Nosy Crow's Blog, page 200

Nosy Crow is in the top 20 children's book publishers by sales

Yesterday, we were looking at market share figures from Nielsen BookScan. These show, among other things, the ranking of publishers by their sales through UK retailers.

To tell you the absolute truth, we don’t normally pay a huge amount of attention to these comparative figures. In fact, though we do buy and use data from Nielsen Bookscan, we don’t buy the comprehensive data set behind these particular figures (Nielsen Bookscan just ran this report for us as a favour). Generally, company comparative figures like these don’t feel very relevant to what we do all day. They cover publishers that are very different from us: corporate giants like Penguin Random House, HarperCollins and Hachette, for example. And pretty much everyone has been going for longer than us, so their position is boosted by sales of their decades’ worth of backlist titles: while they often have thousands of titles including classics from Roald Dahl to Paddington Bear, we’ll have published just over 100 print titles in total by the end of this year, all of which have come to market in the past three years.

And frankly, we are so busy publishing our own books (and, of course, our apps) that we don’t spend a lot of time looking over our shoulders at our competition. Of course, we’re aware of other publishers. We see – and often admire and buy – their books in shops. We list their books in our various “best of…” blog posts. We even talk about their books in the Nosy Crow Guardian Reading Group, but otherwise we keep our heads down, and edit, design, market, publicise and sell our own stuff.

But, yesterday, we saw that our sales of books out of bookshops for this year to the middle of August mean that we rank 19th in the UK among children’s publishers… so, right now, after publishing for just two-and-a-half-years (our first book came out in January 2011), Nosy Crow is one of the top 20 children’s book publishers by sales.

For picture books – and we’ve had a particularly strong run of picture books this year so far – we rank 13th. For fiction, we rank 16th.

The overall value of children’s book sales in the UK has dropped by 9% on the previous year to date (I imagine that inevitable Hunger Games sales drop-off could account for maybe half of that). Only six of the top 20 children’s publishers are showing any growth at all in their market share (Walker Books and Simon and Schuster are the only other mainstream publishers in the top 20 that are showing growth, and three mass-market/bargain book/licensed book publishers are too). But the value of Nosy Crow’s sales has grown by 161% – a much, much larger percentage than any of our competitors.

Of course, there’s a huge, huge gap between our sales and the sales of, say, Penguin Random House, who are at the top of the ranking. And the Nielsen Bookscan figures don’t cover all sales. And things might change between now and the end of the year: there are many highly-commercial books being published by other publishers between now and the end of the year. There are lots of provisos and caveats.

But it was a nice moment and we are very grateful to our friends at Bounce for helping us to achieve it.

We celebrated with cake sent to us (!) by forthcoming debut author Pamela Butchart, who came down from Dundee last week to visit us.

Being small and being independent is still important to us. I stand by everything I wrote I wrote 16 months ago. But we want the authors and illustrators we publish to feel that they are publishing with a publisher with a bit of market clout, and it’s good to see these Nielsen Bookscan figures corroborate that.

What should an app cost? Some thoughts on iOS 7 and the new Kids' App category

Yesterday Apple officially announced a range of new products that had been widely-expected, including two new iPhones and a release date for iOS 7, the new mobile operating system for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch – September 18. Excitingly for us, iOS 7 will include something that children’s app developers like us have long been waiting for: a dedicated category for Kids’ Apps.

A Kids’ Apps section of the App Store will hopefully mean that our apps will be more straightforward to find (previously they’ve been split across book, game and education categories), that parents and teachers will have easy access to information about the suitability of an app for different age groups, and that the very best apps for children will be showcased and promoted. Apps that are featured in the Kids’ App section must also comply with certain standards to ensure that they don’t encourage children to buy in-app content without parental permission (something that we care a lot about, and which we’ve written about previously on this blog).

