says Asha Nehemiah, a well-known children author in conversation with Varsha Verma.

Meet Asha Nehemiah, a popular author with children of all age groups. Wonderfully funny characters get into hilarious adventures and crazy escapades in her stories. Here’s more about this wonderful author.

Journey of a writer...

“I started by working as a copywriter in an advertising agency. I worked with some amazingly talented writers and illustrators – many of whom dreamt of writing or illustrating a children’s book one day. It seemed the ultimate indulgence then - to work on a children’s book and give free rein to one’s more fantastic ideas. (I now know that creating children’s books is not what we had imagined!!!) At some point, I switched to being a freelance feature writer who also wrote for children’s pages and children’s magazines. As of now, I only write fiction for children - in magazines and books,” tells Asha as a matter of fact.

“But I knew it from a very young age that writing would be my profession. I enjoyed writing and was aware that whatever I worked at would require ‘writing’ and ‘creativity’ as the main skills. I also enjoy being with children – so teaching was the other option I considered. I am, in fact, a trained English teacher and have been a volunteer teacher for several years, teaching English to children who came from homes where they spoke only in their mother-tongue,” she adds.

Hardest part of writing a book...

“Getting the first five chapters written,” she answers quickly. “This is the stage when I’m moving the ‘book’ from a bunch of scribbles, character notes and an outline plot to actually putting it down in sentences, paragraphs and chapters. Once the first five chapters are done, the book moves a little more smoothly,” she explains..

On asking about whether the characters are inspired from life or are they fictitious, Asha replied, “A bit of both really – it’s difficult to say where reality ends and fiction starts.”

What makes a children book attractive to children...

Children today have many more options for entertainment than ever before: TV, movies, internet, games, etc. All of these options are wonderful and they all are a competition to books. “So if I want a child to read my book, it had better be at least as entertaining as any of his/her other choices – ideally it should offer a child something more satisfying. So I always keep this in mind when I write. In order to make the book a more fulfilling option, I try to include some emotion in it. Talk about feelings, relationships along with the fun and mystery and adventure. After this, the publishers have a very important role to package the book attractively and market it in a way that makes the book accessible to kids and parents equally,” reveals Asha.

But, how can parents encourage their children to read? “I think it’s important to offer children choices of good books to read rather than say anything to them. If the books seem interesting, that’s incentive enough to dip in. When parents complain that their children don’t read enough however, I have some suggestions. Be good role models. If you’re always slumped in front of the TV to unwind, that’s the subtle message the children pick up that watching TV is the best way to relax. Take your children to libraries or bookstores and let them choose whatever they want to read,” she shares.

Advice to aspiring writers...

“To borrow a line from Nike: “JUST DO IT”. So many people tell me, “I’ve always wanted to write a book. ” If you want to write and be published, ‘just do it.’ Write first. The publishing will happen,” advises Asha.

Love to read...

Asha loves to read and her bookshelf currently has Frank Cottrell Boyce’s The Unforgotten Coat and Chitty Chitty Bang bang Flies Again, Jeannette Winterson's Oranges are Not the Only Fruit and Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers. They are a favourite gift to give and receive. “I love browsing in bookstores and often end up buying a book coupon as the gift and lots of books for myself,” she adds.

“Book influence my writing in that they make me aware of the fact that there are so many new ways of telling stories that I’ve yet to explore. There are so many authors who have inspired me, but I would particularly mention Nadine Gordimer, Fay Weldon, Jane Austen, Michael Morpurgo, Jenny Valentine and Julia Donaldson,” shares Asha.

Ways to unwind...

“Reading detective stories and reading cookbooks in bed is my favourite way to unwind. I listen to music with any activity that does not involve reading and writing – like while I cook and walk,” tells Asha.

What next?

“Readers can look forward to Trouble With Magic, a book for younger readers to be published by Duckbill in April 2013. It’s a real fun book with some unexpected twists and two very lovable characters. There’s also a collection of stories for middle readers The Boy Whose Nose was Rose by Scholastic. Perhaps that will be out early next year. These are stories of mystery and fantasy – all laced with lots of humour,” she concludes.

