Jack was keen to do a promo on his podcast Do Meet Your Heroes like he hears on other podcasts. He chose to do The Elephant in the Room, which goes to print next week. I’m collecting presales here (names now, payment when books arrive).
It’s a beautiful book too. I worked it up at Hardie Grant for a while, but then its editor moved publishers, and it fell through the cracks. The idea is that there is an elephant in each room of the house, the world’s biggest idiom, and an overwrought family ignores her, puts up with the chaos, hopes it will go away. It’s a metaphor for — it’s not a metaphor! It’s an actual fucking elephant!
The elephant stomped
The elephant stomped
The elephant snorted snuffed and clomped
Our elephant was rather bored
of being totally ignored
And so she ambled to the sink
And had herself a mighty drink
Lifted up her might nose
And used it as a mighty hose
It’s not just a fun, rhyming story about a omnipresent and possibly pregnant pachyderm. It’s also a terrific text for teaching about idioms. Illustrator Laura Wood (The Cow Tripped Over the Moon, Hickory Dickory Dash, Baa Baa Blue Sheep, Humpty Dumpty Sat on the Slide) has drawn an idiom into every illustration. For example, the one in the table scene above is the fish with a straw in its mouth … you got it? … give yourselves a clap everyone, especially the kids over fifty. DRINKS LIKE A FISH! Genius right? It’s Where’s Wally meets Peepo meets Possum in the House meets Where to Hide Two Grey Elephants. The rhyming story is a winner with 2 to 7 year olds. The idiom stuff can propel it into the higher primary grades. Alice did idioms in grade 5. I fully expect it to sell two million copies and be made into THE major idiom film ever made, directed by Christopher Nolan.
If I do sell two million copies, and it becomes an all time classic, why not have your kids’ name on the back page of the first edition as part of my salute to those who helped pay for the print run? if I don’t sell two million copies, well you can still have your kids or grandkids names in the back, and be sorted for a Christmas present. I’ll of course sign and personalise when I send books out in December.
Why self publishing? I should one day write something longer about the frustrations of writing books. I’ve now penned twelve picture books, and another ten titles in other categories, and the going rate for an author is 5% of RRP (we split the 10% creator royalty with the illustrator). That means that on a $30 hardback, the author and illustrator make $1.50 per copy each (or $3 if you can write AND draw well enough to be an author-illustrator). And that’s on day one, before the book is discounted, or dumped at Big W, or slashed and burned as a $7 paperback at Scholastic clubs and fairs promotions when percentages often drop below 2.5% (you know the forms your kids bring home? Authors and illustrators are often getting less than 50 cents on those copies). Anyway, it’s a stupid industry, nobody gets rich except a tiny slither who do something brilliant like put a green sheep on every page (instead of a freaking idiom) 😁.
The reason I decided to self-publish is that I now know the other way. I know for certain that even if it’s a smash, and The Cow Tripped Over the Moon was an Australian smash (50,000 copies sold, CBCA Honour Book), the author won’t see anywhere near $1 a copy. But with self publishing, the margin is obviously higher. Much higher in fact. A bookshop takes copies at a 40-45% discount, but otherwise, the creator can net the retail price per copy. Of course he or she also has to pay for the printing, the shipping, the storing, the marketing and the everything else, but there’s A LOT OF WIGGLE ROOM before you crash to 30 cents per copy.
In case that’s not convincing, you can also think of committing to two copies of The Elephant in the Room as a payment for this newsletter. I’ll often sit here for a day, and bash something out about watching sport, or disability parenting, or Staking out Baker Boy in Ocean Grove and then I’ll go to post, and I decide at the last minute to make it free, because paywalls are annoying, and who wants 200 people to read the article you’ve worked hard on all day when you could have 2000? Committing to two copies of a lovely picture book might be a way of ‘kind of subscribing’, where you get something pretty good, but you don’t have to have yet another recurring payment.
So there it is. Pitch over. The book will go off for printing next week, but names are still coming in, and I’m extending until Tuesday when Sandra Nobes (designer, Allen & Unwin) will finalise layout of the names page. Hardbacks will then be with me in early December, and I’ll send them out in time for Christmas. I’m guessing it’ll be $30 per book (plus postage). Possibly $29,95 once I read my book on marketing and understand how human brains respond to price tags.
Thanks for considering all this. If you don’t want your name in the back, I’ll of course be posting when copies come in. You can equally support me then, with a purchase or two.
Cheers
Tony
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