A Different Sort of Publishing – One Book at a Time!

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bookbinding, bookselling, fiction, illustration

Well, it couldn’t be much more different to pile-it-high-sell-it-cheap, could it, binding your own books? All those free giveaway downloads (that most people will probably never read), all that worry about potential poor reviews, the need to sell thousands of copies to get anywhere – it’s as far away from that as you can get. I make books and I sell what I make. It’s very satisfying.

I have made ten copies (that’s all!) of The Herbarium to take to the Blandford Literary Festival this Saturday. If they sell, that’s great and I’ll make some more. If they don’t, it doesn’t matter – I can relax knowing I have a few ‘in stock’ and cheerfully get on with another project.

I used to be in a froth of worry at these sorts of events in case I didn’t sell anything – a clear sign of failure as a writer. These days I don’t really think about it like that. People like them or they don’t, buy them or they don’t. When they’re gone, they’re gone, at least until I can make a few more. And the great thing about a hand-bound book is that it’s a great conversation starter. I always have something to say, and indeed, the book, being illustrated, says a great deal for itself. It’s entirely a win-win situation for me. No longer am I the unhappy author whimpering ‘please buy one of my books’ to an uninterested, overloaded market. This is the sort of publishing I can happily deal with. One book at a time! And I get to tell people how I did it, too. I’m sure it will be a very enjoyable day.

 

Blandford Literary Festival, The Corn Exchange, Blandford Forum, Dorset. My talk will be at 11.45am on Saturday 23 November, as part of the Dorset Writers Network Open Day. Admission free.

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Talking about Bookbinding

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bookbinding, Dorset, illustration

It’s been a busy time for me lately – not only have I been working on the text and illustrations for a new hand-bound book, I have also been preparing for a talk I shall be giving on the subject at the Blandford Literary Festival at the end of next week. There are many processes I could talk about, what with the writing, illustrating and binding aspects and I could happily chatter on about it all day. But I only have one hour, so it will necessarily be a little compressed. What to concentrate on? I can’t possibly demonstrate it all, or even part of it. My audience are likely to be mainly writers themselves, and I decided they’re most likely to be interested in the detail of the bookbinding process.

To demonstrate this, I created a set of small books, each one designed to show a different stage of the binding process. I can pass these round so that people can look at them as closely as they wish, and ask questions. I hope this will work!

Practicalities aside, the point I most want to get across is that this is not a money-making scheme – I do it purely for love, a true amateur, I hope, in every sense. I sell what I make, and get my money back, but commercial success was never part of the plan. The satisfaction of producing my own books is reward enough.

 

Blandford Literary Festival, The Corn Exchange, Blandford Forum, Dorset. My talk will be at 11.45am on Saturday 23 November, as part of the Dorset Writers Network Open Day. Admission free.

Persistence and the Art of Drawing

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Artwork, drawing, illustration, plants

First version…

Second version…

Third version…

Getting there…

Completed version

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. This proverb was a favourite of one of my primary school teachers, and she must have taught me well, as I often quote it to myself. It’s an uncomfortable feeling when a creative project, even a small one, doesn’t quite work out, as I discovered this week when I set about producing an illustration for my new work-in-progress The Chesil Apothecary.

The subject of my drawing was a climbing plant that grows wild in the hedgerows here in Dorset, the black bryony. Its flowers are small, green and unspectacular, but it comes into its own in the autumn when they are replaced by strings of bright red berries. Reproducing these in black-and-white, pen and ink, was always going to be challenging, but when the drawing was finished, I knew something was wrong. I simply hadn’t captured the artless, tumbling magnificence of the plant.

Now I’m aware that I often take liberties with nature in these drawings – I’m not a botanical artist – but there was something in the exuberant flow of berries that was missing, something in the sinuous way they dangle and pile themselves over the plant’s luxuriant heart-shaped leaves. It just didn’t look right. So back to the drawing board.

All plants have a ‘jizz’, as they say in the birding community – something in the shape and layout of it that tells you straight away what you’re looking at, without analysis. When you look at a familiar plant – a tulip or a daisy – you recognise it without considering its component parts. So I began to search for this quality in the bryony plant. What is it that I recognise? Heart-shaped leaves? Yes, but also something in the way the heavy bines of berries hang, and the pale tones of spent stems behind them. It wasn’t easy to pin down, and I thought about it for some time before I tried the illustration again. Halfway through, I realised that yet again it wasn’t working. I still had something badly wrong with the berry clusters – so back to the drawing board once more.

The internet can be a great help in this situation, and I called up every image of the black bryony that it could provide. One of these images spoke to me – and bingo! I could see where I’d gone wrong. The puzzle was solved.

The third version – still not perfect – at least represents the plant as I know it, and I’m happy with that. Persistence pays off, and you learn so much along the way, too.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Works for me!

 

I shall be talking about writing, illustrating and binding my own books at the Blandford Literary Festival on Saturday morning 23rd November, as part of the Dorset Writers’ Network Open House.  Blandford Literary Festival