{"id":16936,"date":"2015-10-02T08:00:50","date_gmt":"2015-10-02T12:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=16936"},"modified":"2015-10-02T08:00:50","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T12:00:50","slug":"when-a-self-published-book-is-done-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=16936","title":{"rendered":"When a Self-Published Book Is Done Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

We see a lot of self-published books at the store. All are by people passionate about their creations\u00a0and hopeful they will find a broad audience. But while we would love for\u00a0these books\u00a0to sell well, most of them don’t, for a variety of reasons. First of all, it’s hard for ANY book, published\u00a0by any outfit, to rise to the attention of readers. It takes the right push at the right time for a book to take off, and that is an art, not a science. It’s true for all books;\u00a0that’s just the reality of publishing and marketing. Self-published books have additional challenges. Sometimes the subject matter has a limited audience. Often, the books suffer from poor production values, not having the advantage of professional design. They might\u00a0feature text that hasn’t been edited for clunkiness or shaped into a satisfying narrative arc. They might present\u00a0art that isn’t as professional as\u00a0that\u00a0found in books published by traditional houses. And\u00a0the cost of small press\u00a0runs usually leads to disproportionately high cover prices. All of this\u00a0can add up to a hard sell for customers.
\nBut every once in a while, we are delighted to see\u00a0a self-published book like this one.
\n
\n\"Sweet<\/a>
\nSweet Pea & Friends: The Sheepover<\/strong>\u00a0is a beautifully designed, appropriately priced\u00a0book (full color, $19.95, printed in the United States!) and starring about the sweetest-looking sheep you ever saw.\u00a0I’d never met John, or heard of his farm, but when\u00a0he\u00a0brought in this book for us to consider selling, it was hard not to jump over the counter and pump his hand in congratulations.\u00a0My fellow booksellers\u00a0and I marveled over the quality of the book and asked many questions about how it came to be.
\nCo-authors John and Jennifer Churchman live on\u00a0a Vermont farm with a variety of animals. John, a professional photographer, has a\u00a0good-sized\u00a0online following, and his family’s blog posts about farm life have also developed a readership. When the\u00a0Churchmans’ lamb, Sweet Pea, was injured and then saved by their collie, Laddie, their blog readers were hugely invested in the story. That led to John and Jennifer deciding to turn Sweet Pea’s adventure into a picture book.
\nJohn had the advantage of many years’ experience working with design, photography, and pre-press preparation. He’s also an artist.\u00a0The spreads are lovely. Usually, I find collage static and choppy, but these are fluid and manage to be both friendly and slightly mysterious simultaneously — not a common mix, and an arresting one.
\nThe\u00a0backgrounds of the photographs are textured\u00a0with frost patterns John Churchman\u00a0photographed in his\u00a0winter barn, and in the party scene, there are beautiful soft\u00a0color bursts adorning the sheep like so many festive\u00a0scarves. The story is told in a straightforward, gentle, fun\u00a0way that suits it.
\nHere are some spreads from the book. \u00a0[Update: I had originally posted some that I’d photographed at the bookstore, and then John sent me these more professional versions.]
\n\"10-11SweetPea_spreads_fin1smrev2\"<\/a>\"24-25SweetPea_spreads_fin2smrev\"<\/a>
\n<\/a>
\n\"26-27SweetPea_spreads_fin2smrev\"<\/a>
\n

\"IMG_4960\"

(I don’t have the professional version of this one but I love the sheep’s expression so much, I kept my photo of the pages in the post.)<\/p><\/div>
\nThis is a\u00a0book that sells itself the minute you put it into a customer’s\u00a0hands.
\nI haven’t seen a book\u00a0quite like\u00a0The Sheepover<\/em>\u00a0before. It’s an original, though it does\u00a0put me in mind — in a general way — of another self-published photographic book, Carl R. Sams II and Jean Stoick’s Stranger in the Woods. <\/em>As I recall, that one\u00a0did pretty well for itself. : )
\nSweet Pea and Friends in The Sheepover<\/em> isn’t listed with distributors yet, but readers can\u00a0order\u00a0from Vermont and other New England bookstores like The Flying Pig who have discovered the book. Booksellers can order from the wholesale page: http:\/\/www.sweetpeafriendsbookstore.com\/pages\/wholesale
\nYou can also find out more about Sweet Pea and the Churchmans’ farm at their Facebook page<\/a>:\u00a0https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Sweet-Pea-Friends-1604611683095783\/timeline\/
\n\"IMG_4961\"
\nNote: due to a spam attack, the comments section of this blog has been temporarily disabled. We hope to have it up and running soon!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A self-published book that knocked our socks off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}