Book Publishing Project

I am a graphics and new media teacher at a local college in Hitchin, Hertfordshire and my first year students – aged 16/17 have written their own children’s books with a moral and have illustrated them. They have also created a short promo video of their book.

Natasha Sanders

Three of the books look really professional and were created using Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. The video’s were created in Photoshop as frame animations and then exported into Premier Pro to create the video and to add sounds etc.

 

 

 

 

Thomas Lea

 

Jessica Hart

I now want to try and get their books published. Not an easy task as there are so many hidden costs involved.

We can try a few different ways of approaching this:

1. Find an agency who have backers who would be willing to pay for the book to be published and distributed. This would mean that the amount earned per book would be drastically reduced but it would also mean that there would be less to pay out up front such as ISBN numbers and less of a headache.
2. Create a website address through a portal such as www.GoDaddy.com (accessed on 19th February 2016 at 13:48) for around £13-15 per year. This can then be linked to a WordPress account. Blog about the project, showing the design stages through to completion on a daily basis. Add in key words, meta tags to make sure optimal search options are covered. Publish the link to your blog wherever you can on social media platforms. You can hope that someone sees the progress of your book and is interested enough to help get it published.
3. Contact an actual publisher after you have got an ISBN number assigned to your project. This costs around £75 for less than 10 projects. Make sure you go through a legitimate company based in the UK. I believe Nielsen is a reputable agency for this purpose: http://www.isbn.nielsenbook.co.uk/controller.php?page=121 (accessed on 19th February 2016 at 13:50). Whatever publisher you contact, they will normally ask for a short synopsis of the book to be sent. If they like the idea and storyline, they will ask you to send the manuscript to them. They may want many changes to be made. It is up to you to negotiate this: http://www.novum-publishing.co.uk/the-publisher/manuscript-submission.html (accessed on 19th February at 13:55).
4. I would strongly suggest that you contact as many publishers as you can in the first instance to see if your book has something that interests them. Do a bit of your own market research to find out if your storyline has the impact it needs. Ask family and friends to read it. You will soon find out if it has potential!

I will let you know how I get on with this project as I go along. I will try to post something on here each day to give you an update. I am very excited about this project as this could change my student’s lives and could lead to them being offered more work.

Update on 10th Feb 16: I was contacted by Pentian and they said they might be interested and would use a crowdfunding scheme to help publish the book. I’ve passed this information onto my students so that they can take control of what happens to their books. I’m not going to submit my book just yet as I still have to get the illustrations finished! There’s just no time…