How to Sell A Book

The Kingdom of Tigers is out today!

Seriously, does anyone know how to sell a book? I’d love to hear what made you pick up your favourite book for the first time. Especially in picture books - is shelf appeal what it’s all about, or do you have certain authors on repeat buy (cough Julia Donaldson cough)?

One of my favourite gifts that we received when Ariadne (8) was born was a bundle of picture books that our friends the Buckleys curated from Australia. It was a mix of classics (The Very Hungry Caterpillar, books which made us think of them, like Magic Beach because of their beach house, and also new-to-us stories which have become core texts, like The Paper Bag Princess). It’s now my favourite newborn gift as well. Recently I sent Mr Jack and Some Dogs Do to a family with three boys and a big dog, and three books from the Little People Big Dreams series to the daughter of a doctor friend whose family are from Iraq via Ireland, and personally I’m always particularly drawn to books about food, Chinese culture, Chinese food, history, other cultures, knitting, the environment, STEM, female role models, Jesus, pandas, tigers, funny books, stories about courage and resilience…well, clearly I’m not very discriminating. We buy a lot of books. Despite my husband’s quarterly culls, bookshelves are collapsing all over our house as I write.

I’ve had the chance to chat to lots of clever and interesting people about The Kingdom of Tigers over the last few weeks, for podcasts, blogs and even a newsletter here on Substack from the fabulous Emily Hanson (where we discuss how we met: spoiler alert, neither of us turned out to be serial killers! So far…) and tomorrow I’m doing my first ever school visit, where I’ll share The Kingdom of Tigers with everyone from Nursery to Year 6 and guide them through some story making. And the conversation is a little bit different every time.

The original idea for The Kingdom of Tigers came from my aunt, Michelle Yeoh (the Oscar-winning actress and UN Goodwill Ambassador), and we started out wanting to raise awareness of Malaysia’s beautiful harimau tigers, critically endangered due to deforestation and illegal poaching. But along the way, the story came to mean even more.

It’s a bedtime story

…because my publisher and organisations like BookTrust have put together compelling research showing the value of reading for pleasure, and how that comes from reading to children.

It’s a story of courage, resilience and not giving up

…it’s strange to be writing this, as my dream of being a published author comes true, because it’s a dream I’ve always had, even though for a long time I felt like I’d given up, and then when I did pursue it wholeheartedly there were so many setbacks and rejections that it sometimes seemed irrational to even think of carrying on.

It’s about home, how everyone deserves a safe place to grow strong and fulfil their potential

The revising and rewriting of The Kingdom of Tigers happened around the same time as families were fleeing Ukraine and Afghanistan, and the more I got to know the stories of refugees, the clearer Hari’s voice became.

Conventional wisdom is that yes, the odds are long for anyone¹ trying to sell a book, but “you only need one yes”.

Which is sort of true, except you actually need a whole chain of yeses, in my experience, from stakeholders such as:

1. An Agent: How I Got My Agent is a classic newsletter topic for a reason, practically a genre in itself, but I can’t imagine my particular story would be at all helpful for any aspiring picture book writers, and it’s certainly not typical. I don’t have a helpful query letter to share because I met Hannah Sheppard at an awards ceremony, and we clicked the way you sometimes do, when you’re lucky enough to meet someone who makes you laugh and feels like an immediate friend in a room full of strangers - and I only found out she was an agent later. Which is hilarious in hindsight because it turns out everyone in publishing knows and loves Hannah - she’s got amazing taste, impeccable editorial vision, works incredibly hard and has the biggest heart for amplifying underrepresented voices and making a difference in the world.

2. Editors: Hannah ran the whole submissions process, and fielded early interest from a couple of publishers, one of whom gave some game-changing editorial feedback which led to a total rewrite—and this new version was the one which found its home at Kumusha Books (Harper Collins). We were called in to meet the team, which felt rather like a job interview, with the editor, creative director, head of the imprint (Ken Wilson-Max who heads up Kumusha Books) and the managing director of books printed in colour at Harper Collins.

   I prepared for it in the same way I’d prepare for a job interview, researching the imprint’s recent books and listening to Holly Tonks, the editor, speak on a podcast. She mentioned the importance of a one-line pitch, so I prepared that: “It’s about biodiversity and the plight of endangered tigers, but really it’s about the need for a home.” And when she asked if I had any questions, I asked what her one-line pitch was - and when she told us, and I showed her it was exactly the same as what I’d written down, it felt like a “yes” moment! And then we had another one when Ken explained why he’d named the imprint Kumusha, because in the Shona language it means home, not in the sense of your address, but your ancestral home, just like Malaysia is to me. And when they told us that they even wanted to print the book in Malaysia—well, Hannah and I knew that The Kingdom of Tigers had found its home.

