Meeting the Liveworm Team: The Moogy Roo Series.
Post 5 / Posted February 27th 2020
This Blog is a retrospective look back on my self publishing journey which took just on 12 months from the day I decided to publish my first story, mid January 2019 to finally collecting my first 534 copies from customs at Brisbane Wharf late January 2020.
Date in History: 10th April 2019
With heightened anxiety I arrived at the meeting with Sharon and Alejandra (Liveworm Mentors) but was quickly put at ease by three genuine passionate professionals whose knowledge and creativeness was confrontingly on a completely different level to mine. As we sat I expected each one of them to take a moment to read my story, that I had by the way, agonised over a few days earlier on how best to present, deciding on a schmick new white lever arch folder that spoke to me from the shelves of Officeworks and emptied my pocket of a few dollars more than I was expecting to pay, but could be professionally presented along with my market analysis and book specifications which I had also compiled into this folder, following specific guidelines I had researched when submitting to an illustrator which covered:-
- Subject matter and basic plot summary of your story - Intended audience - Budget (Unknown) - Where the book will be distributed - My experience and reason for self-publishing - What am I looking for in an Illustrator - How the book will be marketed - Soft (Limp) or Hard (Cased) Book Cover (Undecided)
- Portrait Page Size 25.7 x 24.7cm (Other books I liked)
- Landscape Page Size 21.6 x 28.7cm (Other books I liked)
- Inside Paper Type: Satin / Gloss
- Number of Inside Pages 13 (Approximately)
- Colour or Mono print (Inside Pages) Colour
- Cover Lamination (Matte or Gloss) Gloss
- Quantity 300 - 500 (Depending on Minimum)
- Book Content (Text, Images etc) Coloured Illustration and Black & Text
- Production schedule and finished illustrations Unknown / TBA.
But this was all fluff and containing only basic specifications which I quickly suspected when it only took a Sahron and Ale a momentary glance before putting aside my shiny new white folder so they could instead, hear personally, my aesthetic vision for the book, and which their first question was "What was my prefered illustration Style?" to which I replied with a very confident 'blank stare" whilst simultaneously trying to teleport myself out of the room, because I simply had no idea. I thought you asked an illustrator to draw and they draw, NO, but thankfully Sharon and Ale could see that my sweat glands were doing the talking for me and quickly ducked away to grab a pile of sample books from an endless wall of bookshelves encompassing the room, that had obviously been compiled from past student and commercial projects over the 30+ years the Liveworm program has been running. From that point on it was information overload, and discussed a plethora of book design optons as follows:-
So many options
Format Hard Cover
Soft Cover Book Size
Stitch Binding
Perfect Binding
Case Binding
Board Book
Illustration Style
Pencil Charcoal Lithography Acrylics Pen and Ink Freehand Digital Vectore Graphics Page Finish & Paper Weight
Coated
Uncoated Satin Paper
Gloss Paper
Matte Paper
Art Paper Paper Weight (Grams per square metre)
Book size and finish Die Cut Spot UV Embossing
Debossing
Foil Stamping
Coating
Celo Glazzed Whilst I left this meeting with greater knowledge and significantly more clarity for the design of my book, I still had homework and research to do, which was to nail down an illustration style so we could commence the next phase 'Character design".
I will be posting twice a week, every Tuesday and Thursdays and would love your feedback, comments and questions along the way. Thanks for your support.
