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| Pam Dix from the IBBY committee UK with the President of IBBY Korea, Su-Jung Kim and writer Sang-Hee Lee. |
I remember my first London Book Fair in 1998... I wandered aimlessly about wondering what on earth I was doing there. Everyone seemed to be rushing with purpose, while I trundled about feeling distinctly insignificant and redundant. It’s odd how the actual creators of books, can feel so inconsequential at a Book Fair. But over the years I've realised that most of the best encounters take place without planning, in the corridors between the stands, or in the numerous seminar sessions – even if it’s just to put a face to an editor you’ve never met, or meet one new person who will be a springboard to other projects, or just one new author or illustrator who has similar interests.
The most striking children’s book stand this year goes to Egmont. Not only did they have the best sweets in their jars and a balloon-floating Pooh bear... but alongside an earnest table discussion, I spotted a pram! So authors with babies do manage to get appointments!
The Artworks also made a child-friendly statement with open tables and chairs.
Some of the larger publishing house stands with their 'gate-keepers', protect their editors and rights people as well as the books from anyone who might want to browse a book. A few get around this this with digital posters of new books on their hoarding. Daughters of Time, the History Girls anthology showed up well on one of these massive digital screens. But there are others, where one is hard pressed to know they actually publish a thing called a book.
The most thought-provoking stand was Book Aid International, where I met Judith Henderson, the project manager. It was a shack built of bits of wood with tin-plate, a hand-painted library sign, empty shelves and a single locked cupboard showing how books are so precious and few in Africa, that they are literally locked up. Figuratively locked away too as so few people have access to books in Africa. Book Aid works in partnership with libraries in Africa providing new books and resources and training. They were the LBF's Charity of the Year and to mark their 60th anniversary they plan 60 new child friendly library spaces. The ABBA blog isn’t about fund-raising but if you are interested in donating visit:
www.bookaid.org/LBF.
The seminars and workshops were many and varied with accomplished speakers in their fields – Julia Eccleshare leading the panel on
What the judges are looking for, Sophie Hallam from Booktrust and Ben O'Donell speaking on C
hildren’s reading habits, Lynn Taylor from the Reading Agency facilitating a talk on Chatterbox Groups and Mike Jolley, Chris Wormell and Tom Cole on
The Spectrum of Experience – from first time picture book to lasting career. The Authors Hub was crowded and noisy and too small.
Malorie Blackman with her huge enthusiasm and energy, was Author of the Day on the final day.
Korea was the guest country of this year’s Fair and the Korea IBBY stand had a magnificent display of Award Winning Korean picture books. What struck me is they often dealt with children with difficulties and disabilities but because many were wordless, could easily be enjoyed not just by Korean children but children across all cultures. So here we are... an IBBY UK and KIBBY gathering on the last day of the Fair.
Many of the Korean books on display had won the Bologna Ragazzi Award, which is given to picture books prominent in technical expression and stories with great creativity, educational values and artistic design. The foreign Bologna Ragazzi books are often picked up by other publishers like the Tate.
The Lion in Paris translated from French,
being a good example of this.
Here are four picture books with Korean artwork to enjoy:
The images in
Last Night by Hyewon Yum which won the 2009 Bologna Raggazi Award, are full of playfulness and beautifully rendered in textured print with bold shapes and a striking way of showing light and shadow. It's a wordless picture book that tells of a grumpy child going out at night with her bedtime bear who has been transformed.
A day at the beach by Kim Su-yeon, is about a blind fisherman who has no one to help him in his advanced years. The text in its entirety only amounts to five lines, but the illustrations show how the old man leads a full life. It was one of the winning entries in the student category of the V&A Illustration Awards 2006.
Readers follow the blind man as he goes fishing with his dog. He is mending his nets when a seagull snatches a line out of his hands and the dog, chasing the seagull, suddenly morphs into the seagull. The dog-seagull returns the line to the old man. In the meantime the old man is reeling in a big white fish. The white fish swims off with the newly returned line and the old man, turning into a black fish, pursues it. The dog-seagull follows him under the sea, and turns into a large boulder when a shark threatens to gobble up the black fish. Then the boulder turns into the old man, and the black fish turns into the dog. Coming back to the surface, the old man and the dog go home with the big fish in their basket. The story finishes with the line, “
Tomorrow they will repeat their life of today.”
