It's not often that one gets to thank a printer in a public place, but here I have to acknowledge the great work of CPI Antony Rowe of Chippenham. They have been printing books for me for years, and this time (on an admittedly small book) they have turned around a book and gone through the whole production process (PDFs received to doorstep delivery) in a fortnight. On 20th Oct entries closed for the "children's book illustration" competition -- and at that time I had no illustrator and no printer (apart from a few quotes). By Monday 25th Oct I had decided which illustrator to use (Boz Groden), had adapted the illustrations for use in the book, and had completed the book design. At the same time my clever son Martin designed the cover on Photoshop (incorporating Boz's splendid artwork). I worked out a final price with CPI Antony Rowe, got an assurance that they could print and deliver quickly, and got the PDFs off to them. That was all sorted two weeks ago -- today I get delivery of 2,000 copies.
Ah -- the joys of being a small publisher!! It's actually a multi-faceted business, and doing everything in-house can be stressful but is, on the whole, very creative and rewarding. I can do in two weeks what the big publishers would probably take 18 months to do -- I am always staggered by their enormously long lead-times. Of course, they use those long lead times to embark on advance publicity in the book trade -- but that is for the most part half-hearted and ineffective, except in the case of the blockbusters which get the full works.
Now all that is needed is for kids and their parents and grandparents to like the book..... the launch is on schedule for next Saturday (13th Nov) in the National Park Information Centre in Newport Pembs.
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