It’s also made us think about the position of our apps within the entire App Store ecosystem – their appearance, their price, their content and their extras. At the moment, our apps aren’t as cheap as some other kids’ apps on the Store, which is something we’ve always felt comfortable justifying: we think they’re also better value than a lot of apps, with higher production values, richer content and greater interactivity – and unlike a number of other products, we don’t have any in-app purchasing or advertising in our apps. At £3.99, we think reading experiences like our award-winning fairytale apps – The Three Little Pigs, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood – are an absolute bargain (and our other apps are even cheaper).

We’d really like to hear from you, though. Now that kids’ apps will appear in a separate place on the App Store, will you expect to pay less for them? Or would you expect them to be free? What do you think’s the right price for a children’s app? What’s the price point you buy apps at most often? And are you comfortable making in-app purchases for kids’ apps?

If you’ve any thoughts or suggestions about pricing, we’d love to hear from you – and to thank you for your time, at the end of the week we’ll pick five comments (either here on the blog, on Facebook or on Twitter) at random and give the authors a copy of our Little Red Riding Hood app.

And keep an eye on our blog next week – we’ll have some exciting announcements to make to coincide with the release of iOS 7 and the Kids’ App category.

Catherine Wilkins and Fleur Hitchcock talk about Bookbuzz

This year’s Bookbuzz programme has now launched, and as we wrote before, we have two books in the list of twelve core titles! Both Dear Scarlett by Fleur Hitchcock and My Best Friend and Other Enemies by Catherine Wilkins have been selected – the two books are perfect reading for the start of the new school year (and, perhaps, especially for children going into secondary school for the first time).

You can watch a video of Fleur talking about Dear Scarlett on the Bookbuzz website, here – and here’s the first chapter of the book:

Catherine has blogged about writing for Bookbuzz on their website, here. Here’s an extract:

“I wanted to write about a character like Jessica because I wanted to write about things that I could relate to.

When I was at school, I was never the best at anything. I always felt underrepresented when other stories, and films and TV seemed to be about someone being brilliant at sport or dancing, or being clever.

I thought, where are MY people? Where are the idiots who are fun to be with?”

And here’s the full piece.

You can also watch a video of Catherine talking about the book here. And here’s the first chapter:

My Best Friend and Other Enemies is an especially well-timed selection for Bookbuzz because the sequel to the book, My Brilliant Life and Other Disasters, is out this month! Here’s the first chapter:



Order the book online.

No teachers were harmed in the making of this book: reading Baby Aliens

In January we’ll be publishing the VERY funny Baby Aliens Got My Teacher by Pamela Butchart – a brilliant, laugh-out-loud debut for 7+ year olds, featuring crisp twins, pea phobias, and aliens-in-ears.

And over the Summer, children’s author and app blogger Helen Dineen read an early proof copy of the book with her family – husband Jim, and children Daniel (5) and Hannah (3). Helen said, “I was quite surprised as they are younger than the target age group and I thought they might struggle to get into it with the initial scenes jumping around a bit, but it went down really well.”

And here’s what Daniel has to say about the book:

“It was excellent because I love that they thought she was an alien. The teacher was horrible but she turned all nice. Boys and girls will like it. It reminds me of school. I would like to read more like this. The funny bits were when Zach went in the girls’ toilets and when they thought there was a snake but it was only a sock!”

If you’d like to find out what all the fuss is about, you can read the first chapter of the book here:

It’s also available to pre-order from Waterstones online here.

Thank you to Helen, Jim, Daniel and Hannah for reading the book and sharing their thoughts – we think you’ll all love it too!

The Nosy Crow Reading Group is back

Next week we’ll be hosting our fourth Nosy Crow Reading Group, and this month we’re talking about Fruitloops and Dipsticks by Ulf Stark – our first book in translation for the reading group.

The event will take place here in the Crow’s Nest (10a Lant Street) on Thursday, September 12 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 Fruitloops and Dipsticks is “for”?

2) Could you tell that this was a book in translation? If so, how?

3) What do you think the advantages are of encouraging children to read books in translation?

4) How convinced were you by the first person narrator?

5) There are quite a few fairly disparate themes in this book – what do you think the main ones were? How well were they united?