First-look Science series from Tulika

Chennai-based Tulika Publishers has recently released First-look Science series of books, supported by Wipro as part of its Wipro Applying Thought in School initiative. This series is perfect for a child’s first look at science because they were in the form of pictures. In a classroom project with Srishti, Bengaluru, design students were asked to visualise five sets of scientific facts on different topics. And they did – through the fantasy adventures of Bhoomi’s Story - Space, Boondi’s Story - Water, Dhooli’s Story - Air, Gitti’s Story - Earth and Beeji’s Story – Earth’s Surface, which draw young children into science and introduce basic concepts about the world we live in.

The stunning pictures convey the beauty, vastness and mystery of nature, enriching the storytelling experience. At the end of each book is a summing up of facts related to the stories.

Igloo Books hopes to raise £100k for charity

UK’s leading fastest growing private publishing companies - Igloo Books - has chosen Children with Cancer to be its charity of the year for 2013. Igloo Books aims to raise £100,000 for the charity over the coming months. Igloo Books’ 80 employees will undertake a number of challenges to support the charity, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. The company plans to raise money through various means, ranging from cake sales and a summer fete, a charity barn dance, and an illustrious ball, to more gruelling challenges like the Three Peaks challenge, a 100 km walk, and, mightiest of them all - a Seven Triathlons in Seven Days challenge. This test of endurance will push team members, including MD John Styring, to their limit.

Children with Cancer UK is the leading national charity dedicated to the fight against childhood cancer through research, and remains both focused and determined to eradicate all childhood cancers.

Interestingly, Igloo Books is no stranger to fundraising. Every year, it chooses a charity to support for twelve months. Previous charities who have received Igloo’s support include the Prince’s Trust, for whom Igloo raised £50,000 in 2012. The company also takes a sustained interested in local literacy projects, donating 2,000 books to children under ten for World Book Day earlier this month.

Now ‘Diary Of A Wimpy Kid’ stationery and gift products

Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS, has announced its first-ever dedicated line of Wimpy Kid gift and stationery products. Made and marketed in coordination with Galison Publishing's Mudpuppy brand, a leader in innovative, high-quality stationery and children's products, the first items will appear in stores on October 1, 2013. They include Galison's bestselling formats: journals, notebooks, magnetic pads, and mini journals. All products are designed in conjunction with Jeff Kinney , the #1 bestselling creator of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series. This new stationery line will be sold and distributed to the trade by Chronicle Books.

"This exciting new partnership will position Wimpy Kid as a leader in the gift and stationery market," said Michael Jacobs , president and CEO of ABRAMS. "Galison's market expertise coupled with our experience with the powerful Wimpy Kid brand will deliver even more exciting opportunities for retailers and consumers." A major marketing campaign for the products will kick off in June at BookExpo America and lead into the product launch this fall.

"Galison is very excited to be in partnership with ABRAMS," said Bill Miller, president of Galison Publishing. "Based on our history of creating quality stationery and creative toys, puzzles, and fun stationery for kids, we feel we are the perfect partner to create the Diary of a Wimpy Kid stationery line."

More than 85 million Diary of a Wimpy Kid books are in print around the world. The books have been sold in more than 44 territories in 42 languages.

Affordable mobile apps for small-business advertisers

User Friendly Media signed a partner agreement with award-winning community directory publisher Local Book Publishing, to resell App Express, the affordable mobile app builder that enables small and medium-sized businesses to engage customers and grow their business with powerful mobile apps. App Express is designed to solve common business challenges, like customer communications, scheduling, invoicing, marketing and promotions.

Through this agreement, Local Book Publishing will offer the App Express platform to its advertisers in Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina, Utah and Arizona, helping them tap into the growing opportunity for SMBs to build customer loyalty with local mobile customers.

“We are excited about partnering with App Express and now have the ability to offer mobile apps to our advertisers,” said Kevin Neuberger, vice president of operations, Local Book Publishing. “Working with App Express accelerates our move into mobile and allows us to offer our advertisers an affordable option for engaging mobile customers.”

