and as unintimidating as buying bread, is a good thing.

Of course, I’d be delighted if Sainsbury’s took up Nicola Morgan’s author-touring book bus idea. I doubt they will. Sainsbury’s is a business. It allocates shelf-space and prominence to books (and everything else) on the basis of how well they sell in a particular shop. It doesn’t owe publishers or authors a living: its purpose as a business is to maximise shareholder value. If it can do that by selling books as well as bacon, I for one think that’s great. And if giving Sainsbury a particular prize for bookselling makes other retailers for whom it’s relevant think about what they might do to earn the award next time around, so much the better.

Tagged with authors, bookseller industry awards, booksellers, bookselling, bookshops, mega-mash-up, sainsbury, sainsbury's, small blue thing

Kate's Australian trip

Posted by Kate on May 10, 2011

Well, that was fun. Tiring, of course, but fun.

I mean my trip to Australia last week, from which I am still recovering (thank you, British Airways economy class… though a total of 46 hours in the air out of 156 hours takes it out of you however you travel, probably).

The main event was the Allen and Unwin sales conference. It was great to spend time with the people at Allen and Unwin, not least because I wouldn’t have been able to pick any of them out of a line-up just six short months ago, and now we’re in touch almost every day. The picture above shows, from left to right, Kristy Rogerson (Children’s Product Asst); me (it’s an unflattering angle or an unflattering blouse – what can I say?!); Kate Justelius-Wright (Marketing Coordinator – Schools & Libraries); Liz Bray (Children’s Books Director); and Jyy-Wei Ip (Marketing Coordinator – Trade).

It was also good to see Robert Gorman, last seen after the London Book Fair, and who, as MD of Allen and Unwin, is head of the whole show:

Allen and Unwin starts to distribute Nosy Crow’s books this month, and some of them are already in Australian bookshops.

It was, as always when I travel abroad, interesting to look at differences (from my home territory in the UK) in the bookselling landscape and to reflect on how these impact on publishing.

The relative strength of the independent bookshop sector as a source of publishers’ sales is one thing that is striking about the Australian market, and the independent bookselling sector seems to be holding its own while chain booksellers in Australia are no more immune from the challenges of chain bookselling than other comparable operations in the US and the UK. Book Marketing Limited’s Books and the Consumer survey suggested that the UK had seen a reduction of the volume of books sold through independent bookshops to 5.4% of the UK book market by value and 15% of the market by volume (I know that’s an extraordinary disparity, but I have looked at the graphs carefully and done the sums more than once). I don’t know the comparable figures for Australia – do please tell me if you know by writing a comment – but I do know that, for example, Allen and Unwin is still producing point-of-sale display material and dumpbins in a way that UK publishers really don’t do any more… because, in our market, there aren’t enough customers able to take generic book display material to make it economically viable to produce it.

I went to some terrific independent book shops while I was in Australia, several of which had a skew towards children’s books. The first was The Children’s Bookshop and Capella Bookshop in Beecroft, a suburb of Sydney, which is run by the immensely energetic and likeable Paul Macdonald: a man as interested in talking about digital publishing and apps as he was in talking about the highly impressive list of UK authors and illustrators who have done events in the converted two bedroom flat above his shop – a group that included Jacqueline Wilson, Julia Donaldson and Anthony Browne.

Here’s Paul in the children’s section of his shop:

I dropped into The Lindfield Bookshop, in Lindfield, another Sydney suburb. I chatted to Scott Whitmont, who took time out from an Olivia Newton John dinner he was running that evening to find out a bit about Nosy Crow.

Here’s Scott in the children’s section of his shop:

I also got to meet Galina Marinov of Leading Edge, which works to amplify the marketing and buying power of Australia’s independent bookstores.

I visited other kinds of shops too (and Allen and Unwin had arranged a pretty impressive tour last time I was in Australia). I went to department stores like Myer and discount department stores like Big W. The discount department store is not something we have in the UK, and it’s interesting to see what books – UK and Australia – are in each of these different environments… and, of course, to try to picture Nosy Crow’s children’s books in them and to work out where they might fit best.

I went out to Scholastic Australia and to an extraordinary bit of Scholastic’s Australian business, Australian Standing Orders, which supplies copies of (mainly) Australian books every month to Australian school libraries. In the Scholastic Australia office in Sydney, there was a really impressive collection of framed John Winch envelopes (something that made me feel a bit squirmy about my world-class collection of Axel Scheffler envelopes, which are not so beautifully displayed):

Oh, and there were interviews with, among others, Susanne Gervay for Reading Time and for The Little Big Book Club.

