Nosy Crow's Blog, page 195

Impressions from the first Chinese Children's Book Fair in Shanghai

You can taste the air in Shanghai as soon as you touch down in the airport – a little gritty, a little sour. But you’re kind of expecting it, by then, because you can’t see the city through the smog as you are landing.

First glimpse of Shanghai skyscrapers from the taxi

The trip into the western part of the city from Pudong Airport leaves you in no doubt that this is a city that is thriving economically: you whip past endless high-rise buildings. The taxi driver had a brisk manner and an iPhone, but no English. I had to pass the address of my hotel, written in Chinese, to him, with one of my four words of badly-pronounced Mandarin.

Very official looking double-stamped breakfast voucher for the hotel

I’d come to Shanghai for the first Chinese Children’s Book Fair: two days of business-to-business meetings with a couple of public days tacked on at the end. I’d been invited to speak at the digital conference they were holding as part of the fair.

Gloria Bailey from the Publishers Association was, as ever, the unflappable and impeccable organiser of everything, taking in hand even our last minute stand design: we were too late to be added to the UK Pavilion where publishers as varied as HarperCollins and Sweet Cherry Publishing had sections. But it all worked out well, as it turned out that the Nosy Crow stand was opposite our Chinese-language agent’s stand… and I really needed their support: very few of the people I met, particularly the people who were older than, say, 30, spoke enough English to sustain a book fair conversation, so they were invaluable as translators (you can see me with Yolanda Tang, rights assistant at the agency we use, above).

Nosy Crow’s stand at the Book Fair

The Chinese children’s book industry is thriving, bucking the trend for the rest of the Chinese book business: there was no growth in adult book sales, according to Mrs Zhou from Juvenile and Children’s Publishing House, who briefed us the day before the fair began, while children’s book sales had grown by over 10% in both 2011 and 2012. But while volumes are high, prices are low: Mrs Zhou estimated that the average retail price for a children’s book was between £2 and £3, but spoke of bestseller sales figures in millions of copies. Children’s picture books and non-fiction were particularly strong areas for growth, and areas in which, I felt, there was particular opportunity for UK publishers to sell rights. It looked to me as if a lot of the most successful children’s fiction was home-grown: inevitably, and rightly, Chinese children want to see their own culture and experiences, as well as their own language, reflected in their reading material. It seemed to me that there was particular lack of interest in older, edgier fiction.

This avoidance of gritty, grown-up issues, like much else that I encountered, may be because of elements of continued state involvement in various aspects of book publishing and book selling. It was interesting to see the split between older companies, with their origins, at least, in state ownership, and the newer, private companies. You could tell what kind of organisation you were dealing with just from their names: East China Normal University Press on the one hand, and Dandelion Children’s Book House on the other, for example. The state/private origin divide was also reflected in the style of the stands. The private houses were more flamboyant, and stuck less to the standard fair booth template: they’d spent more money.

Dandelion’s stand

I was fascinated to hear about evolving marketing work both state sponsored and private, with the appointment of reading promoters such as Zihan Mei and with the arrangement of author signing tours to schools – a huge challenge in a country as enormous as China. It was interesting, too, to see the development of recommendation and selling websites from Red Earth to dangdang.com as well as Amazon.cn.

I spent the first day and a half in standard, Frankfurt Book Fair-style thirty minute appointments, set up for me by our Chinese language agent. Our list is small and we’d sold Chinese language rights in various picture books already, some through our agent, and some, before we appointed our agent, directly, but there was real interest in many of our picture books (particularly picture books in series) and in younger fiction (again, particularly books in series). Ironically, there was less interest in those books that we invariably print in China: novelty books like board books with moving parts and pop up books. That’s not to say that children and publishers weren’t gripped by them. A five year-old, Wang Chuangqi, whose English name was Tina, went through every page of every novelty book we had on the stand, and a little boy gazed on as publishers took photographs of one of our Playbook pop up titles. But my experience was that Chinese publishers wanted to buy files and pay an advance and royalties, so the co-edition model that is so essential to novelty book publishing didn’t seem workable, at least for now. The prices just don’t work. It seems unlikely to me that our novelty books will sell to the country in which we print them.

