The future looks bookish.

I recently received this email from David Shelley at Hachette Publishing, along with many other contributors to the book industry, and am sharing it here as it contains some beautifully positive, useful and curious insights into the landscape of books right now, as we move away from a pandemic into a different set of 'challenging' circumstances.

As you will know, I love books - buying, reading, designing and illustrating them - and people sometimes ask me whether 'books are dead', or on the decline; the rather simplistic assumption being that digital advances have somehow pushed paper books off the shelf.

One of the loveliest highlights is learning that things are actually rather good in the book world. Not fabulously, sunnily glowing, but productively optimistic, fuelled by a return to reading courtesy of pandemic-enforced hibernation, and a significant growth in the numbers of younger readers.

It's long, but well worth the read if, like me, you're a bit soul-tired of bad news, sad endings, scary AI stories and financial and political developments which feel at best threatening, and at their worst (usually at around 3am), malevolent. Take some joy from David's words as he talks about the growth in reading, strong book sales in Ukraine, Tik-Tokers' love for books - and an uptick in the manufacture of book cases!

(I also noted excitedly that Hachette have bought Paperblanks, whose delicious, bejewelled notebooks I have bought for years. Having not seen them around recently, I'm glad to hear they're still going to be there for my fevered collector's hands.)

Enjoy this chunk of gently uplifting news. It has been lightly edited for brevity.

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Dear authors, translators and illustrators,

 

I’m writing at the end of another eventful year to give an annual update on the current books market, to share some information about what’s happening at Hachette, and thoughts about what 2023 might hold for book publishing. 

 

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL

 

As I think it’s important to find reasons to be cheerful right now, I thought I’d start with a few pieces of positive information about the overall state of the books market. Firstly, the data to the end of October shows that print book sales in the UK slightly increased in 2022 on 2021 – which was already a buoyant year for sales. Our figures show that audiobook sales have also shown some growth, and that ebook sales have remained steady.

 

Given the economic challenges in the UK, this is extremely heartening to see. There is a truism that two products are more able to withstand recessions than most – books and chocolate, because both are affordable luxuries that repay investment with great pleasure. For the hours of enjoyment that one gets from books and the depth of their emotional impact, I think they are terrific value for money compared to many other forms of entertainment (gaming, cinema, TV), and this year’s robust sales bear this out.

 

It is even better to see because, as has been well-documented, there was a boom in reading during lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. The fact that the market has remained strong – and a long way up on the pre-Covid sales of 2019 - suggests that even after lockdowns had ended, people have kept up the reading habit. Looking back in history, there is precedent for this: there was a marked and permanent jump up in sales of novels after the Second World War as it was a habit that many acquired during that time. The hope is that these readers acquired during the Covid era will remain with us in the future.

 

In terms of trends in the market, the other thing to feel hopeful about is the boom in younger readers. We are seeing TikTok as an incredibly strong driver of book recommendations and sales, and much of this market is made up of teenagers and twentysomethings. Their preference is predominantly for physical books, and there is great focus from this market on the production values of books and an emphasis on collectability. One nice side-effect is a boom in the production of bookcases after gradual decline in previous years; many teenagers now have a large collection of books and want to display them. Plus there has been a real rise in the popularity of subscription boxes, where readers get a book every month; it feels like another testament to the power of curation, and how much people like having a book chosen for them.

 

Some key themes in fiction include novels that feature or combine romance, fantasy, suspense and that have inclusion at their heart. It’s always hard to generalise but a lot of the bestsellers recommended on TikTok feature worlds and experiences that are different to the reader’s own. I think we’re also seeing a (welcome) dissolving of borders between genres. Research has long shown that readers often don’t read within narrow genre parameters – ie wouldn’t categorise themselves as a ‘crime reader’ or ‘science fiction reader’ and that seems to be more true than ever for younger readers now who are more influenced by story and character than genre. As someone who used to work as an editor predominantly within a genre (crime) and was frequently annoyed by the way this was used by those outside it to compartmentalise or reduce the impact of it, I couldn’t be more pleased to see this largely artificial industry system start to crumble.