In between, there were great conversations. I think my favourite was with Liz Bray about the challenges and rewards of her work with the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, which I found inspiring, humbling and illuminating – not bad for a car journey to a shopping mall in the suburbs of Sydney.

Of course, there were fun-‘n’-games too. Here’s Allen and Unwin’s dapper publishing legend, Paul Donovan, at a dinner (in a German restaurant) to celebrate the forthcoming publication of Australian Merridy Eastman’s gentle and funny memoir of her time spent as a German wife and mother in Munich after a whirlwind romance:

After a presentation at the Allen and Unwin sales conference, in which one rep requested either a video version of the session or a Kate Wilson/Nosy Crow Road Show, I felt I had peaked, and so consigned myself to the tender mercies of British Airways once again.

Tagged with allen & unwin, allen and unwin, australia, australian bookselling, australian publishing, booksellers, bookselling, bookshops, independent booksellers

What makes a good (book) buyer (from my perspective)?

Posted by Kate on Jan 28, 2011

Yesterday, as those of you who follow me on Twitter might know, I went to visit ELC/Mothercare and met Sophie Ellwood (centre in this picture) for the first time.

And I got to thinking, as Carrie Bradshaw used to say: what makes a good buyer?

Of course, what makes a good buyer of physical books from a retailer’s own perspective is that they buy what the retailer’s customers want or need to buy: the right number of the right books at the right price (so that the retailer can maximise sustainable profit).

We can’t, as publishers, entirely know how well buyers are doing on this measure (though I thought it sounded as if the ELC/Mothercare team was doing pretty well). For us – well, for me, anyway – while these things matter, other things matter too, expecially in the context of presenting new projects.

Here are some of them:

It’s great when a buyer is responsive. It’s a nerve-racking thing to present your books, and it’s encouraging when a buyer is clearly engaged, makes comments and asks questions.

It’s great when a buyer imparts useful information. Buyers are trying to buy what their customers want and need so it is helpful to understand from the buyer what they think their customers want and need. And it’s useful to have background information on how sales are going for your books specifically and for books in general and on any plans for books that the retailer might have.

It’s great when a buyer is decisive. I know from experience that it is tough to say “no” to someone you don’t know particularly well, but if something isn’t right for a retailer, I, for one, would rather know it isn’t. It saves time, and may stop a publisher making the wrong print decision or uninformed publishing decisions. It’s great to have reasons that are clear… though I’d be the first to acknowledge that responses to concepts and art is a very subjective thing and it’s sometimes hard to define why something doesn’t look quite right for your customers. If a buyer can articulate it, it’s good to know what is right, or not right, about a format, a cover, a concept, a story, artwork.

It’s great when a buyer is open. Sometimes buyers say “no” to things that they see at an early stage. As a supplier, you have to judge what things to let slide, and what things you should introduce again, to get a conversation going again. Some buyers are willing to reopen conversations, and some are less so.

It’s great when a buyer follows through. Of course, it’s all very well being impressive at the presentation. What ultimately matters is that the orders come through; that the book is available in the shop or shops and positioned where you agreed it would be; and that the customers buy it, confirming the buyer’s judgement in the first place.

Sophie scored really well on my personal scorecard for points one to four, which is what prompted me to write this. But because it’s the first time we’ve met, I can’t tell you about the last point, though she has a very good reputation for this too!

Sophie liked a lot of Nosy Crow’s Books. My fingers are now firmly crossed…

Tagged with booksellers, bookselling, bookshops

It's that time of year... when you present highlights to key accounts

Posted by Kate on Jan 07, 2011

Kate writes:

“I was off to Waterstones today, to show them material on our books from May to August. May is the first month in which we have more than one book or pair of books from the same series, so that felt like a bit of a breakthrough.

The photo is a glimpse of the inside of my case.

Some of the books, as the eagle-eyed among you will see, were continuations of series published between January and April of this year. Mega Mash-up: Mad Scientists and Aliens under the Ocean is the June follow up to February’s Mega Mash-up: Romans and Dinosaurs on Mars and Mega Mash-up: Robots and Gorillas in the Desert ; Perfectly Reflected is the sequel to Small Bue Thing ; and Bizzy Bear: Off We Go! (in which Bizzy Bear goes on holiday and seems to meet a very nice female koala) and Bizzy Bear: Let’s Get to Work! (in which Bizzy Bear works on a contruction site… presumably to finance his travels) are June sequels to March’s Bizzy Bear: Fun on the Farm and Bizzy Bear: Let’s Go and Play!.

