Fair Game
Distracted by tea, biscuits and rising paper prices, the Publishing Association were entirely unprepared for the tigress' attack...
Happy Easter, tiger lovers – and hoping all the Brits amongst you have had a lovely, sunny four-day holiday!
As those of you on the mailing list will know, it has been a difficult few weeks for us, as the two interested sponsors that we’ve been waiting to confirm with us for months and months and months have, very disappointingly, failed to come back to us with a final decision. With the printing deadlines we were working towards now becoming disconcertingly imminent and still no word from our would-be benefactors, we decided it was time to take matters into our own hands – and to find another way to gather up the necessary funds.
And so, at the beginning of this month, we headed down to the London Book Fair, the publishing world’s huge, sprawling yearly bunfight at Earls Court Exhibition Centre. And where, luckily enough, this year’s emphasis was on the burgeoning Russian and Chinese book markets.
Unfortunately, attempts to communicate with in-country representatives before the event had proved rather fruitless. My grasp of Russian pronunciation turned out to be so bad that simply repeating the name of the person I wanted to speak to 40,000 times over the telephone in my best Moscovite accent led to the unilateral response: “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English”. Mortifying, to say the least. As a result, rocking up on Day One of the Fair with just a well-annotated exhibitor list and a folder-full of TIGER book sample pages, I was more than a little apprehensive.
Things did not begin well.
The first person I spoke to was a friendly man from a Chinese publishing company, who ushered me enthusiastically to a chair as quickly as I could say “project for the Chinese market”. Feeling encouraged, I cheerfully spread our gorgeous tiger photos across the table and began to explain about the work we were doing on the campaign, the story of the book, and how important we feel it is to engage the public in China on issues surrounding tiger conservation. After about a minute, I realised he was staring at me with an utterly blank expression. Thinking perhaps that he hadn’t understood something, I paused to ask if I was going too fast.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Is it a children’s book?”
“It could be,” I said “But most people buying the books have been adults”.
“But it’s just about tigers?”
“Yes. It’s about one tiger family, in the wild. As I was saying, it’s a very beautiful st-“
“There are lots of animals in China. Why would anyone care about tigers?”
This seemed rather a peculiar question.
“Well,” I said. “Apart from anything else, they are very seriously endangered”.
At this point, the man actually burst out laughing, right there in my face.
“Oh really?” He said, through giggles. “Are they now? And how exactly do you know this?”
I was astounded.
After a few more minutes of trying to explain that this is a very well-documented problem and that his own government had recently attended an emergency meeting to address the issue, during which he made sarcastic faces and behaved largely as if I were an escapee from a mental health institution, I gave up and dejectedly trundled off to find someone whose views were at least grounded in a semblance of reality.
Fortunately for the project and for my morale, half an hour later I was sitting with a very lovely woman from another Chinese publishing house, who was not only interested in building cultural crossovers between the UK and China but was gazing at a photograph of a month-old cub with a look of something very much like love.
By the third day of the Fair, I had built up firm interest in the book from a handful of Chinese publishers, a very enthusiastic Russian one (who, fortunately for all concerned, had a translator close at hand!), several Indian publishers and even a few from right here in Europe. A dozen phone calls and emails later and we have already got to the final stages of arranging a licensing deal with at least one of these, with several others around the world still in negotiations.
This is wonderful news for the campaign. Not only does it mean that the message is being spread around the world, helping to raise awareness in the countries we are most anxious to engage people in, but it will also provide the necessary funds for us to get on with printing our own run of books for all you lovely people who have already pre-ordered copies without waiting for sponsorship to come through.
And, of course, 30% of every penny that comes to the project will be donated to tiger conservation initiatives.
Altogether, this represents a major leap forward in helping us to meet our campaign objectives and we are very, very excited to see the results. After a slightly difficult start, it was an enormous relief (and encouragement!) to meet so many other publishers who were moved by the book, genuinely interested in the campaign – and who felt that their readers would be, too.
Please do keep your fingers crossed for us over the next few weeks… and, if you want to take advantage of the extended deadline and get yourself a first edition of the beautiful book, you can take this opportunity to pre-order copies of TIGERS for your family and friends!
Until next time,
Lindsey x
This is amazing news! I am so proud of you for putting forth such a strong effort at this book fair. What started as disastrous and disappointing turned into something promising and inspiring. Thank you for sharing this is very encouraging to those of us who read the Tiger blog and who volunteer when they can.
Bravo!