 

In non-fiction we have seen a real rise in our specialist publishing. Even though the internet holds information on every conceivable subject, people are increasingly turning to books to give them trusted, fact-checked and detailed information on a particular issue that they are invested in. One example of this is the success of our Jessica Kingsley list, which is the world’s leading publisher in the fields of autism, arts therapies and gender diversity and sold more books than ever in 2022.

 

One other very positive phenomenon is the continued rise of independent bookshops, not just in the UK but also in India, Australia and other key markets. The rise of ethical consumerism and localism seems to have grown during 2020-21 and we are seeing more consumers who want to buy their books from local and independent retailers. It’s something we’re keen on here as the hand-selling independent booksellers do can often launch an author’s career, and it’s why we’re proud to work with the Booksellers Association and to be the official sponsor of Independent Bookshops Week which had its biggest and best year yet in 2022.

 

The Future

 

I think it would be probably be reckless right now to try to predict what even the near future will hold for our industry as things are changing so fast. But the things we are gearing up for in 2023 are a continuation of the supply chain and consumer confidence challenges I mentioned earlier – none of these look set to get any better in the immediate future – yet also, I hope, a continued recognition that books are a vital way of getting through difficult times. Thinking about the books published across our lists, they variously provide escapism and entertainment; an educational route towards success; a means to help improve health, wellbeing or life satisfaction; a deep dive into complex issues that cannot be adequately covered in a social media post or newspaper article; a route into other people’s psychology; a source of joy for adults and children alike; and a vision for a better future.

 

Lastly, I just wanted to share one interesting export sales statistic with you, which is that we have observed that book sales in Ukraine were at exactly the same level in 2022 as in 2021 – this is in addition to various charitable books contributions. I think this is a striking testament to the bravery and tenacity of Ukrainian booksellers, a number of whom came to the Frankfurt Book fair and whom we met with there, and to the enduring power of books.

All my best,

David.

 

 

 

Why you should always pre-order a book you fancy.

When I’ve totally invested in a book via my illustrations, I want that book to do well. Not only for myself, because of course I’ll be earning a modest royalty on each sale and that is a part of how I earn a living, but because I want any author I’ve worked with to be rewarded for what will often be years of hard, dedicated work - and years, quite probably, of building up to starting it, planning, thinking, dreaming (these are the people who didn't just dream about it - they did it!)

Contrary to how it might look on the chirpy and colourful bookcentric feeds of Twitter and the ‘Gram, books do not magically spring from nowhere, fully formed with glittering covers and smiling, selfie-ready authors. By the time you see that part, the writer has spent years chipping away at a manuscript they didn’t necessarily have ANY idea would ever be published, months honing it, weeks editing it, and the illustrator has spent weeks or months working on the illustrations to go with it - and all the sketching and roughs and versions that entails. Most of the time they'll have created a cover for the book too, which often actually comes before the insides are decorated.

A cover reveal happens some time before a book’s release, to introduce the book to the world in visual form and to remind you, if you didn’t know already or had forgotten, that its publication is imminent. And again: by that time, the illustrator’s work on it will have been finished months before that moment.

And when all that's done, when the book's become 'a real object', a definite point on the horizon, authors and illustrators will encourage you to buy a copy of their book BEFORE it comes out, from the moment it’s made available to buy online. I know as a species we’re used to hitting ‘buy’ and getting the new thing thrust in our hands pretty much the day after - or even the same day, if you use a certain grotesquely popular service - and it might be an odd concept, having to wait for the thing you’ve paid for.

But that is exactly what an author and illustrator have done; just for much longer. They’ve made the investment, a substantial one at that, and they’re now waiting patiently, and probably quite nervously, for the pay-off; the sales, the reviews, the readers receiving their book and enjoying it, and the opportunity to engage with the readers for whom they’ve laboured all this time.

Here are the reasons why buying a book before publication is immeasurably important to, and massively appreciated by, authors and illustrators.

