The Prisoners of Wispine (A childrens book I've written)

[Mr Flibble]

Hi,
As this is an off topic forum I thought I'd use it to talk about a book I've written for 8-15 year olds.

The Prisoners of Wispine is a fantasy meets fairy-tale meets murder mystery. Featuring a witch, a fairy, a shrunken ogre, a sneaky ratbag, a nanny, an animal lover, a tyrant, a prince, two princesses and a master of disguise.

It is a tale of wit, hope, despair, intrigue, secrets, flashbacks, love, death, prison bars and lost magic.

Blurb:

Princess Holly has been in exile from Wispine for so long. Finally, she returns home with the help of the mysterious Madam Tythorn. Princess Holly can hardly believe her eyes.

What had happened to Wispine?

Wispine was once a thriving magical land, full of wonder and excitement. Then everything changed and the magic came to an end.

Before long Princess Holly finds herself at Castle Fang, once a lavish kingdom, now a dank prison where fairies, witches and anyone connected with magic is now imprisoned.

The castle is staffed by guards, including Omar, a shrunken ogre and Officer Hart, who has a strange connection to one of the prisoners. Within these walls, Holly makes some new friends including Mystica the Witch and Princess Beau. She also encounters an old enemy – Fizz – the fairy who exiled her. But can they put their differences to one side as anew enemy becomes apparent?

When one of the prisoners is found dead everyone is a suspect, everyone has a motive but very few people seem to care, except for the man who put an end to the magic – the mysterious King Logan.

Where has all the magic gone?
Why has Officer Hart suffered memory loss?
Can Mystica the Witch secretly cast spells?
Who has a copy of the keys to the castle?
What is Madam Tythorn’s dangerous secret?
And...who is a murderer?


Available from Amazon & Lulu:
http://www.lulu.com/gb/en/shop/philip-r-clarke/the-prisoners-of-wispine/paperback/product-22739402.html

Thanks for reading :)

[ThatWriterGuy]

Interesting -- my partner is a published children's book illustrator. Did you pitch you this around to agents/publishers before self publishing?

[ThatWriterGuy]

P.S. Stoke me a clipper, I'll be back for Christmas.

[ashkent7]

I self-published a children's book a few years ago. It was aimed younger than yours - probably 3-6 years. It did alright for a while (not as good as my novels) but to be fair i didn't really do any marketing...it was more an exercise in getting it in some form so it wouldn't be lost forever (in a future that aint what it used to be lol) so i had someone illustrate it and put it on Amazon. I personally would always go self published with any future books (when I get around to finishing the dozen or so that are underway - too many irons in too many fires to rush things out) for a few reasons.

I know a few published writers and i know what they went through in both time and money to get published, and they are making a reasonable living from it, but I can put out a book on Amazon with a paperback version in about an hour and for a fraction of the cost it would be to send out prospective letters, which means there is money left for some targeted advertising. Plus there's the factor of having full control over your book, the lack of multiple page contracts to sift through and try and work out who is doing you over on which page. If you're willing to put in the graft, get your work in front of the people who are going to buy, then there's nothing you can't do yourself. I sell video greetings and when i started I had no reviews, no website, and a whole load of competition...two years on it's projecting about 10-12k profit this year. A bit of grit, determination, going against the grain every now and then and just plugging away until you get where you want to be, you get there with or without agents/publishers.

Sorry that was a bit longer than intended. Good luck with the book i know how competitive the teen market is :D

[Mr Flibble]

Interesting -- my partner is a published children's book illustrator. Did you pitch you this around to agents/publishers before self publishing?

Thanks for your responses guys and good luck with your own books.

I tried a few agents but most didn't want to know because the only publishing past I had was in a scientific journal. and none of them gave me a reason why. I did pay a known fantasy author to review the work so I knew it was not a load of crap. It had also been written and produced as a play before it was a book and was quite popular when it was put on.

As for publishers I had another book which was a review of Disney animated movies and that was with a publisher who basically held it for about a year and pissed me about because they kept prioritising other titles. then I was told the owner fell ill and they were just not moving forward with it. So I waited until the contract expired before publishing it myself here: http://www.lulu.com/gb/en/shop/philip-r-clarke/it-all-started-with-a-mouse/paperback/product-22579245.html

I initially published that one through Publish Nation but when I discovered they were doing it through Lulu and that I could do it all myself for nothing I self published this new one.