Wang Chuangqi looking at Bizzy Bear

Publishers photographing – and a little boy looking at – Nosy Crow’s forthcoming Playbook title, Playbook Castle

The digital conference on the afternoon of the second day was interesting. I was one of five speakers, and the audience was a couple of hundred strong. The other four speakers were Chinese men, and it was noticeable that my presentation style was very different from theirs. Asked to speak about trends in children’s digital reading, I spoke about, and demonstrated what I thought were interesting innovations from other publishers and developers including Source Books, Tinybop, MeBooks and No Crusts as well as our own apps. I emphasised the importance of creativity and experimentation and working collaboratively. I spoke about the advantages of being small and nimble. By contrast, the other speakers focused exclusively on their own businesses, and spoke of hugely ambitious projects – personalised educational platforms, Manga-inspired transmedia projects with books, trading cards, digital games, TV and movies – with the emphasis on strategy and a vision of the future. It was strange, too, not to have the parallel experience – and instant feedback! – of Twitter.

Looking upriver from The Bund – on a “clear” mid-morning

It’s very positive to be working with reputable publishing houses who are keen to collaborate fairly and legitimately with foreign publishers. For many years (and I have been in publishing for quarter of a century), China was pretty much the “home of copyright piracy”. Of course, it remains hard to have insight into the business practices of companies from whom we are divided by so many miles as well as by culture and language, and that is why it is often helpful for us to have the mediation of an agency. But we have to trust the publishers with whom we deal: there’s no other way we can do business.

I spent less than 70 hours in China from Pudong landing to Pudong take-off, so I can’t begin to pretend any level of expertise! But our Chinese-language agents said that they were pleasantly surprised by the turn-out at the fair, both Chinese publishers and international publishers.

China isn’t, at this stage, one of our most lucrative markets: we make more selling to other countries, but every rights deal is welcome. We have received, and accepted, one offer since the fair already. A single deal isn’t enough to justify the cost in money and time of going to Shanghai, but depending on the overall results, I think that we’d go again.

Impressions from the first Chinese Chldren's Book Fair in Shanghai

You can taste the air in Shanghai as soon as you touch down in the airport – a little gritty, a little sour. But you’re kind of expecting it, by then, because you can’t see the city through the smog as you are landing.

First glimpse of Shanghai skyscrapers from the taxi

The trip into the western part of the city from Pudong Airport leaves you in no doubt that this is a city that is thriving economically: you whip past endless high-rise buildings. The taxi driver had a brisk manner and an iPhone, but no English. I had to pass the address of my hotel, written in Chinese, to him, with one of my four words of badly-pronounced Mandarin.

Very official looking double-stamped breakfast voucher for the hotel

I’d come to Shanghai for the first Chinese Children’s Book Fair: two days of business-to-business meetings with a couple of public days tacked on at the end. I’d been invited to speak at the digital conference they were holding as part of the fair.

Gloria Bailey from the Publishers Association was, as ever, the unflappable and impeccable organiser of everything, taking in hand even our last minute stand design: we were too late to be added to the UK Pavilion where publishers as varied as HarperCollins and Sweet Cherry Publishing had sections. But it all worked out well, as it turned out that the Nosy Crow stand was opposite our Chinese-language agent’s stand… and I really needed their support: very few of the people I met, particularly the people who were older than, say, 30, spoke enough English to sustain a book fair conversation, so they were invaluable as translators (you can see me with Yolanda above).

Nosy Crow’s stand

The Chinese children’s book industry is thriving, bucking the trend for the rest of the Chinese book business: there was no growth in adult book sales, according to Mrs Zhou from Juvenile and Children’s Publishing House, who briefed us the day before the fair began. Volumes are high, and prices are low: Mrs Zhou estimated that the average retail price for a children’s book was between two and three pounds, but spoke of bestseller sales figures in millions of copies. Children’s picture books and non-fiction were particularly strong areas for growth, and areas in which, I felt, there was particular opportunity for UK publishers to sell rights. It looked to me as if a lot of the most successful children’s fiction was home-grown, and I there was particular lack of interest in older, edgier fiction. This, like much else that I encountered, may be because of elements of continued state involvement in various aspects of book publishing and book selling. It was interesting to see the split between older companies, with their origins, at least, in state ownership, and the newer, private companies. You could tell what kind of organisation you were dealing with just from their names: East China Normal University Press on the one hand, and Dandelion Children’s Book House on the other, for example. The state/private origin divide was also reflected in the style of the stands. The private houses were more flamboyant, and stuck less to the standard fair booth template: they’d spent more money.