April 2: International Children Book Day

International Children's Book Day (April 2) was first observed by an international non-profit organization International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) in the year 1967 on or around the birth anniversary of Danish Author: Hans Christian Andersen. The occasion is marked with activities like writing competitions, announcements of book awards and events with authors of children's literature, etc all over the world.

Hans Christian Andersen was born in the town of Odense, Denmark, on April 2, 1805. During his lifetime he was acclaimed for having delighted children worldwide. Andersen's fairy tales have been translated into more than 125 languages. Some of his best acclaimed fairy tales series include: Thumbelina, the Ugly Duckling, the Little Mermaid, etc.

say Anushka Ravishankar and Sayoni Basu of Duckbill Books, in a tête-à-tête with Varsha Verma. Duckbill Books is a publishing house for children and young adults, a partnership between Westland, India’s fastest growing trade publishing and distribution house, Anushka Ravishankar and Sayoni Basu. “We look forward to building a children’s and young adults’ publishing list which will be comparable to the finest in the world. Our list will contain an eclectic mix of books for readers ranging from six-year-olds to young adults,” said Anushka.


Infact, Duckbill happened all of a sudden. “At some point, it just happened in May 2012,” told Anushka, who was working with Scholastic India at that time. “We were returning together from Bookaroo and thought of setting up a children publication firm, where we would not have to limit ourselves to what we can do,” added Sayoni, with a rich experience in publishing firms like Scholastic India, ACK Media, etc. “When we work in a large company, we have a conservative choice, there’s always a burden of revenue. With Duckbill, we feel more liberated.”

“Our idea was to pay more attention and time to each book to be published. This is in contrast to the big publishing houses where the pressure to bring more books out is always mounting,” added Anushka. And the name came even faster...in just three minutes, as Sayoni told. “We thought most of the publishers have a name with birds, why not an animal and then Duckbill striked and we are happy with the choice.”

Books at Duckbill...

On talking about children books, Anushka told that there are still some topics missing in this segment. “There’s not enough historical fiction and school stories. Also, we are hoping to bring some horror fictions for kids as well.”

Duckbill has launched five books so far while four are in press. “We are planning to do twenty books in a year for children (6-7+ years) and young adults. We are not into picture books right now,” informed Anushka.

The books are available in both print and ebook format. “The ebooks numbers are not large but yes, they are moving too,” told Sayoni. “Besides, books have a long shelf life. It sometimes takes 5-6 years to make a book a bestseller.”

Authors at Duckbill...

“We are consciously looking for authors. We have arranged Duckbill workshops in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and were amazed to find some really good verses. And we are excited to find people looking for something different,” told Anushka. “So, we are also promoting first-time authors, who have a different but a fresh voice. Children need to have variety. Though lot of foreign books are available, there are not many Indian authored books.”

Partnership with Westland...

Telling about their arrangement with Westland, Sayoni told that while the production and distribution is handled completely by Westland, the editorial and marketing (partly) are handled by them.

Challenges in the industry...

“Children literature is not considered much significant in the country,” feels Sayoni. “Even the literature festivals do not have children books.”

“Besides, selling is a big problem. Five years ago, lot of bookshop chains had come up and there was a need for more books to stock. But now, things are changing. It is actually difficult to break into the industry,” she added. “Moreover, getting book reviews in this segment is also difficult,” added Anushka. “Thankfully, we have received some very good reviews of our books so far,” she told as a matter of fact.

The future...

On asking about where would Duckbill be five years from now, Sayoni replied instantly, “We might publish the same number of books but of-course, we would like our books to sell splendidly. We hope that children books would become a big thing and people will take them seriously.” While, Anushka added, “The best part is when children or parents come and say that they liked our books – that’ becomes greatest gift for us.”

Macaw - a bird synonymous with vibrancy and liveliness—juxtaposed with novelty and innovation, is the marquee at Macaw Books. The publisher offers children with delightful books that not only satisfy a child’s never-ending quest for knowledge, but also instil and nurture his or her creative instincts. The Macaw range of books cater to toddlers, young children as well as adolescents, and include picture books, activity books, retold fairy tales & fables, graphic comics, children’s classics, fiction, non-fiction, all featuring state-of-the-art, vibrant illustrations and lively, easy to follow text. Here’s more on this vibrant children books publisher.