   And after the “yes” from Harper Collins, they were the ones who won the rest of the “yeses” that we needed.

   1. The Team: on my first call with Holly, after they had made an offer for the book and we’d accepted, I asked her, “what does success with this book look like for you personally?” As in, what are the Key Performance Indicators for an editor when annual reviews roll around? What makes you look good to your boss or the management team at the publisher? I think Holly was a little taken aback by the question, but she gave me a very thoughtful answer. Book sales aren’t in an editor’s control really—that’s down to sales, or maybe publicity and marketing to some extent. So for the editor, the key metric is probably internal buzz. Have people heard of the book you’re working on? Are they excited about it?

      I wondered how I could help with this. How could we raise the profile of the Kingdom of Tigers with the wider team at Harper Collins? Write a better book might have been the obvious answer. So obviously I invested in a set of tiger biscuit cutters and baked the first of many batches of tiger shortbread to bring in to my first meeting at the Harper Collins office—and Holly took me around to hand them out to the whole team.

      

      Hey, remember how Holly’s got that tiger book?

3. The Illustrator: well. You don’t need me to spell out how important the illustrator is for a picture book. I mean, they don’t call them “word books” and for good reason. How important is the art in The Kingdom of Tigers? It’s impossible to quantify, but if the market value of a picture is a thousand words and the Kingdom of Tigers consists under 1000 words and thirteen full colour spreads, I’ll leave you to make your own assessments. I am in awe of illustrators. Sometimes people ask if I’d ever illustrate my own books and when I’ve stopped laughing I sometimes show them this:

   

   Left: Megan's first sample artwork fot The Kingdom of Tigers. It's so beautiful that I cried the first time I saw it. Right: Theo (3) and I following along with the tiger chapter in a children's "how to paint" book.

   Our wonderful art director Candice discovered Megan—and the whole team were thrilled when Megan said yes to illustrating The Kingdom of Tigers! I remain in awe of Megan’s talent—and her process for researching and illustrating the book is so fascinating that it would make a brilliant topic for a newsletter.

4. The Trade Press: Some real highlights of the last year have been the terrific press coverage of The Kingdom of Tigers. I’m so grateful to the journalists at BookBrunch and The Bookseller for the lovely write ups of the deal announcement and features in the ESEA special edition and July previews. Harper Collins put on a grand previews event for press, booksellers and influencers at the top of the News Building, and I was honoured to present The Kingdom of Tigers there:

   

5. Booksellers — you might think it would be awkward turning up at a bookshop and asking if they like the look of your book. And it is! But the booksellers I’ve met so far have been so welcoming and enthusiastic (and I’ve stuck to my personal mantra: always bring snacks. Tiger shortbread to the rescue once again). Our local indie bookshop Ink@84 is hosting a little drinks party for Megan and me on the day itself, and set up a special pre-order option for buying signed copies via their website. My local Waterstones have been absolutely marvellous—they’ve invited me to give a musical suitcase production of the story at their weekly storytime and are making a special display in the shop—and the Waterstones closest to my office have put an order in for their copies, and invited me in to sign them on my lunch break!

   

   Left: Waterstones have chosen The Kingdom of Tigers as a Best Picture Book for preorders (we’re in amazing company!) Right: Ink@84 arranging pre-orders of signed copies

6. Readers - which brings us all the way to today, when the book makes it into the hands of readers for the first time. For the last week friends have been sending me screenshots of their preorder dispatches and gosh, I’m a little nervous, but mostly I’m excited. It’s finally happening, what Aunty Michelle and I wanted all along—to tell the story of the harimau tigers, to inspire readers and introduce them to this beautiful part of the world, to encourage them to be resilient, care for others and follow their dreams.

My dream is that The Kingdom of the Tigers will be a story that gets read and reread at bedtime, one of those books that friends buy for newborns because it represents their wishes for the baby, the way a fairy godparent would bestow gifts of courage and care. I hope there will be copies in libraries which are floppy with having been opened again and again, and copies passed on or sold secondhand alongside outgrown clothes. I’d love it if the book gets donated to charity shops and school fairs, and most of all I hope that the story is remembered by readers who never fully forget the tigers of Malaysia, readers who grow up to invest in biodiversity and aid for refugees and wildlife charities, readers who never give up on their dreams.

1. Obviously there are exceptions: authors who already have a strong sales track record, celebrities, those with strong publishing/press connections… But this a story all about how my life has been flipped, turned upside down…at least a little!