Dandelion’s stand

I spent the first day and a half in standard, Frankfurt Book Fair-style thirty minute appointments, set up for me by our Chinese language agent. We’d sold Chinese language rights in various picture books already, and our list is small, but there was real interest in many of our picture books (particularly picture books in series) and in younger fiction (again, particularly books in series). Ironically, there was less interest in those books that we invariably print in China: novelty books like board books with moving parts and pop up books. That’s not to say that children and publishers weren’t gripped by them. A five year-old, Wang Chuangqi, whose English name was Tina, went through every page of every novelty book we had on the stand, and a little boy gazed on as publishers took photographs of one of our Playbook pop up titles. But my experience was that Chinese publishers wanted to buy files and pay an advance and royalties, so the co-edition model that is so essential to novelty book publishing didn’t seem workable, at least for now. The prices just don’t work. It seems unlikely to me that our novelty books will sell to the country in which we print them.

Wang Chuangqui looking at Bizzy Bear

Publishers photographing – and a little boy looking at – Nosy Crow’s forthcoming Playbook title, Playbook Castle

The digital conference on the afternoon of the second day was interesting. I was one of five speakers, and the audience was a couple of hundred strong. The other four speakers were Chinese men, and it was noticeable that my presentation style was very different from theirs. Asked to speak about trends in children’s digital reading, I spoke about, and demonstrated what I thought were interesting innovations from other publishers and developers including Source Books, Tinybop, MeBooks and No Crusts as well as our own apps. I emphasised the importance of creativity and experimentation and working collaboratively. I spoke about the advantages of being small and nimble. By contrast, the other speakers focused exclusively on their own businesses, and spoke of hugely ambitious projects – personalised educational platforms, Manga-inspired transmedia projects with books, trading cards, digital games, TV and movies – with the emphasis on strategy and a vision of the future. It was strange, too, not to have the parallel experience – and instant feedback! – of Twitter.

Looking upriver from The Bund – on a “clear” mid-morning

I spent less than 70 hours in China from Pudong landing to Pudong take-off, so I can’t begin to pretend any level of expertise! But our Chinese-language agents said that they were pleasantly surprised by the turn-out at the fair, both Chinese publishers and international publishers.

I think, depending on the results of the follow-up from this year, that we’d go again.

Help the Philippines and win original artwork by Axel Scheffler

Last week we wrote about the Authors for the Philippines auction taking place to raise money for the Typhoon Haiyan Red Cross Appeal. And since then, some amazing new lots have gone online – including original artwork by Axel Scheffler.

You can bid for this fantastic, unique, signed Pip and Posy illustration (click to enlarge):

Bid for this artwork.

And Axel is also auctioning this incredible signed and dated illustration of characters from The Grunts (click to enlarge):

Bid for this artwork.

And there are some amazing lots on offer from other Nosy Crow authors and illustrators, too:

Win a signed set of the Small Blue Thing trilogy by S.C. Ransom.

Win a personal dedication in the eleventh Rescue Princesses book by Paula Harrison.

Win a signed A3 print and personalised hardback copy of Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam from illustrator Steven Lenton.

To win any of these fantastic pieces, all that you have to do is leave a comment underneath that lot on the Authors for the Philippines website with your bid amount – if you’re the winner, you’ll need to donate that sum directly to the Red Cross Appeal and email proof of your donation to the Authors for the Philippines organisers. Here’s a full set of instructions.

The auctions close on Wednesday – so dig deep, support a truly worthy cause, and good luck!

We're publishing the book of the 2013 John Lewis Christmas Advert: The Bear Who Had Never Seen Christmas

When the John Lewis Christmas advert aired on Saturday 9 November, I, like pretty much everyone else, felt very lumpy-throaty… but the other thing I felt was relieved.

I felt relieved because, this year, we were so much further ahead than we’d been the previous year. In 2012, we’d seen the 2012 John Lewis Christmas advert, The Journey, on YouTube on Friday 9 November. We’d been pushed there by the Twitter buzz that was already building. Then I’d felt, on the morning of Saturday 10 November, that we could make a book of it… a book that we then wrote and designed that weekend. We pitched the book, The Snowman’s Journey, and got our order from John Lewis the following week. We delivered books to John Lewis in early December. You can read the story here. By contrast, this year I knew that we’d just seen and approved some pretty splendid-looking folded and gathered sheets for The Bear Who Had Never Seen Christmas, our book based on the John Lewis’s 2013 Christmas advert, from the print run that was, at that moment, on press in Italy.

