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.

Illustrating 'You Will Be Found', by Benj Pasek & Justin Paul

This was a massive job.

Hence, this is a fairly massive blog.

If you want to read the lot - get the kettle on! And settle in.

~ † ~

When I was first contacted about this job by Sasha at Little, Brown,  I knew nothing about the musical 'Dear Evan Hansen', nor its story; I was ignorant of its success and didn't know anything about its songwriters, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (though I later found out I knew a lot about their songs!)

I'm not generally a musical fan, and as such, this was totally off my radar.

Unusually for me, I didn't immediately set-to with an hours-long Duck Duck Go search of the musical, its characters or its writers. Knowing only that this was to be a 'the book of the song' - the most famous and well-loved song of this extremely successful Broadway musical - all I was eager to find were as many renditions as possible of it, learn its words, understand its rhythm and cadence. Which I found, and listened to, and watched, over and over.

I had a Wiki-read of the plot, knowing that its themes were large and heavy, and with a seriously hectic timescale in mind, got to work. In a very over-simplified summary, and without issuing spoilers (I've since been to see the musical) Dear Evan Hansen tells the story of a struggling, lonely lad who happens upon a way to put himself in an unexpected position of both power and likability, but only via his genuine desire to soothe the pain of others, and bring comfort. En route he becomes distinctly less likeable as we watch his own needs begin to obscure his original aims in his painfully human search to belong, and a series of well-meant but ill-judged decisions turn good intentions into a slowly-building, inevitable implosion. And it's all played out on the howling screens of social media against the backdrop of high school politics. 

What I did know at the very beginning was that suicide, isolation, loneliness, dishonesty and grief are handled with a steady but surprisingly deft touch in this story, and the song, adopted by people around the globe, appeared to have become something of an anthem; a go-to in the vein of 'Let it Go' or 'Greatest Showman's 'This Is Me' from 'The Greatest Showman', which Benj and Justin wrote (along with all its other songs - and they also wrote them for 'La La Land', and 'Trolls', which I love).

30-something illustrations plus cover were all to be delivered to a crazy schedule. Over 100 pieces of individual artwork were made for this book, and this blog is a summary of the processes I went through to develop the look and narrative for it.

What had brought Little, Brown to me were the illustrations I'd done a couple of years previously for Andrea Gibson's 'Take Me With You', tiny, all-ink pieces created in response to individual lines taken from Andrea's huge poetry archive. This was the one that really caught Benj and Justin's attention:

Maybe it was the fact that it was a piano that drew them in; maybe the sadness of the dead plant with the tuning fork stuffed in it. But it gave me something to start with.

As I started to make suggested pieces for the book in order to establish its vibe and voice, I began to feel like they should be a little more expressive, and loose. This wasn't just me inventing an excuse to throw ink around for the next five months (although, that's exactly what I did end up doing!), more a question of following where my nose took me, if you know what I mean.

These early offerings were met positively, created in black and grey, with the colour scheme to be dictated by the strong Dear Evan Hansen (hereafter referred to as DEH) branding. We tried to work out the cover at the same time as the first few spreads, the cover always being the most urgently needed - with all the art created with inks on A2 and A3 paper, using brushes, dip pens, monoprinting, bleach, pencil and fineliner.

This very early spread eventually evolved into its final version, though quite changed:

A little collage came really naturally to these early illustrations, tearing through paper, cutting holes for absence and missing people:

At the same time as establishing a look for the inside, we had to move fast on the cover. It needed to be strong and simple, and I made many versions - we knew the figure was important, we knew the sky was important (Evan is very lost at the start), and we knew the title had to take centre stage.

We *also* suspected there might be gold...well, I did, and thus made sure the roughs said so (in the end, it was an emboss and a spot varnish - not bad, not bad!)

Evan's isolation was key, so the figure became a repeated motif throughout - sometimes alone, sometimes with company. Note the early spellings of Benj's name, before I'd got to grips with it!

The tree for the cover, which also ended up appearing many times inside, was made with four shades of blue ink, and a few shapes were auditioned:

And here's the final cover. This is the paper wraparound, with the addition of a healthy sprinkle of ink blots.

While the cover was being sorted, I had to crack on with the first few spreads (the whole thing was a creative juggling act!) Collage came very naturally, as it allowed for layering and organic experimentation, as in the early spread for this line of the song, our little person pondering whether they can overcome that challenging thing ahead of them, the enormity of the mountain making them feel tiny.