The beginning…

Sandeep Kaushik, CEO, Macaw Books, is basically a computer software engineer who started his career as a corporate trainer and later moved on to a technical marketing role for highly-skilled GIS services. After working for 4-5 years in this role, Sandeep started his data processing unit, catering primarily to Delhi government. “Ours was an authorised computer centre for Supreme Court of India as well,” he recalled. “But the turning point came when we had a joint venture with Bharati Telesoft to manage the designing of books for their facility in US. These were basically fiction books and we used to receive 15-20 books every day,” added Sandeep. “Another turning point came in 1999 when I visited the Frankfurt Book Fair for the first time. There, I met a couple of clients and bagged a major project for illustrations. Thus, Book Matrix was formed for outsourcing services. Till 2007, we did lot of work for publishers in US, UK, Europe and South East Asia. Our art directors and editorial staff were even trained in US and UK. Since 2003, we have been exhibiting at major international book fairs and we bagged work that kept us busy the year round,” he told.

“But, slowly, the requirements were decreasing and we launched Macaw Books in 2007 at the London Book Fair. We launched Macaw Books in US but we built the brand in India. In 2010, the entire operations were shifted in India,” told Sandeep. “Today we publish children books in English as well as many regional languages like Oriya, Malayalam, Bengali and Hindi. Besides, we have been selling the rights worldwide.” “When we launched Macaw Books, the Indian market was flooded with remainders from US and UK markets. Thus, we thought of offering international quality good books at Indian prices,” he added.

The focus…

Today, Sandeep is focussing on Macaw Books while the Book Matrix is catering to niche clients. “The economy has seen recession for the last couple of years. And the only segment which has not faced recession so far is the educational activities,” he explained. Anticipating the need, Macaw Books recently released education supplements consisting of 18 books for the age group of 4-10 years. “We plan to be very aggressive in the education segment by 2014. For this, we are planning to release one series of books every month in 2013, covering major subjects like English, Science, Quantitative Reasoning, Environment Science, etc.

Array of books…

Macaw Books has a huge list of 2,800 titles catering to the age group of 4-14 years, including encyclopaedia, story books, activity books, board books, popup books, interactive books with CDs, box games, etc. One of our most popular series is A Day with Scientist which had won the Teachers’ Choice Award and the Mom Choice Award in US. Another popular series is Facts & More which has a series of 200 titles, covering all possible subjects of non-fiction. Infact, this series has been translated in 14-15 languages internationally enabling us to sell more than 60,000 books,” told Sandeep proudly.

Every year, Macaw Books adds 70-75 titles, including reprints which are economically priced between Rs 50-150, but at par with international quality. “Even our Encyclopaedias are priced very economically, like Rs 750 for a set of 10 books. To keep the cost low, we have come up with soft cover editions which have been very successful in India,” he told.

On ebooks...

When we talk of books, we cannot ignore ebooks. Macaw Books has also launched its first set of ebooks at Flipkart.com. They are also planning to launch their online portal for the sale of ebooks. “These ebooks consist of 80 percent epubs and 20 percent apps. We are now working on developing our own apps for ebook platform as well as mobile platform. But, how to sell an ebook is a challenge which perhaps all small publishers would be facing as once a reader searches for ebooks, he gets so many choices and more often he opts for a licensed character or a giant publisher,” shared Sandeep.

Distribution…

For distribution in India, Macaw Books operates through local distributors while they supply books directly to bigger chain stores. “For exports, we not only deal directly but also operate through major book exporters in India,” added Sandeep. “Right now, our indigenous and export sales account for 50:50 of the total sales but for royalty and co-editions, it is 75 percent for exports and 25 percent for indigenous market and we would definitely like to balance this figure as well.”

The USP...

Despite the challenges, Sandeep says that their USP is evident in their tag line – nurturing children to a better tomorrow. “We are very sensitive about content. For the last 4-5 years, we had been bringing out books by demand of the market but now we are focussing on coming up with books which would be the demand of the future and would be more relevant to Indian market. We aim to become one of the top five children publishers in India,” concluded Sandeep.