Pre-orders  (or ‘pre-sales’) are THE BIGGEST hint to booksellers that there’s interest in a book. Bookshops used to have to use a combination of educated guess, their experience and previous sales by an author, to order in the stock of books they think they can sell. Not any more. Figures from pre-sales give them a vivid picture of what readers are anticipating - and they can order in stock of it, ready to meet demand. Books without pre-orders make it difficult to size up how many to order.

Similarly, publishers need to know how many to print! Obvious, when you think about it. Although an initial print run will have been agreed months before, or even at the time of contracts being signed, no publisher wants to under-print and not be able to meet demand - selling out straight away might be a flattering surprise for an author/illustrator, but they’d rather keep selling!

By the same token, they don’t want thousands of copies too many - buying the book you fancy as a pre-order puts the publisher one book closer to getting the quantities right.

Book sellers will sometimes offer a book at a lower price prior to publication. This is likely if it’s by an author/illustrator whose work has done well, or it’s a follow-up or one in a series. Obviously this is a 'nudge’, as it’s known in retail, but you save a couple of quid/dollars by buying it early!

Pre-orders create anticipation, excitement and momentum for the book.  An author/illustrator will be getting on The Promo Train for his or her book (nope; unless you’re on the boy-wizard level of popularity, book will NOT sell themselves) which means visiting schools and libraries, doing online talks and interviews, maybe some radio or even TV; their confidence will soar as a result of knowing that, by the time they hit the road for all this, the book is actually selling decent quantities already.

Which means an engaged and engaging speaker, who is excited and confident.

When a book is in its pre-order stage, there’s every chance the author/illustrator is working on its follow-up (keeping in mind what I said above about the timescales of book-making). Nothing says ‘keep going’ like good sales on the one you’ve already done, that’s about to come out!

WORD OF MOUTH. If you’ve pre-ordered a book, it means you’re into it and excited about it - and that means you can tell other people about it, and they can pre-order it too. I mean yes, you can do that if you order it after publication, but there’s nothing quite like the gently teenage smugness of ‘psst...I know this is gonna be a good'un…and I get my copy first.'

Finally, we author/illustrators HAVE IDEAS for stuff we want to do around the book - stuff we couldn’t put IN the book itself! A pre-order campaign allows us to make those things and offer them as little creative nuggets of encouragement to the potential readers. "Buy it now, rather than waiting till publication, and we’ll send you a bunch of swag!" In the case of Josh Allen and myself, that swag consisted of enamel badges, cards, a free illustrated story and signed art prints - for the book we’re currently promoting, that’s book plates, glow in the dark badges, signed art prints and more. Since the book launches those things stop, because, of course, we can’t offer them to every single buyer!

Think of it as not only your reward for having faith that what we’ve made will be ace, but your badge to show you’ve been inducted into our little gang of like-minded, book loving people.

And what could be nicer than that?

You can pre-order 'Only If You Dare' by Josh Allen & Sarah J Coleman in the UK and the US here.

And you can still get the some of the swag for Out To Get You, here.

The Lady Who Paints Legs

Amy Shane is a book reviewer and special events editor for the Independent Voice Newspaper in Missouri, USA, and first came to my attention on Instagram when she recreated one of my book covers...on her own body!

I'm used to seeing my artwork pop up on people's skin via the tattooist's gun - always an unexpected thrill which fills me with admiration and curiosity for the brave human who's done it - but this was different. This was a full-on, body-paint recreation of the cover in all its detail, on a difficult and unusual surface.

Amy's recreated more of my covers since, and as someone will happily talk in public or in front of an audience but doesn't exactly embrace selfie culture let alone photographing anything from the neck down, I wanted to ask her about what she does and why. This blog's normally about what I'm doing, so I thought I would probe someone else about their strange and fascinating hobby!

We, of course have the common ground of the printed book, so I think Amy and I will be in touch for a long time to come.

 She can be found on Instagram as amy_fortheloveofbooks

Please explain what your ‘real-life’ job is, and how you came to be the amazing Amy Who Paints On Her Legs?

My “real-life” job is also book related and why I ended up with an Instagram account in the first place. I am a Professional Book Reviewer, and have a newspaper column called 'For the Love of Books'. I'm nearing on eight years now, so I guess you could say I am always surrounded by books. I started on Instagram because the publishers wanted to see an online presence; honestly, I went in kicking and screaming, afraid I would never figure how it all works. 

