By Mick Le Moignan
Regular readers of this column may recall my story, last year, of a hasty promise made to an old friend during lockdown, which led to the foundation of a small publishing company, Bouley Bay Books.
My experience in the film and TV industry was little help when it came to publishing. Writing a book, while essential to the process, is only the start of it. To sell a film or TV programme, you only have to convince one network and sometimes a few investors of its value. With a book, you must persuade every single purchaser to part with their hard-earned cash.
Self-publishing is a relatively simple process. You lodge the files of your book, in approved formats, with an international print and distribution company and decide the prices. Any copies that are ordered are ‘printed on demand’.
The downside is that the margin on sales is excruciatingly small – and bookshops will only order multiple copies if either the book or the author is well-known.
The next step is to visit bookshops and tell them about your books – which is when you discover that most bookshops refuse to set up accounts with small, independent publishers, because there are thousands of us and, they, understandably, don’t want to take on the extra administrative burden for a handful of copies which may not sell.
The solution is to sign a contract with a book distributor, who acts as intermediary between publishers and bookshops. They take 60-70% of the Recommended Retail Price of each book. Typical printing costs are about a third of the RRP, so little or nothing is left to cover other costs or any profit. It’s a labour of love.
The solution to that problem is to switch from ‘print on demand’ to paying in advance for a print run of several thousand copies, where the unit cost of each book is much lower – but you do have to sell them, to get your money back – so you need to be very sure of the lasting value and appeal of the book in question.
Last year, my son Nick told me that his favourite childhood bedtime story, The Runaway Roller Skate, had been out of print for many years. He said dog-eared, second-hand copies could occasionally be found online at prices approaching £100.
I said I was sorry to hear it, as I agreed it was one of the most delightful of all children’s books. Nick said: ‘Well, now you’re a publisher, why don’t you do something about it?’
Fair challenge. I decided to try and contact the writer and illustrator, John Vernon Lord, and ask if I could reissue his masterpiece. It was 50 years, I found, since its original publication by Jonathan Cape.
Google advised that John had taught illustrating at the University of Brighton for most of that time, retiring as Professor Emeritus, and lived in the village of Ditchling, on the South Downs. Sadly, none of my usual informants, Google, Siri or Alexa, could furnish me with an address, email or phone number for him.
I decided to emulate Mr Ellwood and start searching. Disappointingly, the staff at the pub in Ditchling said they had never heard of Mr Lord. (Spoiler: it was the wrong pub.) The charming proprietor of the Ditchling tea-rooms, The Nutmeg Tree, said he often called in and promised to pass on a message.
Three weeks passed by and we heard nothing. On a return visit to The Nutmeg Tree, our new friend said she hadn’t seen him but she still had my message on her mantelpiece. We tried the local art gallery, where they said they had exhibited Mr Lord’s work several times and he was a frequent visitor. If I’d care to leave a message for him…
Enjoying some consoling raspberries as we walked back to our car, my wife, Trish, gave me a nudge and pointed to another couple, heading towards the gallery. ‘Say John!’ she whispered. I did so and a tall, rather elegant, artistic-looking man turned around and said, ‘Yes?’
So ended our quest for the runaway illustrator, who immediately agreed to contact Jonathan Cape and seek permission to relaunch the book. Later, over a convivial pub lunch at John’s preferred pub in Ditchling, the White Horse, we reflected on the part played by luck in anyone’s life. As a wise man (possibly Thomas Jefferson) once said: ‘The harder I work, the luckier I get.’ Mr Ellwood’s quest to recover his stolen skate and his dogged refusal to countenance failure are prime examples of that.
John told us how the story originated: at boarding school in Wales, on rainy Saturdays, the boys were allowed to roller skate around a vast, indoor area. A shy eight-year-old, John found one of his skates had been ‘borrowed’ by an older boy. Rather than telling a teacher or asking for it back, John just used the single, remaining skate. And yes, the boy’s name was Ellwood.
John Lord has always worked hard, generously encouraging fresh generations of British book illustrators and publishing over 40 books, illustrating works by Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear and, possibly most challenging of all, James Joyce. He won the UK’s top award for illustrating, the Victoria & Albert Museum Prize, for his work on Aesop’s Fables in 1990 and again, 28 years later, for his amazing illustrations of Joyce’s Ulysees, published by the Folio Society.
John is the doyen of British illustrators. I see The Runaway Roller Skate and The Giant Jam Sandwich as the 20th century equivalents of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, delighting adults and children alike. Future generations of parents and children deserve to have the pleasure of sharing them.
We hope to make sure these wonderful children’s classics will never again go out of print. For me, whatever other books we may publish in the future, that would be ample justification for setting up Bouley Bay Books.
The Runaway Roller Skate will be republished on 1 September 2023. Copies are available in Jersey at the Amaizin’ Adventure Park and online. RRP £12.99.