And I felt relieved because, this year, working with John Lewis’s amazingly creative advertising agency, adam&eveDDB we’d had access to some pretty spectacular, specially commissioned book-friendly artwork, rather than having to use stills from the ad itself as we had to do in 2012. Having seen the folded and gathered sheets, I knew how superb the art looked combined with a text written by Louise and me on pages designed by Steph, We’d had a proper choice of paper stock too, rather than having to go for the paper that was available at such short notice. Altogether, this was a book that I knew would look great. Here’s a look inside:

The Bear Who Had Never Seen Christmas is a hardback, priced at £7.99, and it will be sold exclusively by John Lewis from 18 November 2013, with John Lewis donating £1.20 from each sale to Save The Children. You can buy it online here.

This year – I’d like to think inspired by our successful translation of last year’s ad into a book! – the book’s not the only thing based on the characters and the story that lovers of the advert can buy from John Lewis.

This year’s advert has been viewed 6.3 million times – and counting – on YouTube. Our insight into the making of the advert left us astonished at the investment of time and energy into getting every detail right. You can see behind the scenes here

Craig Inglis, John Lewis’s Head of Marketing, told us, “It’s great to be working with Nosy Crow again on a new Christmas book after their hugely creative and quick work last year. Once again, the John Lewis Christmas advert seems to have captured the imagination of a wide audience so it’s great that children can now enjoy the story in such a magical and beautiful book.”

We also heard that there had been a story-time reading in the John Lewis children’s product buying department at their head office yesterday… and I’ll be being an author again this year at storytelling events in Peter Jones on 23 and 24 November.

John Lewis has, once again, been a complete joy to work with: responsive, supportive, respectful of our areas of expertise… and delighted with the lovely book we’ve made for them.

Authors for the Philippines

Typhoon Haiyan reached the Philippines on Friday and caused catastrophic damage. It is the strongest storm ever to make landfall, hitting an area where thousands of people are already homeless after an earthquake in mid-October. The death toll has reached 2,300, with a further half a million people displaced, and left without food or clean water, shelter, or communication.

And to raise money for the Red Cross Appeal, some incredible authors, illustrators and others have put some great book-related prizes up for auction – Authors for the Philippines.

There are a fantastic selection of lots on offer, including a signed copy of You’re a Bad Man, Mr Gum! by Andy Stanton (with a hand-written letter), a signed first edition of The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell, a signed (and doodled-in) copy of Oliver and the Seawigs by Philip Reeve and Sarah Mcintyre, an original piece of Claude and Sir Bobblysock artwork by Alex T. Smith, and even the chance to name a character in .

To place a bid, all you need to do is leave the amount you’d like to pay as a comment underneath each lot, and if you win, donate that sum to directly to the Red Cross and send the confirmation to Authors for the Philippines. The auctions are open now (with more lots still being added) and close on November 20 – you can see the full list of available items on offer here. So dig deep, find something that appeals to you, and help support this incredibly worthwhile cause.

Download our latest app for free!

Today we’re launching a FANTASTIC app offer. For 48 hours (and for the first time since its release), Axel Scheffler’s Flip Flap Farm will be available for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch for free!

You can download this fantastic rhyming app, featuring STUNNING artwork from Pip and Posy and The Gruffalo illustrator Axel Scheffler, for free from now until Friday.

Download it from the App Store here.

Combining rich reading, audio and illustration content into a single activity, Axel Scheffler’s Flip Flap Farm is a deceptively simple and brilliant idea that will keep children playing and reading. Swipe any part of the screen to create 121 different combinations of animal halves, rhymes and silly, hybrid animal names – all read aloud and set to farmyard music.

If you download the app, we’d really love it if you’d consider leaving a review on the App Store – it only takes a moment and really makes a difference! And if you’d like to stay up-to-date with all of our new apps and offers, you can sign up to our apps mailing list here.

And if you like the app, you’ll love the book! Axel Scheffler’s Flip Flap Farm is also available as a beautiful spiral-bound, split-page board book – you can order it online here.

Download Axel Scheffler’s Flip Flap Farm for free from the App Store.