6) Did you find it funny? Were you surprised? Do you think the parts you found surprising or funny would be the same for a child reader?

If you have other areas you’d like to discuss, or questions you’d like to raise, do please leave a comment below. And if you’ve not yet read Fruitloops and Dipsticks, you can order it online here.

We hope you can join us online!

It's September publication day!

Our September books are out now and it’s our biggest publication month of the year! Here’s what you can find in bookshops today:

Playbook Pirates by Corina Fletcher and Britta Teckentrup

Is it a pop-up book? Is it a 3D playmat? It’s both! The follow-up to the phenomenally successful Playbook Farm, this ingenious package unfolds and transforms into a pirate seascape playmat, revealing a pop-up pirate ship, ship-wreck, mermaid island and more! With cut-out cardboard rowing boats, pirates and sea-creatures, this makes for a great pirate adventure – perfect portable fun for journeys, playdates and bedtime too. Here’s a video trailer:



Buy the book online.

Axel Scheffler’s Flip Flap Farm by Axel Scheffler

What do you get when you cross a goat with a turkey? Why, a gurkey, of course! What about a pig with a sheep? Well, that would be a peep, naturally! With 121 possible combinations, silly names and animal noises to make you giggle, this innovative, split-page spiral-bound board book is perfect for pre-schoolers. Little readers will adore flipping Axel Scheffler’s animals again and again to see what crazy creatures they can create – and to find out what strange noises they make too! Here’s a video trailer:



Buy the book online.

Spells-a-Popping, Granny’s Shopping by Tracey Corderoy and Joe Berger

The third hilarious adventure in this picture book series about a little girl whose Granny is (shhh, whisper it!) a witch. While Pandora likes things to be normal (ish), her Granny just loves to magic things along, and their trip to the supermarket is anything but ordinary. As fishfingers start flying around, Pandora tells Granny to behave herself. But when Pandora spots a couple of robbers up to no good, an extra-ordinary Granny is exactly what’s needed! Here’s a look inside the book:



Buy the book online.

Pip and Posy: The Bedtime Frog

In the latest installment in Axel Scheffler’s wonderful pre-school picture books series, Posy goes to stay at Pip’s house they have lots of fun together before bedtime. But just as they switch out the light, disaster strikes: Posy realises that she has forgotten her favourite frog toy. Desperate to help his distraught friend, Pip offers Posy a range of different toys to substitute for her frog, including his own favourite frog money box. But none of them will do – it’s only when Pip gives Posy his own, very favourite, pig toy that Posy is comforted and that the friends can get a good night’s sleep, at last. Here’s a look inside:



Buy the book online.

Pip and Posy: The Scary Monster

We’re also publishing the first paperback edition of another volume in the Pip and Posy series. When Pip comes to Posy’s house wearing a scary monster mask, he gives Posy a bit of a fright! But when she works out it’s only Pip, she feels much better, and they share the biscuits she’s made. Hooray! Here’s a look inside:



Buy the book online.

My Brilliant Life and other Disasters by Catherine Wilkins

Jessica is back, and everything in her life seems to be going swimmingly – she’s got her best friend, she’s about to launch her comic, and her nutty Aunt has come to stay. The only ink blot on the landscape is Scarlett, Amelia’s super-cool, super-annoying cousin… who just happens to draw cartoons too. Soon Jessica is fighting for her cartoonist life. It’s a good job she has an enormous badger on her side… Funny, heartwarming, and BRILLIANTLY realised, this sequel to the (equally hilarious) My Best Friend and Other Enemies is perfect reading for 9-12 year olds. Here’s the first chapter:



Buy the book online.

The Rescue Princesses: The Silver Locket

In the newest volume in the Rescue Princesses series, Rosalind and the other princesses are in the Kingdom of Taldonia for the Autumn Ball. They love playing with a little puppy called Patch. But they can’t stop arguing, and Rosalind decides it’s easier to be friends with animals than with silly princesses. She goes off on her own, and that’s when disaster strikes! Patch gets lost in the woods and Rosalind needs the other Rescue Princesses to help find him. But what if they’re not her friends any more? Here’s the first chapter:



Buy the book online.

