Nosy Crow's Blog, page 89

Looking back at 2017: our seventh year of publishing

Each January – sometimes right at the turn of the year, sometimes, as this year, a bit belatedly – I write a blog post looking back at each year that Nosy Crow has been in existence. Here’s last year’s, for example.  It is, I know, done as much for me as it is for readers – an exercise in record-keeping, really – and I fully acknowledge that it’s probably much more gripping for me to write than it is for anyone to read.

2017 wasn’t, in terms of world events, an improvement on 2016. Trump’s dangerous and stupid Twitter rhetoric was a daily distraction (and only this week, John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan USA, was forced to write this); terrorism struck countless times around the world and, with the attack on London Bridge and Borough Market, painfully close to home for Nosy Crow; Brexit dominated UK news, but negotiating the consequences of the lamentable decision to leave the EU was sluggish and dispiriting; and some great people died – Babette Cole and Michael Bond died, and so did John Noakes and Brian Cant, and those are just the high-profile people in the world of UK children’s media.

And of course we thought about and were saddened by these things and many others, but, for Nosy Crow as a business, 2017 built on the remarkable success of 2016.

We ended the year with revenue of over £10 million (and we made a bit of profit, which we plough instantly back into the business). That’s twice the turnover of 2015, so we’ve doubled in size in two years. This is a hugely important milestone for us: when we were putting together the business plan for Nosy Crow back in early 2010, we said that, one day, we believed that it was possible for Nosy Crow to be a profitable £10 million business. We said that it was maybe conceivable to imagine this happening after 10 years of publishing. It happened after seven.

We published 99 original books in 2017 (plus paperbacks and board books of hardbacks), just four more original books than in 2016. The balance of our list wasn’t radically different from 2016, which was the year we began publishing non-fiction and activity books, as well as board, picture and fiction titles. We did, however, properly launch our list published in collaboration with the British Museum (we’d published a single title in 2016 to tie in with an exhibition), and our Early Learning at the Museum ABC and 123 board books were included in The Sunday Times’s Children’s Books of the Year selection.

We held our place as the UK’s 13th biggest children’s publisher, based on Nielsen’s recorded sales out of UK retailers. We closed the gap between us and our nearest competitor (Simon and Schuster, since you ask, though they are still 1.5 times our size). In 2017, £1.38 in every £100 spent in the UK on a children’s book was spent on a Nosy Crow book – up, woo-hoo!, 8 pence on 2016.

Though we increased our market share and grew our sales in the UK, actually our biggest areas of sales growth were outside the UK. More than half our sales came from outside the UK, and we added four new languages (Farsi, Luxembourgish, Ukrainian and Albanian) to bring our tally of languages in which we’ve sold rights to 39. Though we found customers around the globe, we sold particularly well to the USA, China and Italy in 2017. (If you are a foreign publisher or a scout, and would like regular updates about our rights activity, email rights@nosycrow.com to be added to our rights newsletter mailing list.)

In March, we won, for an astonishing fourth time in six years, the Independent Publishers Guild’s Children’s Publisher of the Year Award.

In May, Nosy Crow won the UK publishing industry’s biggest accolade for a children’s publisher when we were named (“the Nibbies”). I’ve been in publishing for 30 years, and hadn’t accepted one of these as a publisher before… and I didn’t get to do so last year either, because I was in Australia selling books at the Allen and Unwin conference. Adrian and Camilla accepted the prize, though, which was kind of perfect, actually.

Hester, Ola, Catherine, My Brother is a Superhero author David Solomons, Adrian, and Camilla, celebrating Nosy Crow’s win at the Nibbies

Also in May, we moved offices across Borough High Street from the west side to the east. We’re now in the shadow of Harper Collins, almost literally. We’re in a U-shaped courtyard building that, I’d guess, dates from the 1920s. We’re on the top floor, occupying the fat bottom of the U and the right-hand leg of it. It’s bright and open (we’re entirely open-plan) and we have room to breathe: while we were in the old office, our ability to grow was restricted by the fact that we couldn’t squish another person in. We had an office-warming party at the end of June.

Our office-warming party in June 2017.

In July, There’s A Bear On My Chair, a picture book by Ross Collins, won the UKLA (United Kingdom Literacy Association) award for books for 3-6 year olds. In August, Where’s Mr Lion, a board book with felt flaps by Ingela P Arrhenius, published in January 2017, won the overall Sainsbury’s Children’s Book of the Year award. In April, on the same day, Nosy Crow books scooped two awards in continental Europe: the French translation of My Brother is a Superhero by David Solomons won the Prix Enfantaisie in Switzerland and the Dutch translation of Don’t Wake Up Tiger by Britta Teckentrup won the prestigious Het Prentenboek van het Jaar in The Netherlands. Books published by Nosy Crow were shortlisted for several national prizes, and won and were shortlisted for many regional awards.