Share this giveaway on Twitter.

Please note: if you’re using a new iPad Air or iPad Mini Retina, you will likely experience some difficulty in using Axel Scheffler’s Flip Flap Farm, as the new device has produced a bug related to the screen resolution – we’ve issued an update which fixes this, and new versions of all of our apps will be available on the App Store soon.

In space, no one can hear you squeak

If you read yesterday’s blogpost, you’ll know we’re giving away some great prizes to celebrate the recent successes of Weasels, the hilarious picture book debut by Elys Dolan.

But the celebrations don’t end with Weasels mugs! Today, we’re sharing an early look at Elys’ next book – the brilliant, laugh-out-loud funny… Nuts in Space.

An elite crew of furry animals have found the Lost Nuts of Legend, a mythical snack rumoured to give the bearer unimaginable blessings such as teeth that never need brushing, rooms that never need cleaning and underwear that never needs changing. Now all they have to do is go home, but everyone is starving, the Star Nav is broken, and it was a REALLY bad idea to stop at the Death Banana. Will the crew ever find their way home? And, most importantly, will they get there before someone EATS the Lost Nuts of Legend?

Full of humour and action-packed pages, this is a truly STELLAR story. Here’s the very first look inside the book:

Nuts in Space will be published in April and you can pre-order it online here.

Subscribe to our books newsletter and win a Weasels mug!

It’s been a triumphant couple of weeks for Weasels, the hilarious picture book debut by Elys Dolan – the book has been shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize and nominated for the Greenaway Medal. And to celebrate the its success, we’re giving away some great Weasels mugs!

As the Weasels themselves know, no plan for world domination will succeed without adequate caffeine supplies (just don’t make the same mistake that they do by ordering a frothuccino…) – and with one of these very stylish objects you’ll be perfectly placed to enact any megalomaniacal aspirations.

Here’s the mug in all its musteline glory (click the arrows for a full 360-degree-view):

And here’s a look inside the book:



Order Weasels online.

In order to be in with a chance of winning a mug, all you need to do is subscribe to our books newsletter and leave a comment underneath this post, with the name you’ve subscribed under.

The competition will close on Wednesday, and you must have a UK postal address to enter. Good luck!

Nosy Crow is a runner-up for iLounge's App Developer of the Year Award!

A little while ago we asked for your help in voting for us as iLounge’s App Developer of the Year.

The results of the awards have just been announced, and we’re absolutely delighted to be named as a runner-up! PARTICULARLY as the overall winner in the App Developer of the Year category is… Google. And it’s hard to feel too bad about losing to Google. Out of a shortlist of twelve nominated developers, there were two runners-up named: Facebook, and Nosy Crow. So we feel we’re in pretty good company!

And as icing-on-the-cake, Little Red Riding Hood was also named runner-up for the Children’s App of the Year Award, so we’re feeling very pleased. Here’s a trailer for the app:

Buy Little Red Riding Hood on the App Store.

You can find the full list of award winners in iLounge’s 2014 Buyer’s Guide. Thank you to everyone who voted for us and helped us earn this great accolade!

Are you interested in picture books? Join in with our next reading group!

Next week we’ll be hosting our next Nosy Crow Reading Group, and this month we’re talking about picture books! We’re examining three original and brilliant titles: I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen, The Heart and the Bottle by Oliver Jeffers, and our very own Weasels by Elys Dolan.

The event will take place here in the Crow’s Nest (10a Lant Street) on Thursday, November 14 at 6.30pm – and if you aren’t joining us in person, we’d love it if you took part online. We’ll be partnering with The Guardian once again, and you’ll be able to join in with the discussion online at a page of their website and on Twitter with the #NCGKids hashtag.

As usual we’ve prepared a few discussion points to get you thinking in advance – here’s some of what we might talk about:

1) Who do you think these books are “for”?

2) Between them, these books cover a fairly broad emotional palette. Do you think picture books are best suited to particular themes? Which emotional tone do you think these books conveyed most successfully?

3) The different designs and page layouts of these three titles demonstrates the versatility of the picture book format. What do you think the particular design (use of space and colour, typography and text layout, use of page spreads, and so on) of each book achieves?

4) What do you think the illustrations and texts achieve separately and together in each book? Do you think they complement each other?

5) How important do you think “story” is in each book? What do you think the most important elements are?

We hope you can join us online!