Congratulations to all of today’s authors and illustrators!

Kindle MatchBook

Yesterday Amazon announced Kindle Matchbook – a new programme (initially only in the US) that will offer customers Kindle editions of previous print book purchases for either $2.99, $1.99, $0.99, or free. The move is being compared to another campaign launched last month by Amazon, AutoRip, which offers free MP3 versions of previous CD purchases – but reallly it’s a much bolder step than that: for one thing, CDs are already easily digitisable, whereas there’s no straightforward way (you could scan every page, I suppose, but that’s about it) of getting a print book onto an e-reader.

As a consumer, MatchBook looks great to me – there are all sorts of reasons why having eBook editions of my print library is an appealing idea. But as a publisher, and someone interested in how Amazon run as a business, it’s hard to see what the rationale was for this programme. On the surface, I can see how it sort of makes sense: Amazon tie more people into the Kindle platform, potentially upsell a lot of people who were intending on only making one purchase into spending a couple of extra dollars, and increase eBook downloads at a stroke.

But it’s not really that straightforward. Conventional wisdom is that Amazon have been pinning their hopes on eBooks as the key area which might one day make them a profit (they’re certainly not making any money on sales of Kindle devices, which operate on absolutely wafer-thin margins). Yet MatchBook seems to fundamentally devalue that core product: it treats eBooks as commodities with no inherent worth; as products that can be given away for nothing as promotional tools. Even if the norm is for a $2.99 pricetag, rather than a straight giveaway, the inescapable conclusion is that the e-format is nothing more than an adjunct to print.

So what will this do to eBook downloads for Amazon? I’m sure that lots of people will happily bundle the two formats and pay for the print and e-editions simultaneously, but who will want to continue paying the full price for eBooks as standalone products (which they have, at long last, managed to establish themselves as being) if they’re available for little or nothing when you buy the print edition? And what will MatchBook do to the general assumption about what eBooks “ought” to cost? What will that shift in buyer behaviour do to Amazon’s bottom line, I wonder?

The only conclusion I’ve been able to reach is that this is an extension of Amazon’s attempt at playing the world’s longest-lasting game of chicken: they are willing to make a loss (and their shareholders are willing to indulge this strategy) for as long as it takes for them to outlast all of their competition – and then, perhaps, they’ll try and make some money. And, ruthless as it is, I can see how this would work. Am I more likely to buy a print book from Amazon, now that I could get the ebook edition for nothing? Yes, probably. But I’m also less likely to want to buy just an eBook now, which is what makes this a particularly aggressive move towards the competiton: Amazon are, perhaps, happy to eat into their own margins to win out in the long term.

And that means a threat to bookshops. But I think this could be a great opportunity for high street retail, rather than a death knell. If bookshops can get in on the act and start offering bundling as well, they may well be in a better position to take advantage of it. For a start, bookshops’ core products are print, rather than e-, books, and so unlike Amazon, they won’t be undermining their own health by giving away the e-format. They’re also in a great position to be able to up-sell to customers: there’s no competition between an engaged and enthusiastic bookseller and a website algorithm. And if bookshops can build the right infrastructure, they might be able to offer customers e-editions in non-proprietary formats for more than one sort of device, rather than just the Kindle edition.

What do you think? Do you think this is good for Amazon’s business? Are you more likely to buy from Amazon if you can have the two formats bundles together? Will you continue to buy eBooks separately? We’d like to know.

Glorious Granny fiction

This week we’re publishing Spells-a-Popping, Granny’s Shopping by Tracey Corderoy and Joe Berger – the third fantastic picture book in the series begun by Hubble Bubble, Granny Trouble and continued with Whizz Pop, Granny Stop. And for fans of the little girl and her granny (who may just be a witch), we have some very exciting news: next month, we’re launching a fabulous new series of first fiction from the creators of this picture book series.

A bewitching brew of domestic dottiness, fizzy fun and chuckle-inducing charm, this delightful series is ideal for newly independent readers with a thirst for magic and mayhem.