After about eight months and totally lost on how to find my own presence, I started thinking about what books really meant to me - when you read an amazing book it’s as if you become part of it, you fall into the story, and well that’s where the idea began. I then thought about making myself part of the story and started researching paints. To be honest, I have never painted before or have taken an art class. I just doodle when I am bored. So, I bought some body paints and started playing, and the rest is history. 

 

My ‘Forest Queen’ was one of the first ‘leg’ paintings that you posted on Instagram. The legs seem an odd choice at first but they’re the natural resting place for a book when reading. Have you painted anywhere else? With or without success?

I originally started on my arm and hand, then my chest. I enjoyed painting on my chest (and matching lipstick to the paint colors) however, I have to paint completely backwards, which at times can be a bit complicated, especially when dealing with words. It took me awhile to realize I could just paint on my legs. My legs also give me space to get in more detail and aren’t a flat surface, which is easier for me to paint on. I still can’t paint on canvas or flat paper, it doesn’t make sense to me either, lol.

Some technicals:

What do you paint with? Do you use both hands?  

I only use Mehron Paradise AQ body paints. After a lot of research, I really value the company and the ingredients they use in their paints. They include:  aloe, cocoa butter, avocado oil, lemon grass, cucumber extract, and vitamin E so they smell and feel wonderful.  

They have also been around for over 90 years, so they have to be doing something right! I also use NYX brand spray primer (Just to get a smooth surface and prep the skin) and matte sealer just as an added protection when I am done.  I just paint with one hand. When it’s nice outside I love painting on my back porch, overlooking the cornfields (where I take pictures for  my stories). My neighbors must truly think I am nuts!

How long do they take you - from x hours to…? 

An average paint takes anywhere from 2 ½ hours to 4 hours, depending on how much detail there is, or how particular I get with myself. And yes, if any of you are wondering: I have gotten so frustrated that I have scraped the whole paint and washed it of before I changed my mind.

How do you wash it off? 

Just plain water. The whole paint washes off in about 10 seconds. Which is why I have to be super careful, and why I add the sealing spray. And yes, I have spilt water on my legs and lost the whole paint. 

What’s the criteria for choosing a book cover to reproduce? 

The cover art is really the first thing I look at, and if it is it something I can attempt to replicate. I can’t do photos, or people. Parts of faces yes, whole people – no way lol. I will also choose a book if I read the book and loved it, or by the author or publisher reaching out. Sometimes I go in themes. Really there is no rhyme or reason to my brain - lol!

Is there one you haven’t done yet that you really want to do? 

There are so many that I want to do, my list grows everyday. One older title I would love to do is 'Splintered' by AG Howard. I loved the series and the cover art. 

Do you have aspirations to create covers yourself? You’re clearly creative, with dexterous skills! 

I honestly never thought about it.  

And how many books do you have lined up to paint at the moment?  

At the present moment I have a list of 13 that are lined up with upcoming release dates,  and 3 already painted ready to be posted.

~ Thanks to Amy for answering my mildly predictable but nosy questions! ~

 

 

Walking Each Other Home

"We sit on the edge of a mystery. We have only down this life; so dying scares us - and we are all dying. But what if dying were perfectly safe? What would it look like if you could approach dying with curiosity and love, in the service of other beings? What if dying were the ultimate spiritual practice?"

So begins the new book by beloved, world-renowned spiritual teacher Ram Dass, and his close friend and fellow teacher Mirabai Bush. This book is the 'follow-up' to Ram's other writings, arguably the most famous of which is his 1971 'Be Here Now', which has become a classic manual for conscious being, and an account of his spiritual journey, consulted and referred to by millions of humans worldwide. I was given the opportunity to illustrate this book at the beginning of this year, and as a long-term yoga practitioner (*cough* as I picture my yoga teacher noting my recent absences!) with a growing, more recent interest in the 'self that can't be shown in Instagram' - the spiritual self, the one that's hardest to recognise, be true to and look after - I grasped this opportunity with both grateful hands.



