You will soon see that this post is about my situation,
however it has implications for the wider Caribbean. I have been thinking and
thinking what to do with my children’s
books. Here is my situation.
1. A great number of my books were written for the Ministry
of Education - some 30 books/stories. They hold the copyright since it was work
for hire in the 1980's; they do not sell books, so only the children in the primary
schools, to whom they give books free, ever see these books. Of course, they
cannot afford to reprint them, or all of them, as often as they would like. So
much of what I’ve done is locked up. The solution would be for the Ministry to
print them and sell them, as well as providing the free copies as usual to the
government primary schools; perhaps seek bids from commercial publishers to do
this. There is a precedent for this; it was done in the 1970’s/1980’s.
2.Then some of my books, three, were sponsored or printed through the
Children’s Writers Circle, which is no longer active, and to which I have the
copyright. Two others were done by publishers who have gone out of business or
cannot afford to reprint them and so the copyright has reverted to me.
3. I have some other books which were for Cricket World Cup,
published by a publisher in the UK. This was also work for hire and was sponsored by a
businessman in one of the other islands. They are not available here. I’m
trying to see what I can find out about them being available here, even though I make no money on them.
4. I have one self published book.
5. More recently I have been published by Carlong, two books. And they, of course, will keep those in print as part of their Sand Pebbles Series (children's book series; they are traditionally textbook publishers).
So in the fiftieth year of Independence:
1.
I thought that I should at least reprint one of
my books (at first it was at least three. LOL! Or for Jamaicans, DWL). The
funds for this would come from money saved from the sale of previous books,
saved little, little, over hundreds of years. LOL. (Mild hysteria setting in).
That’s why it’s down to one book.
2.
Also I thought
I should write at least one book/story. Well I’ve actually done that, and
revised it - perhaps another revision or two needed. It’s a children’s picture book. But now I’m in
despair and cannot finish it because of what the facts seem to be.
The facts:
1.So I thought I should reprint Cordelia Finds Fame and Fortune. It is, after all, one
of my best known books. I took it to the Miami Book Fair School Outreach
Programme and there was an American edition. I have already paid to have it
digitally formatted.
Here are more facts: to print 500 books (because I cannot
afford to reprint more, nor can I warehouse them – I’m now in an apartment.)
would be $ X. The selling price, would be $ Y. A distributor will take 200 on
consignment for half the selling price.
This affords me some J$ 60 profit on each book (sixty Jamaican dollars – can’t
even buy a slice of chocolate cake). If they sell all of the books I will earn
J$ 12,000 (which could almost buy 3 chocolate cakes). Yes that’s true. Bet you can't believe that. Why am I doing
equivalency measures in chocolate? My mind just goes to chocolate at times like
these. If I sell the rest (300) to the retail trade at 30% discount (over what
period of time? three years? by which time some of the staples will have rusted?
They take little by little, 12 copies, little by little) I may make back the printing cost. No,
I cannot increase the retail price. The market cannot bear it. So obviously
this is totally impractical, even though I really think this would be a lovely
book to have out this year.
By the way, this is
not negativity. This is ‘facts’ from experience. How have we done books in previous years? Well for me and others, when
there has been a big project, we submit books for consideration, and if they
are selected we then go to press if we do not
have stock. No big projects in sight. Everybody in the world bruk!
Yes, the variables could be find a sponsor, increase the
print run, and on and on we go. However that is not the way to print/publish
books on a sustainable basis.
This is a clear case for print on demand? I’m investigating.
My information so far is print on demand is a by page
cost and it’s expensive, more suited for academic books which are not price
sensitive as far as the market is concerned.
Right! So obviously this is a clarion call for turning it
into an e-book. However from what I’ve read, the challenge for picture books is
that since e-readers have the capacity for text to be enlarged or made smaller
there is no guarantee that the illustrations will stay in the position in which they were first
located so as to relate to the text. Also
researching this further, because this must be the way forward for my
unfinished picture book and perhaps for all future children’s books.
And how do we resolve the challenge of access, the fact that
the majority of our people/ children will not have e-book readers any time
soon?
So please make your suggestions, share information you may
have. Is the Caribbean going to always
be a region of children’s book samples (and is long time we been working at
this, man) or is there a way forward?
Lots of challenges here! For all of us writers for children in the Caribbean. The cost factor is perhaps the main reason why the picture book part of the genre is least developed here.
ReplyDeleteDiane, you set me thinking. My 2 main suggestions are sponsorship and e-books. You can read more details on my blog post on the topic which you inspired. http://marogkingdom.blogspot.com/2012/07/reply-to-dianes-blog-on-future-of.html
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, Helen, to which I replied on your blog. Lots to consider.
ReplyDelete