A runs across every page of the book suggesting that the old man, even though blind and isolated, is not abandoned by the world but is always connected to something – his dog, seagulls, fish, and by extension to nature itself. Powerful and imaginative.
The Story of Ppibi by Jin-Heon Song reflects the childhood memories of the author. Ppibi is an autistic child who comes to play in the forest, the neighborhood playground, but is shunned by other children. The narrator befriends Ppibi and the two boys explore the forest together. The forest is shown in fine pointillistic pencil marks, shadowy at times and at other times like a nebula of light dust, giving the sense of a cloud around the characters which suggests perhaps the autism.
Wave by Suzy Lee published in 2009 made the IBBY Silent books Lampedusa Project Honour List. A little girl visits the beach and overcomes her fear of the ocean. No words, just the sky and the sea, the seagulls and a girl – very fluid and immediate – done in only two colours. One can almost hear the waves and seagulls squawking and smell the sea. Simple and wonderful.
Hope you liked my post on my first day at the London Book Fair 2014. If you haven’t read it, then click First Day at the London Book Fair 2014 to read all about it.
Marketing Your Book
Day Two began with a workshop that had about 8 people sat round a table with a moderator. The topic of the workshop was selling and marketing your book internationally. While the workshop didn’t address the international aspect of marketing your book, there was still a lot of good stuff to take home.
Some of the words of wisdom shared included making sure your book cover sizzles. Don’t check your book sales every day, instead use that time to find bloggers who can promote your book. Everyone at the table was encouraged to share what was working for them.
With regard to social media, I learned we have to tweet about hot topics that are in the social consciousness. He gave the example about football and how you can win new followers by talking about a recent game. To this end, if you follow me on @davidchuka you’ll see me begin to share more about my football team and the challenges of parenting.
The moderator said that Twitter works but you just have to be committed to tweeting every day. At this juncture, I feel it’s necessary to interject that our primary focus as writers is to write so if you’ve not fulfilled your main calling, then don’t sweat the small stuff i.e. social media.
To improve your brand name across social media, make sure you’re using the same username/tag across your profiles. I think you’ll agree that I have a consistent brand name across my profiles apart from Pinterest.
Blog – http://www.davidchuka.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/Author.David.Chuka
Twitter – @davidchuka
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKbSJqQe5FQaJHvj-n5R4Gw
Pinterest – http://www.pinterest.com/boldtrends/
We were encouraged to try paid PR as they can get you into newspapers and also help with press releases.
Make sure to haggle on price if you want to go this route as there are always deals to be struck. Ideally before the deadline for advert submissions as they have last minute deals. I’ve never used this method before and would be interested to know if you’ve had any success with it.
Cross promoting helps so try to get to know other authors in your genre. I have to say that I have personally found Facebook groups and Twitter plus GoodReads to be a great place to find fellow authors in my niche. A great man once said that iron sharpens iron and when it comes into getting into an alliance of like-minded authors, the power that we can give each other is huge.
After the workshop, I went to another workshop that I have to admit was pretty boring. Not because of the content but more the delivery of the content. The subject had to do with legal matters. I’m glad I took the business card of the moderator as it’s something I know I’ll definitely need help with in the future.
Self-Publishing and Traditional Publishing in the same Bed
For the afternoon session, I went to possibly my best seminar of the day titled ‘Eating the Cake Too: The New Breed of Hybrid Authors have the Best of Both Worlds.’ This session was moderated by Diego Marano who is the head of Kobo in the UK and the special guest was Hugh Howey.
Hugh stressed that writing comes first and should reign supreme above everything else. He talked about how when he first began, his idea of success would be to sell his books to 5000 people over the course of his lifetime. Hugh was asked how he managed to balance all his responsibilities in addition to writing. While he wasn’t ungrateful for all the success that has come his way, I got the distinct impression he missed the old days when his life was purely centred on writing. He made a statement to the effect that we should write as much as we can now and hope our 10th book is the breakaway success before other commitments took us away from writing.
He shared how he believed we’re going back to how stories used to be told which involved a direct engagement between the storyteller and his audience who could give him instant feedback on what part of his story was working and which wasn’t. He gave the analogy of people in the music world who played live and used the audience feedback to gauge where they needed an improvement on their performance. With social media, we can begin to engage once again directly with our audience and involve them in the storytelling.