Emma Brewster, Children’s Book Buyer at Sainsbury’s; Camilla Reid; and Axel Scheffler, award judge, at the Sainsbury’s Children’s Book Book of the Year award ceremony

We continued to experiment. We branched out into audio, launching 12 fiction titles in audio form in December, read by, among others, Susan Calman and Juliet Stevenson.

Susan Calman in the recording studio, reading the audiobook edition of To Wee or Not to Wee by Pamela Butchart

If you’re reading this, you’re on our website. In 2017, we had 243,673 unique users, and 929,790 page views. We have 7,295 Facebook likes, up 17% on last year, and, across @nosycrow, @nosycrowbooks and @nosycrowapps, we have 46,902 Twitter followers (so we’re not counting @nosycrowdog’s 277 followers), up 17% on last year. We have been much more active on YouTube recently: Nosy Crow videos on YouTube were viewed 459,100 times in 2017 – an increase of 47% on 2016. We have also been much more active on Instagram in the past six months, and have built our followers to 4,484. If you want to keep up-to-date with our news, do please have a look at what we post on the social media channel(s) of your choice, do please keep visiting the website, and/or do please sign up for our newsletter.

Thank you for reading this (if you got all the way to the end).  I hope it doesn’t seem to self-congratulatory, but it’s really great (as I sit in the office in the workaday chilly dark of January before I put my thermal gloves on and put the dog into the bike carrier to cycle off home and cook pasta with tomato sauce) to think back on the exciting bits of 2017. If you’re one of our authors or illustrators or an agent reading this, thank you for your support. If you’re one of the booksellers or librarians or publishers outside the UK who bought a book from us, thank you for your support. If you’re a mum or dad or carer or relative or friend of a child for whom you bought one of our books, thank you for your support. For us – well, for me at least – the seven years we’ve been publishing feel both like a lifetime and an instant. It remains as exciting to find, shape and publish books now as it did when we were just starting out.

Onwards and upwards!

Christmas fiction from Nosy Crow

Today we’re sharing the fourth and final of our Christmas books videos, showcasing some of our favourite Christmas-y titles- with a look at our festive fiction!

There are some WONDERFULLY winter-y and Christmas-y books here – from beautiful two-colour illustrated fiction for newly-independent readers, to fantastic young chapter books, to gripping middle grade reads.

Here’s a look at our other Christmas books videos:

Watch our Christmas picture books video:

Watch our Christmas activity books video:

Watch our Christmas board books video:

There’s one last-minute place available for January’s Nosy Crow Masterclass

A little while ago we announced the return of our Nosy Crow Masterclasses, with another edition of our How to Write Picture Books event, taking place on Saturday January 20.

The masterclass sold-out in record time – but one place has been made available at short notice, so if you’re interested in attending, and didn’t manage to get a place before, now’s your chance! There is strictly one place available, and it’s first-come, first-served.

You can book your place here:

We hope to see you there!

 

Come to the first Nosy Crow Reading Group of 2018 – we’re discussing Illegal by Eoin Colfer

Would you like to come along to the next Nosy Crow Reading Group?

In January we’ll be discussing Illegal, by Eoin Colfer, Andrew Donkin, and Giovanni Rigano.

We’ll be meeting on Monday, January 22nd at 6.30pm, at the Nosy Crow offices – 14 Baden Place, Crosby Row, SE1 1YW – for a discussion of the book (along with wine and crisps). If you’d like to come along, just register for a place with the form below, or at this page.

You can buy Illegal online from Waterstones here.

We hope you can join us!

Christmas picture books from Nosy Crow

Today we’re sharing the third of our Christmas books videos, showcasing some of our favourite Christmas-y titles- with a look at our festive picture books!

There’s a wonderful selection of beautiful books here – books with snowmen, presents, Christmas trees, Santa Claus, and more!

We’ll be sharing some of our favourite wintery and festive fiction later in the week – keep an eye on the blog!

Christmas board books from Nosy Crow

Today we’re sharing the second of our Christmas books videos, showcasing some of our favourite Christmas-y titles- with a look at our festive novelty and board books!

These books are absolutely perfect for babies and young toddlers – wonderful books for a first Christmas.

We’ll be sharing some of our favourite wintery and festive picture books and fiction next week – keep an eye on the blog!

The Sunday Times’ Children’s Books of the Year

The Sunday Times have published a list of their children’s books of the year – featuring our British Museum First Concept series!

Nicolette Jones writes:

Enormously appealing as board books are the early-learning series ABC, 123, Colours and Opposites. Illustrated with beautiful artefacts from the British Museum’s collection, the books offer a rich variety of images (from amulets to netsuke) of different styles and dates, with inexhaustible potential for interaction. Information at the back and on a QR matrix barcode gives curious adults more details, while the very young have their visual horizons extended.