However, there is much that’s new:

Lyn Gardner is a terrific children’s writer and a Guardian theatre critic, who has brought her skill, her passion and her knowledge together to create the Olivia books, which are classy-but-commercial Ballet Shoes meets Malory Towers for today’s 8+ girl reader. The first book in the series, Olivia’s First Term publishes in June.

Dinosaur Dig! is Penny Dale’s innovative combination of two things little boys (in particular) love: dinosaurs and diggers. These dinosaurs are (spoiler alert!) digging a swimming pool and making a lot of noise about it. The book was inspired by Penny’s construction vehicle-obsessed grandson, Zachary, to whom the book is dedicated. The book publishes in May.

The Noodle books by French illustrator Marion Billet are touch and feel books with a very attractive panda character whose life reflects the daily activities and excitements of most babies under the age of 18 months. Two books publish in May and two in August.

Where possible, we try to make sure that books with a summery themes, featuring holidays, or swimming, or beaches, which are, therefore, possible summer reading promotion contenders, are published in these months, so the ocean setting of the third Mega Mash-up, the beach holiday theme of Bizzy Bear: Off We Go! and of Noodle Loves the Beach, as well as the swimming pool finale of Dinosaur Dig! all make them books we think babies and children would be in the right frame of mind for as the weather gets warmer. Trudging through the rain, weaving round discarded and dessicated Christmas trees this morning, it was hard to believe we’d ever see summer again, but publishing is always about thinking ahead: full-colour books take months to get from the printer to the warehouse, and we are selling rights and doing highlights presentations up nine months, and even more, ahead of the books being available to readers.

The first presentation – to Waterstones – went very well. Lots more presentations to come…”

Tagged with bizzy bear, board books, booksellers, bookselling, books for babies, bookshops, dinosaur dig, lyn gardner, marion billet, mega-mash-up, nikalas catlow and tim wesson, noodle, olivia, penny dale, s c ransom, small blue thing, summer reading

Bath Bookshops

Posted by Kate on Aug 19, 2010

Two Nosy Crow directors, Kate and Adrian, found themselves in Bath this week – not a city they know well – with their children. And being Nosy Crows, they investigated the bookshops en famille. Book-browsing and book-buying in cities other than your own is always an interesting experience for anyone in the industry. While central Bath is a special, prosperous kind of place with lots of tourist money, so no more representative than the Metropolis, Kate’s UK-wide bookselling experience at Scholastic was a great corrective to the London-centric views and experience that she finds dominate publishing, so she particularly values non-London bookshop experiences.

First they went to Waterstones (great location on Milsom Street), which showed evidence of the New Localisation, with lots of Jane Austen-related stuff in the windows. There was also an impressive backlist “books you should have read” table. And it was cheeringly busy, too.

They bought My Family And Other Animals by Gerald Durrell and Second Form at Mallory Towers by Enid Blyton.

The older child said, “Waterstones had the largest range and was very intriguing to explore… but there was hardly any Agatha Christie.”

The younger child said, “S’all right.”

Then they went to Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights (pictured). Kate had met some Mr B’s people at the IPG/Independent Bookseller’s Forum event in May, and they were as nice on home turf as they were in London. It’s a really lovely shop, tempting you to buy stuff you really didn’t know you wanted. They bought Moonfleet by J Meade Falkner (a book they’d forgotten altogether – you see what we mean?), Third Year at Mallory Towers by Enid Blyton and Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill (a book they didn’t know existed – again, you see what we mean?). There were lots of expensive hardback Agatha Christies, but they didn’t buy them.

Adrian said, “Really interesting staff recommendations, with lots of interesting stuff face-out.”

Then they went to W H Smith – and that Bath W H Smith is a good ‘un, with a strong book range. They bought back-to-school stationery (so much cheaper than Paperchase), and Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie.

The older child’s favourite shop in Bath is Mr B’s Emporium.

The younger child’s favourite shop in Bath is Paperchase.

Adrian’s favourite shop in Bath is “the kitchen shop round the corner from Mr B’s Emporium"

Bath is lucky. Within a really short distance there are three very different book buying experiences – chain bookshop, independent bookshop, chain bookseller/newsagent/stationer – each of which is a really good example of its kind.

Tagged with booksellers, bookselling, bookshops

It's showtime! Selling books to the big retailers

Posted by Kate on Aug 05, 2010

It is that time of year. The tubes are hot and sticky, London is preternaturally quiet, you can get a lot of apricots for £1, and the key account buyers are seeing publishers to look at their January to April 2011 books, and work out what – if anything – they might want to do with them in terms of promotions.