I'm trying to market it by emailing bookshops like Waterstones but mostly independent ones. I may try emailing some schools but I'm not sure how fruitful that will be.

I wanted to turn both into ebooks but they keep getting rejected due to formatting. The Disney one I don't think I can do. Lulu offer a service to do it for you for $799 which converts to just over £600. Well I doubt I'd shift enough copies to justify that expenditure.
In short there is little money to be made from writing books these days, It can only really be done if you like writing.

[ashkent7]

Thanks for your responses guys and good luck with your own books.

I tried a few agents but most didn't want to know because the only publishing past I had was in a scientific journal. and none of them gave me a reason why. I did pay a known fantasy author to review the work so I knew it was not a load of crap. It had also been written and produced as a play before it was a book and was quite popular when it was put on.

As for publishers I had another book which was a review of Disney animated movies and that was with a publisher who basically held it for about a year and pissed me about because they kept prioritising other titles. then I was told the owner fell ill and they were just not moving forward with it. So I waited until the contract expired before publishing it myself here: http://www.lulu.com/gb/en/shop/philip-r-clarke/it-all-started-with-a-mouse/paperback/product-22579245.html

I initially published that one through Publish Nation but when I discovered they were doing it through Lulu and that I could do it all myself for nothing I self published this new one.

I'm trying to market it by emailing bookshops like Waterstones but mostly independent ones. I may try emailing some schools but I'm not sure how fruitful that will be.

I wanted to turn both into ebooks but they keep getting rejected due to formatting. The Disney one I don't think I can do. Lulu offer a service to do it for you for $799 which converts to just over £600. Well I doubt I'd shift enough copies to justify that expenditure.
In short there is little money to be made from writing books these days, It can only really be done if you like writing.

I have some templates for uploading to Amazon as a kindle formatted ebook. I know some things can be a nightmare getting the dimentions, fonts and page breaks right. I'll dig out the files and stick them in a dropbox link if you want them (just need to remember what hard drive I have them on!). Definitely don't go through Lulu for a conversion...worst case scenario have a look on Fiverr.com and you would get someone who could format it for probably $50 at most. Fiverr is one of the best places anyone doing indie stuff can look (in any branch of work). The cover of this book of mine (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grim-Reaping-Reaper-Book-ebook/dp/B009T6VFSW) was done by someone on Fiverr for around £75 - before that I was getting quotes of £400+ for similar (and it is a full A4 wraparound cover - and he also sent me all the original sketches and stuff he did).

This was the original cover (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grim-Reaping-Anthony-Lund/dp/1781768048/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)

On Fiverr, you just have to find the right people but you can literally get anything (I do puppet promotion videos on there and a couple of voice overs - I used to do transcript work for a while when I needed the money and before my other ventures kicked in properly)

Just as another thing, check out someone like Feedaread.com for print books, or if you want to cut out another middle-man go to someone like Lightning Source (who are part of Ingrams who do IngramSpark as another option), but for Lightning Source you are effectively the publisher yourself so you buy ISBN numbers and they simply print your book (and when you go through someone like Lulu they effectively just pass your book to someone like Lightning Source to print - which is why you usually pay more). I know IngramSpark wasn't around when I last published, so I'm not sure how they compare to others, but Feedaread was pretty cheap to publish an on demand paperback.

[ashkent7]

This also makes an interesting read.

http://selfpublishingadvice.org/watchdog-ingram-spark-vs-createspace-for-self-publishing-print-books/

[Mr Flibble]

Thanks I'll take a read of that.

The newer more cartoony cover for Grim Reaping is better than the old more gothic one I think.

I ended up having to do a massive rewrite to simplify some of the language for younger readers on mine.

[ashkent7]

I always think that is the hardest thing about children's books - particularly any aimed at 8+

You look at the likes of Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl and such against, the Lemony Snickett books, and then against David Walliams books, and then add in Roald Dahl.... there is such a vast difference in style, tone and difficulty (not to mention length), that I think it's pretty impossible to pin down any real guidelines other than toning down the violence and any mild sweary words. And even then, if you look at movies that carry a 12A rating they can contain one instance of f*** in them now and are violent as hell, so who knows.

I know my daughter is just turned 5, and she can read as well as her cousin who just turned 7, so even giving a book to a child to test doesn't always work. Hardest audience in the world to cater for - especially when all they want to do is watch an annoying badly drawn walking bacon sandwich and its equally irritating brother. :-)