You can read the full round-up here.

 

 

Nosy Crow launches fiction audio list

Today we’re very proud to unveil the launch of a new programme of audiobooks for our fiction list. We’ve produced a launch list of twelve fiction audiobooks – and the books are now available to download from Audible, Amazon and iTunes.

Titles available to buy as audiobooks include My Brother is a Superhero by David Solomons, winner of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and the British Book Industry Awards Children’s Book of the Year prize, The Spy Who Loved School Dinners by Pamela Butchart, winner of the Blue Peter Book Award, and The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Wiliams, the first title in a new series of Nosy Crow classics.

Five titles in Pamela Butchart’s award-winning Baby Aliens series have been narrated by Susan Calman, recently seen competing in Strictly Come Dancing. David Solomons’ award-winning, number one children’s best-seller My Brother is a Superhero, and its sequel My Gym Teacher is an Alien Overlord, have been read by comedian Joe Thomas, star of The Inbetweeners and Fresh Meat, while BAFTA-nominated actor Juliet Stevenson reads The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams.

Kate Wilson comments: ‘We’re fantastically proud of the quality of this audio list – the brilliant books themselves, the production values, and, of course calibre of the readers, which is basically our voice wish-list realised. Over the years, with our apps and our picture book Stories Aloud initiative, we’ve learned so much about what makes audio compelling to children, and so much about making good audio. As the audiobook market for children grows and evolves, now feels like the perfect time to branch out into paid-for audio of longer works.’

Pamela Butchart comments: ‘I’m so excited that the Baby Aliens series is now available as audiobooks! It means the world to me that the adventures of Izzy and her friends are now accessible to blind and visually impaired children.  The very funny Susan Calman (comedian and Dancing Queen!) is utterly brilliant as the voice of Izzy!’

The complete launch list of fiction audio titles is:

Baby Aliens Got My Teacher, The Spy Who Loved School Dinners, My Headteacher is a Vampire Rat, Attack of the Demon Dinner Ladies and To Wee or Not to Wee by Pamela Butchart – read by comedian Susan Calman, recently seen competing in Strictly Come Dancing


My Brother is a Superhero and My Gym Teacher is an Alien Overlord by David Solomons – read by Joe Thomas, star of The Inbetweeners and Fresh Meat


The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams – read by BAFTA-nominated actor Juliet Stevenson


Little Bits of Sky by S.E. Durrant – read by Adjoa Andoh, the voice of Alexander McCall Smith’s 1 Lady’s Detective Agency


Evie’s Ghost by Helen Peters – read by Louiza Patikas, the voice of The Archers’ Helen Archer


The Many Worlds of Albie Bright and The Jamie Drake Equation by Christopher Edge – read by highly-acclaimed theatre, TV and voice actor Ewan Goddard

Christmas activity books from Nosy Crow

Today we’re delighted to share the first in a new series of videos, showcasing some of our most festive and Christmas-y titles – with a look at some of our Christmas activity books!

If you’re looks for Christmas craft activities – colouring, making, decorating, and more – then these books are perfect.

We’ll be sharing our next Christmas books video next week – keep an eye on the blog!

What’s Next Door and the “buzz-saw of the imagination”

What’s Next Door – the latest picture book by Nicola O’Byrne, award-winning illustrator of Open Very Carefully – has been featured in an essay on picture books in the TLS by Imogen Russell Williams.

Of the book, Russell Williams writes:

“Even for the youngest, intelligent illus­tration offers far more than factual images, reinforcers for the all-important word. Sometimes its absence, in the form of judicious die-cutting, allows for a literal passage between pages, as in Nicola O’Byrne’s What’s Next Door, in which Carter, a bilious green crocodile with a bull terrier’s menacing, squat muscularity, is lost. Simultaneously ­begging and belligerent, he holds up a sign: “Please can you help me find my way home? Or I will eat you”. The reader is adjured to draw a door with a finger and think very hard about somewhere wet. On the following page, to ­fanfare (“Well done! That’s a brilliant door!”), a double-doored red portal is revealed to have been cut, through which Carter is ­wiggled to find himself, not at home, but in the sea . . . . This simple formula, repeated with deft variations, inspires complete fascination, imparting the impression that the imagination has the dangerous power of a buzz-saw to bring transgressive, revealing change, as well as furnishing the next page with new perils (from which it alone can provide the escape).”

You can read the full piece here.

And here’s a look inside What’s Next Door:

Buy the book online.

If you’d like to stay up-to-date with all of our book news, you can sign up to our books newsletter at this page, or with the form below.

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