I sent my book to a distributor for review some time back and, to my great joy and surprise, they want to take The Wombat Stole My Shoe on! This was the first company I had approached so I was actually expecting them to say they were not interested. So anyway, there you have it, and I am very happy.
However, it is a double edged sword.
Once I have deducted the standard percentage for a distributor, plus GST, plus freight, and other costs that are bound to crop up, I am actually losing money on these books. But it doesnt matter! Right from the word go I said I was not doing this for money, it was for the love of it. A gift to my children. Not only that I just love reading, and books, and all things bookish, and book stores, and I LOVE well written and well illustrated children’s books and I love reading them to children. Kids books when they are good really make me smile and I know that this is true for most people. I dont know that mine is that great though (OH how I wish I had written it differently now, there are so many changes that I would like to make) but there are so many brilliant children’s authors out there and they are quite inspirational. My husband and I took the children to the library the other night to do some reading and I read some books that made me laugh out loud. You see, there is some really great stuff out there for kids (and adults too for that matter) and there is no reason why people cant just keep on churning out a whole lot more great books too. Maybe I’ll even give it another bash! If I do, I think I will go the traditional route to publication this time and see what happens…. Maybe I wont be published…
Anyway, back to losing money on the books. There is only one solution to this. I must sell all stock and do a reprint. Then once those have sold I can recover costs and be happy that I did what I set out to do. That is, write a cute book for my children and have it pay itself back. So, I guess that brings me back to the whole saga of how on earth am I going to promote it here? Its very competitive in Australia you see. Or at least thats the general idea I have been given after speaking with those in the industry. What should I do? Have all nifty schemes been exhausted? Whats original now days? I’ll have to think of something, I am thinkingthinkingthinking all of the time. Soon something will click.
Is anyone reading this?
Katrina
xo