This is necessarily an opaque business: the buyers have to see everyone before they decide what books make the grade, so you show them what you have and you then try to decode every little comment that they make.

This is Nosy Crow’s first season, and, to tell the truth, it’s been years and years since Kate’s done a key account presentation. All in all, it’s pretty nerve-racking.

Here, for your eyes only, is a glimpse inside The Suitcase that Kate’s trundling around. You’ll see a folder of New Title Information sheets (the top one’s for Small Blue Thing); some little brochures that we’ve had printed up; and laboriously hand-made dummies for Bizzy Bear: Fun on the Farm, Mega Mash-up: Romans v Dinosaurs on Mars, Mega Mash-up: Robots v Gorillas in the Desert, and (open) Pip and Posy: The Super Scooter. You’ll also see a rather fine Nosy Crow mug which is one of a few little presents that we give them, sort of like trying to tame tigers by throwing them small scraps. The presents all get wrapped individually in lime-green (the same colour as the border round this post) tissue paper. Honestly, it’s the most enormous faff getting the whole thing ready.

But, so far, with three down and many more to go, it’s been worth it. It’s another step towards our proper launch next year (Small Blue Thing publishes in January 2011 and is our first title), and the feedback, or at least such feedback as we’ve had, has been positive. In fact, we have our first order, which is a bit of an exciting moment.

Tagged with bizzy bear, bookshops, mega-mash-up, pip and posy, small blue thing

Axel exhibits at Daunt Books

Posted by Kate on May 26, 2010

Camilla, Adrian and Kate went to Axel Scheffler’s exhibition and sale of art at glorious independent book shop, Daunt Books, in Marylebone High Street (Axel signing, pictured).

Brilliant paper engineer, Nick Denchfield was there with illustrators Ant Parker and Helen Cowcher. Lots of old publishing friends were there including Ian Craig (ex Random House, now the wilds of Scotland), Alison Green (Alison Green Books, Scholastic), Lisa Edwards (Scholastic) and Louise Bolongaro (Penguin) together with journalists and literary agents and scouts.

It was, as always, a huge pleasure to see gruffalos, witches, ducks, rabbits and geese in all their original artwork glory.

A bunch of us went out for pizza afterwards – and Axel’s daughter, Adelie (two and a half) – joined us, and, frankly, was less tired than the rest of us by the end of the evening.

Today, Kate was interviewed by Anja Steig of Buchreport, Germany’s book industry magazine: it’s great to think that she chose Nosy Crow as one of the people she wanted to talk to while she was here: tomorrow, she’s interviewing Dominic Myers, MD of Waterstones.

Waterstones will be important to Nosy Crow when we start selling books next year, but here’s an interesting and not altogether cheering US book industry statistic reported by Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman) from BEA (Book Expo America) today: 7% of books published generate 87% of sales and 93% of all published books sell less than 1,000 copies each.

Tagged with axel scheffler, bookshops

One day down, two to go

Posted by Kate on Apr 19, 2010

Today was the first day of the London Book Fair.

Kate had expected to see tumbleweed rolling in the aisles, but in fact it wasn’t like that, at least for Nosy Crow. A lot of our meetings were with UK people – agents, retailers and others – and we had huge trouble keeping up with our schedule. We were constantly on the move from place to place, as we only have a share of a table on the IPG stand (all we could get when we tried to book just after our 22 February 2010 launch). Here (with apologies for another terrible photo) are Deb and Imogen on the stand.

We went to a couple of seminars this morning, of which the first, about creativity in relation to content for children in the digital world, was really good. Chaired by Chris Meade and with Naomi Alderman, Amanda Wood and Neal Hoskins, it was an intelligent look at different ways that children’s reading experience might be affected by the technological devices that are available.

The second, which was about how bricks bookshops might evolve in a digital era was either reassuring or scary, depending on how you look at it. Clever Jonathan Douglas asked trenchant questions of John Newman and Simon Mackay of Westfield’s Foyles, who were resoundingly chipper in the face of digital developments. Nosy Crow loves an independent bookshop, and really hopes that their focus on community, hand-selling, recommendation, connection to schools and children’s events is the way they’ll keep thriving into a future in which Mike Shatzkin estimates that 50% of books will be sold online in 2012 (in the US).

Kate tweeted both seminars (@nosycrow and #lbfdc and #lbfk – this last # is new, and could be used by anyone who wants to tweet about children’s books at the fair, she thought).

Tagged with bookshops, london book fair