My yoga teacher had talked of Ram Dass many times and I'd seen his books in her collection, so I knew he was culturally very significant, and much-loved; he's a bewilderingly curious character. Born Richard Alpert, he began life as an academic and clinical psychologist, a colleague of fellow clinical psychologist Timothy Leary at Harvard University, before establishing the Harvard Psilocybin Project with Leary, which is precisely what it sounds like - experimenting with and documenting the beneficial effects of hallucinogenic drugs - and the 'Good Friday Experiment', the first double-blind study of drugs and the mystical experience in 1962 with Walter Pahnke.

Now this already sounds like a fulsome life well lived. But by now, this person was also a published author and on the Board of Directors at Cambridge, Massachusetts, with several foundations to his name (did I say his PhD was on 'achievement anxiety'?) So I'm leaving a lot out of his story, as there's so much to tell - but we can cut to the travels to India, and the study under a spiritual teacher which led him to be the character we know now. For more about Ram's life, read his easy-to-digest life story here.

So. It’s long been said that I get all the ‘difficult’ topics, illustration-wise — constipation, period pain, cancer, erectile dysfunction, IBS, depression, dementia, contraception, Crohn’s — all handled by my pens. This new book is about dying, and how to do prepare for it with grace and awareness...so I wasn't surprised to receive the commission! It's another potentially difficult subject of course, and an obviously upsetting one, which was partly the point of its creation - we just don't like to think about it. But becoming older and more fragile physically, 86-year-old Ram and his friend Mirabai wanted to explore the journey towards death, grieving and loss, with humour and a lightness of touch, so that we may read it too, and look forwards with our eyes calm and open. After all - it's coming. We just don't know when or how.

I know - it all sounds very idealistic, and rather lofty when you're sitting at work stressing about finishing the next job, how to pay for this and that, worrying about the car repairs and when you'll next get time to watch another Glow/clean the bathroom/send that next promo. But Ram reminds us in the opening pages that 'we have a real deadline'. And that, of course, made me laugh; we do, and I'm a great one for thinking there's always time tomorrow, so reading parts of this book were...maybe a little sobering.



But it's a light read, and it's beautifully written. The illustrations, a mixture of real and digital ink, are sprinkled generously throughout the book from full-page images to tiny spots, and each one was a pleasure to do. I worked both in the studio and in an Edinburgh hotel room where I was based at the time for an on-location job, working on this book in the evenings. All created in shades of blank ink, and eventually turned blue for the pages, the limited palette made for some challenges with regard to contrast and clarity, but I enjoyed having parameters.

The subject matter did not spare the horses either - the request to illustrate a burning ghat had me peering sadly at image after image online, before realising this was simply the kind of visible send-off we're just not used to seeing. For them, it's not only healthy, but desirable and normal. After that, the drawing was easy. Animals and plants play a large part in the book because of Ram's location on the island of Maui, and the wicker coffin was a very meditative thing to create. My favourite illustration in the whole book however is not the busy full-pager of birds and leaves and lettering - much as I loved doing that one - but the simple, lone rock. Who knew that I would like the simplest of drawings the most, used as I am to cramming in detail. In fact, the feedback I kept receiving was to 'give air' to the images. Always keen to give 'value for money', I can lean towards crowding my illustrations, so as I did them, they moved from writhing detail to very minimal. (There are over 40 illustrations in the book, so to see them all, you'll have to buy it!)

Interestingly, within a couple of days of starting the first test image, I was involved in a distressing incident which resulted in a man's arrest and my having to give a statement to the police. The night it occurred I missed my deadline, which then took up all of my focus and worry. With the reassurance of my overseeing agent (thanks MP) and a sympathetic client, the immediate anxiety about the deadline gave way to the gravity of what I'd witnessed, and I was able to put the deadline anxiety aside and settle into some quite time dealing with the incident and the people involved before returning to the job a day later. When I look back at the piece I was working on at the time, I can see the franticness of the work, and the eagerness to compensate the client with what I felt was necessary in the light of the missed deadline - but then I also see, as the pieces progressed over the weeks, a sense of proportion introducing itself; a lightening, a calming, and a more conscious approach, despite a very big list of illustrations. Which is all very, very interesting.