This reminded me of how the father of a student at a Primary school I did a reading at reached out to me on Twitter and said how his daughter liked my books and reading. I replied back and said it was a pleasure to read to her and her school friends. In light of Hugh’s advice, I should have taken this a step further and asked him if I could send him a copy of my next book or asked him which character his daughter liked the best. I believe the keyword here is Engagement.
Below is a short video I shot from the second row with Hugh talking about a deal he recently struck.
Book Marketing Tips from 7-Figure Indy Warriors
The final seminar which I attended was chaired by Indy trailblazers Bella Andre and Barbara Freethy. They were both once upon a time traditionally published but switched to Self-Publishing a few years ago. Bella recently signed a 7-figure print only deal with Harlequin MIRA.
Bella kicked it off by talking about branding. She showed us a slide of all her book covers and said being that she came from a traditionally published background where the author didn’t have a lot of input in the marketing of their books, she wanted to get it right with her covers when she switched. She said she wasn’t hung up on people knowing the title of her books but wanted to build the Bella Andre brand and that’s why they’re always so BIG on her covers.
A great brand should be instantly recognisable and consistent. She advised that we need to fulfil the promise we make to the reader with our book cover. So the images and title should be a reflection on what’s on the inside of the book. She said something she had noticed with a lot of fiction authors is that we only think about the title but the sub title is equally as important.
Think about the holes in the market. What holes/gaps are there in your market that you can exploit? She gave the example of writing under the pseudonym ‘Lucy Kevin’ to capture a segment of the contemporary romance market she felt was being served since the Bridget Jones books.
Readers love knowing that they have more books to look forward to so give it to them and make sure the story in your series is open-ended. People discover you with each new book so aim to write more books in your series. She personally aims to release a book every 2-4 months.
You can maximise the income from your published books by doing one of the following
- Converting them to audiobooks
- Having print books
- Film and TV
- Selling/licensing the foreign rights
- Translating them into foreign language
With regard to book translations, she advised to make sure that your translator has experience in translating books and you need to get a proof-reader to check what they’ve done. Your book could live or die on the strength of your translator. The major languages she said we should target are German, Portuguese (with the Brazilian market in mind), Spanish and Italian. You can convert your published books to audio by using the Amazon service acx.com which will not only upload it to Amazon but other retail channels as well.
Barbara drew our attention to the fact that we could draw attention to our latest published books by having a Facebook party.
You can also boost your posts on Facebook. She said something you could do is along with the creation of your Facebook page is to create a Facebook group. This is so fans of your books have a place to congregate and discuss your books. This way, the onus isn’t on you to keep the conversation going.
She mentioned something about the fact that she only had about two thousand plus fans on her Facebook page but had a friend who had more than twenty thousand but wasn’t selling much. Her conclusion from this is you can’t equate the success of an author to the amount of fans they had on Facebook.
Something she said that caught my attention and I’ve never tried is that you can update your status on GoodReads the way you could leave a post on Facebook. Use Ereadernews.com to advertise your book as you only pay for clicks. This is another channel I will be exploring. I’ve used them for free days but not for paid promos.
Another thing she said was to always think about keywords and have them in your description and author profile as this is a way people find you on Amazon and the other retail platforms.
Have a 5 year plan. I think this is very important as we sometimes tend to get discouraged if we don’t see sales or just a few sales when we click into our KDP account. Speaking of KDP accounts, she advised us not to check it too often as it could either make you depressed or over-excited.
Have your name big on the cover.
The perception is that if your name is big on the cover then you must be BIG. I have to say this was another aha moment and looking through Bella and Barbara’s Amazon author page and viewing all their book titles, I could see they really were practising what they preach. You might not be big at the moment but you have to Fake it, till you BECOME it!
We all need to think like publishers and play with price, covers, description etc. This reminds me of a one on one talk I had with Stephanie Bond on Day One and she said she brought it to the attention of a friend that one of her books wasn’t doing so well in the UK market. They went through a couple of things and her friend pointed out that she began the description to that book with the phrase ‘Welcome back to Lexington, Kentucky.’ They both agreed that Lexington might not be a place familiar to an international audience. As soon as she changed this, an hour later, she began seeing sales on this book. Amazing! This just goes to show that if you’re experiencing mediocre sales on a book you know should be doing better, then something can be done to boost sales.
If there’s one thing that all the Indy superstar writers were in consensus about and which Barbara said again, it was that we should all keep writing. Content is King. Bella said how at the start of each week she had to remind herself that it’s all about the book. Write more than one book. Spend more time writing than promoting.