The first book – containing three separate stories – will be The Glorious Granny Bake Off. In these three hilarious episodes, Pandora’s granny brings comic chaos to a televised bake off, delightful disaster to a school fair and tons of trouble to a stately home! But she puts everything right in the end, with a bit of help from Pandora. Everyone loves Granny, especially her long-suffering granddaughter!

Here’s the first chapter:

The Glorious Granny Bake Off will be out in October, and you can pre-order the book from Waterstones here – and if you sign up for our books newsletter, you’ll have the chance to win a copy next month. And if you can’t wait for your next Granny Trouble fix, you can also buy Spells-a-Popping, Granny’s Shopping (which comes with our free Stories Aloud audio feature with the paperback edition) here.

Udder-ly unmissable

Next year we’re publishing an absolutely fantastic fiction debut – Cowgirl, by Giancarlo Gemin – a funny, moving story about communities coming together and finding happy endings in unexpected places. We’ve just had stunning cover and inside proofs arrive at the Crow’s Nest – and here’s what’s in store for readers…

When her search for the scene of a perfect childhood day takes her up into the surrounding hills, Gemma is forced into a meeting with the legendary Cowgirl. Everyone at school knows she’s a weirdo: the only conversations she has are with the twelve cows on her dad’s farm. But with her abrupt arrival in Gemma’s life, everything starts to look different. And with her only friends in mortal danger of the abbatoir, it turns out she and Gemma have a mission on their hands.

Want to read on? Here’s an early preview of the first three chapters of Cowgirl:

An exceptional story for 9+ readers by an outstanding new writer, Cowgirl will be published in March 2014. And if you’d like to know more, you can sign up to our books newsletter here, and we’ll keep you up-to-date with all of our upcoming titles (and give you the chance to win books!) with a monthly email.

Our favourite apps: a guest post by Phillipa Abbott

We received a comment on a blogpost earlier this week about two upcoming books in the Bizzy Bear series by Benji Davies from Phillipa, who told us that her favourite apps to use with her daughter are Bizzy Bear on the Farm and Bizzy Bear Builds a House. She kindly agreed to share her experience of using the apps, printed below.

I use the Bizzy Bear on the Farm app with my 22 month old daughter Lexie and it’s definitely our favourite. She always picks Bizzy Bear ahead of others (I’ve got about 10 on my phone including some other Nosy Crow apps) – either Bizzy Bear on the Farm or Bizzy Bear Builds a House.

We like Bizzy Bear on the Farm best, mainly because it’s so interactive. The other Nosy Crow apps, including Bizzy Bear Builds a House, seem to mainly tell stories, whereas with Bizzy Bear on the Farm, she really can do lots of different things on each screen. Also each screen is different, be it picking apples and eggs, or feeding piggies and herding sheep, to riding the horsie and parking the tractor. She’s absolutely obsessed with putting Bizzy’s shoes on at the beginning and taking them off at the end. Ditto with putting on the hat for Bizzy Bear Builds a House. She does like the fairy tale Nosy Crow apps too. We have The Three Little Pigs and she likes blowing the house down with the Wolf.

I got the apps initially to help with a long plane and car journey and I like them. She gets a bit fixated in a similar way to with TV so I try and balance her screen time with other activities (outside fun, drawing/crafting etc). But her dad and family work in TV and new media so we’re not at all opposed! In fact I think there is a lot of brilliant content out there and I’m really happy with everything Nosy Crow does, miles better than the other apps I have. I do wish I had an iPad though – it niggles me that she’s looking at apps on my iPhone with the small screen. It will be interesting to see how she responds to these apps as she gets older.

We’d LOVE more apps like Bizzy Bear on the Farm!

Thank you for sharing this, Phillipa! You can find Bizzy Bear on the Farm on the App Store here and Bizzy Bear Builds a House on the Store here for $3.99 each, and watch trailers for the two apps below. And if you’d like to be kept up-to-date with news of our upcoming app releases, you can sign up to our Apps Announcement Mailing List here.