I aim to read the book from start to finish now - a little at a time - and enjoy the placement of the illustrations the designer has chose. You can buy a copy direct from the publisher and most good bookshops. Choose carefully - there are myriad other, more deserving independent book shops that would appreciate your hard-earned money aside from Amazon (and who pay their taxes!)

Thank you to Jennifer from SoundsTrue for the opportunity, to Matt for helping me stay focussed on this lengthy, sprawling job among myriad others, and to Ram and Mirabai for writing the book. I hope did your words justice.

Dreadful Young Ladies

Dreadful Young Ladies by Kelly Barnhill was published in February to a ripple of curiosity on Twitter - 'who's done this cover?' 'Does anyone know this cover artist?' 'Who DID this?'

I've never experienced this before, and certainly the cover is one of my favourite covers ever, so I'm finally happy to put my name to this gorgeous, murky, witchy collection of stories about women and girls using powers they shouldn't have to do things they shouldn't be doing...or should they? Grief and hope, jealousy, loss, power and love all surge through this ornery family of tales in this, the author's first book for grown-ups.

The characters live in unusual worlds different from, but eerily familiar to, our own. I can only urge you to read it for yourself; I rarely get the time to read an entire manuscript, usually having to work on sections selected for my by the editor, or getting half to two-thirds of the way through it in order to glean clues for the cover. But this one I read cover to cover.

Commissioned by the wonderful, patient Laura Williams of Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, this hardcover needed a legendary treatment. I had a slightly slow start, aware of the impact this book was going to have for both the well-known writer as her first adult fiction, and the publisher. But once the stories had been consumed, sketches started to flow - from this peep into the mind of the writer - or is it one of her characters? -

to this typographic treatment based on fairy-tale lettering undermined by the bugs, webs, eyeballs and bones of the supernatural element to the stories:

 

I looked at further type treatments, suggesting we build the macabre feel into the letters themselves, with a rather Gothic and energetic feel:

- before settling on this insect-woman with wings crocheted together from story elements. The human-moth woman's enormous braid was inspired by an earlier illustration from a poetry book for Andrea Gibson which was not included for being potentially controversial - it had a serious political tone, for a seriously political poem. I was working on the two books quite close together, and the rejected braid just fell into place as the centrepiece of this giant (tiny?) insect:

Once this was approved, came the job of inking it in. Check the time-lapse of this happening!

The artwork took a couple of days before being laid over a hand-inked background texture:

and falling stars. Then the inside of the book needed little icons for its chapters, so I created a whole set of numbers and chapter headings, with dark little wing-dings to break up text:

Satisfied with the job, Laura and I sent the whole massive, multi-layered file off to press and  put the book to the back of our minds until publication day.

And then one day in January...it arrived.

I struggle to describe how beautiful the book is - because I didn't expect the other 50% of the cover to be so beautifully complemented by Laura's breathtaking choice of paper and print. A skin-feel stock hugs the black, gold-embossed hardback, and the cover itself shimmers with a layer of pearlescent ink underneath the CMYK:

The pages are artfully studded with my inked decorations, brave chunks of white space adding to the tension:

  

and check out the shimmering as you turn the cover in the light:

This is one of my favourite covers ever, and I think that's down to a few things combined. The subject matter appealed to me straight away, and was pitched to me enthusiastically by Laura who described me as having precisely the right blend of skills and vibe. Thanks Laura! Second, the artwork is only half the story of this cover - the paper and finishing bring the whole thing to life, creating a curious, slightly unsettling-feeling object which, without even looking at the words, you want to pick and turn around in your hands.

Thank to Laura for commissioning me, and to Kelly for writing the book. She's writing two more, and I can only hope that one of those might make it my way. We know Oprah liked this book, having added it to her to list this year:

And in the meantime, you can fead some reviews of the book here, and if you're in the US buy a copy here, or in the UK, from here.

Publishers Weekly

Washington Independent Review

Library Journal