Network with other authors and cross promote each other’s work. I’m all for this and if you need my help, simply shoot me an email via my Contact Us page.
Get to know retailers – how they work, their platforms, latest trends etc.
Hire professionals to do your cover, edit, proofread, write your description etc. write what you love and think BIG!
There was a big round of applause from the audience at the end of this seminar.
I’d really love to know your thoughts, comments, questions etc. regarding my two days at the London Book Fair. It really was a life changing experience and I hope to see you at London Book Fair 2015 which will be held at The Olympia from April 14 -16th. Hope to see you there!
I was at the London Book Fair this week and I have to tell you that it was a life changing experience.
I was there last year and it give me an insight into how the industry works. However, if I could describe my experience in word, it would be INSPIRED. A major part of this was due to the Self-publishing superstars who attended and not only gave their time by answering questions at various seminars and workshops but were also available at their stand to give away and sign free books, take pictures and answer more questions. There was a camaraderie amongst these authors, who all make quite juicy sums from their self-publishing business that I think we all need to emulate.
These Indy self-publishers included Stephanie Bond, Bella Andre, Lilliana Hart, Jacinda Wilder, Barbara Freethy and Hugh Howey. I actually had a photo opp with Hugh with our arms across each other like best buddies and then gues what? My phone‘s battery died. Anyways, Hugh was so gracious to sign my journal and I’m hopeful I’ll get that picture with him at some point in the future.
I attended most of the seminars and workshops with C.K. Omillin who is a fellow author from Belgium in my Facebook Group and it was a delight to share the experience with a friend. Ok, I hope you have your favourite beverage in hand and are all cozied up as I’m about to share the best bits from the London Book Fair 2014.
Book Discovery for Authors
On the panel for this seminar was Mark Coker who is the founder of Smashwords, Joanna Penn who is a UK author and international speaker and Andrew Rhomberg, the founder of Jellybooks.
Mark said something quite profound in that every book we write ought to take the reader to an emotionally satisfying extreme.
We were encouraged to connect with fellow authors as you never know which of your author friends could become a global mega star tomorrow. Joanna said something she does in all her books is to ask for people to join her mailing list at the end. If what you’ve written is good, the reader will be more willing to give you their name and email. Doing your keyword research is strongly related to book discovery. Joanna gave the example of how when she changed the title of a book on finding a new job to ‘Career Change,’ it started flying off the shelves.
Also have your social profile links at the end of your book so readers can connect with you. Andrew warned against always pitching your book on Twitter as it made you sound like a used car salesman. I have to admit that I see this a lot on Twitter and it is indeed a turn off.
Mark brought our attention to the pre-order feature which I see some authors using on Amazon. The beauty about the pre-order feature is that all the sales you make prior to the day your book is published are credited on that first day it’s published and that’s how and why some folks get into the New York times best seller list.
Everything you do is marketing. Marketing is sharing what you love with people who are interested. What this means is that people who follow you on Facebook or Twitter like you and are interested in what you’re up to, so sharing a bit about your life draws them closer into your brand and makes them more open to buy your stuff.
One thing I heard over and over again at the various seminars I attended by different authors and speakers is that we need to have one of our books FREE. This perma-free book serves to remove the barrier of entry, and allow people to try out your writing and then if they like it, they are more likely to buy your other paid books. I have to admit that I tried this half-heatedly and priced the first book in my Billy and Monster series at 99c and did get a few sales on different platforms. I was a bit discouraged by the amount of sales and took it off the other platforms and put it back on the Amazon KDP select program. Once my 3 month Select period is over, I’m taking it off and having it free on Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Amazon and any other distribution platform out there. I think this whole free business was one of the big takeaways from LBF for me.
I believe it was Joanna who advised us to join the alliance of Indy authors where you can discover what’s new and exchange ideas with fellow authors. We need to grow our email lists to facilitate book discoverability. Once you earn their trust, you can then ask for their email. Mark said there are 2 things you get from a sale and that is royalties and a reader. However, a reader has the potential to become a fan and a fan has the potential to become a super fan.
Some interesting news which was shared and I verified at the Amazon Kindle stand is that UK resident authors can now convert their books to audio using acx.com. This an Amazon service that allows you to convert your books into audio. I called this company sometime last year and they said that there were plans to cater to the UK market but it wasn’t ready. Well, it’s now ready and I’ll be converting some of my non-fiction titles using this service. The whole idea to have your book on different platforms and formats is to aid your book being discovered.