The notion of loneliness is pivotal to the musical, and runs through the pages of the book. There were many ways I wanted to show it. This spread wasn't used, but it speaks to the idea that you can be surrounded by people, but still feel totally alone - or indeed that you want all those well meaning people to go away.

I really wanted all these little all-inclusive faces to stay - they weren't used, but they did come back to the final pages in a different form:

I wanted these faces to be suggestive of thumb prints, for their obvious power to symbolise individuality; expressions are mixed, some somewhat unsure, some quietly comfortable, some sad:

Solving the problem of the 'disappearing' lines was tricky. It was terribly easy to go literal on these lines. So my process tends to be exactly that - if there's an obvious or literal solution, I do it; execute those ideas, get them 'exorcised' and onto the paper. Having got them out of my system I can then move on from them - or, as often happens, end up wandering back to them, realising that they aren't actually as visually literal as perhaps I thought they were.

This person has cut themselves from the background; a maelstrom of swirling dark ink strokes and rain:

This is how it looks in the book (less of an 'Alien life form'!)

Disappearance could as easily have been communicated through lettering; here the dyes in the ink decrease with increased watering-down. The footsteps were maybe a touch too 'signposty', so they were removed.

Other spreads were subject to the same kind of see-sawing between literal and pictorial. In this rough sketch our little figure - no particular gender, no particular age - is directing the rain away from them. Let it pour! I've got my (virtual) brolly!

That spread must have had five or six iterations before it eventually became this - a huge surprise, as I didn't think for a minute the chaps would go for it. But they loved its writhing movement and chaos!

I'm happy about that of course, because I was having the time of my life quite literally hurling ink at paper, and working in the most free and abstract way a lot of the time. 

Some spreads took a lot of working out and were subject to much e-wrangling - with one in particular taking us right past deadline and into hours before print cut-off. This one saw many sketches - one of my favourite rejects, the windows in this old and tired but welcoming house encourage our little person up the steep, charcoal hill to where the light is:

This version put them on a gnarly sea:

And this one is fairly close to the version that went into the book; the fragile growth of a tiny plant.

Since the song was in my head for the whole of the five months I worked on this, I could (and still can) recite every line in my sleep. This pair of lines was subject to exactly the 'go literal then work outwards' method; starting with a person in the self-preserving foetal position, broken into pieces courtesy of ink scored though with bleach lines (though the character itself is too alien-like):

Again I played with a type-based treatment for this too - slicing the word through with scalpelled, inked paper:

This is very close to the final book version. Large brushed letters eat into the solid background, with bleach ink blots cutting further into it:

I loved that this one utilised one of my big-galaxy drawings, a huge moon behind the little person holding up 'U' (you...)

This is a first-week sketch vs the final book version:

I could honestly go on talking about the process; it was enormously satisfying and a serious challenge at times, both in terms of time pressure and ticking all the delicately-balanced boxes that illustrating these lyrics and their themes demanded. But I can't; this blog would just go on and on.

By the time we'd finished the job though, I'd generated a pile of over 100 pieces of individual art, with backgrounds, washes, textures, experiments on top. In the end the only way to really see this book is to buy the book! With over 30 spreads and myriad pieces of artwork hidden elsewhere inside, it really is too much to blog here. And I like to leave some surprises. But here are some of my favourite details, and some of the 'inkounters' I had on the way.

This is the hardback cover which sits beneath the paper wrap:

These endpapers were a total triumph - INK!

I love the drama in this one. I kept being encouraged to go more minimal - which was a strange dilemma for someone who naturally likes to fill a page with detail, but also feels completely at home with the simplicity of a single brush-stroked letter. I think there's a feeling that when I'm 'on the clock', I need to be giving "value for money" by totally filling an image - something which I said to Sasha, Little, Brown's art director on this book, who promptly laughed at the notion!

And finally: to celebrate the release of 'You Will Be Found', I had my nails painted with Evan's shirt stripes, a starry sky from the book, and of course: that now-legendary line.

Thank you to Benj, Justin, Sasha and Farrin, and to Leigh from whom I was regularly quarantined at my desk for months on end, my hands a blur of blue ink, sheets of paper, emails and mess piling up.