Series Fiction
In the afternoon on Tuesday I attended a seminar titled ‘The Power of Series Fiction‘ This seminar was chaired by John Dougherty who is a children’s book writer and the panellists were Annie Finnis (Deputy Fiction Director at Usborne) and Chris Snowden (the managing director at working partners). This seminar was catered more to children’s book authors but I believe authors from other genres can apply some of the wisdom shared.
A standalone story is a contained story with an obvious end while a series fiction is seen from the outset as continuous. You create a world you hope your readers will want to belong to. Your readers want to be part of that world. You need to publish books in your series in quick successions. It is good to have a self-contained story within a series. Your books (in the series) have to be fun and enjoyable. Read other books that are in a series in your local bookshop or library to see what’s working.
Who are your readers? If your core reader is 10, then make your protagonist 12. Publishers sometimes move in herds and want to replicate the last series that was successful. Sometimes (I’m really tempted to say most times), the next big hit does not come from copying yesterday’s hit but something that’s new or an innovation of the old. It’s good to bear in mind that publishers go for a series for a younger age group as it encourages them to read.
Q&A with authors who have sold more than 15 million books!
I think the beauty of coming to the London Book Fair or any industry gathering for that matter is that you get to see live and in the flesh some of your heroes who you may have heard about, read about or seen on the television.
The Q&A session on Tuesday afternoon in the Authors HQ was with Bella Andre (who has sold more than 3 million books), Lilliana Hart (who has hit the New York bestselling charts on multiple occasions), Jacinda Wilder (who makes like 6 figures every month) and Candice Hern (who has sold close to a million books).
What linked these authors together was the fact that they are Indy publishers. It was refreshing and inspiring to listen to their stories and how they’ve all gotten to where they are. Bella said how her best advance while she was with a traditional publisher was $33000. Today she makes 7 figures a year. Jacinda (who writes with her husband and has 5 children) talked about how their big breakthrough came when they published book number 28! Lilianna talked about how she started from ground zero and is today one of the most celebrated Indy authors on the planet. Candice talked about how she has stayed in her lane writing historical romance and today dominates that category on Amazon.
Someone asked about a breakdown of their income across the different retail channels and I would say the average breakdown from the four ladies was about 35-40% on Amazon and then Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, Smashwords and then other platforms.
It was really encouraging to know that authors who are not on the Amazon KDP program are still making a mint. I have to say here that you really have to find what works for you. I met Stephanie Bond who is also another superstar Indy author with 6 million books in circulation and she said how she’s kept most of her books on the Amazon KDP program as her monthly figures reveal the income she gets from borrows is equal to and sometimes exceeds paid purchases.
Yet again in this Q&A session, we were encouraged to give our books away for FREE. Consider what happens at a supermarket. You’re usually given a free sample to taste and invariably it leads the taster, if they like the stuff to become a buyer. Make the first book in your series free. Every time you publish a new book, you sell more books.
Bella stressed on how your cover art was a major part of your marketing and great attention and care and investment should be put into making this right. Know the keywords in your genre as that is what people use to find books. Include these keywords in your blurb and author profile.
Another major point that was mooted in the Q&A was to translate our books into foreign languages. Many foreign markets are starving for books in your genre, so you could very well be taking over those markets if you have your books translated.
The most important thing to remember is the Book. Everything is secondary’s to writing. By the way, guess who was running the mic for this session?… Hugh Howey! He ended the session by advising us to commit to writing 1-2 hours every day. Don’t miss a day.
After the Q&A session, I went to the Indy author booth and had a very good chat with Stephanie Bond. 
She writes Mystery thrillers and Romance. She shared with me how she gets the inspiration for her books, things you can do for research like speaking to the PR person at the local police station, watching certain TV programs for ideas on what to do and what not to do. I’ve always admired mystery writers but felt an absence of a law/criminal enforcement background would be a hindrance to writing a mystery. Stephanie assured me that that shouldn’t be a hindrance and that it all starts with a story. If you ever see a mystery thriller book with my named penned as the author, you know who sowed the seeds.
So that was it for Day One. I was truly inspired and couldn’t wait for Day 2. I’d be interested to know your thoughts or questions on my first day at the London Book Fair.
Click to read Day 2 ====> My London Book Fair 2014 Experience Day 2
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