38 Publishing prowess Nigel Browning, Senior Commissioning Editor of Practical Art at David & Charles, talks to Craft Focus about taking those first crucial steps to getting published! For budding art and craft enthusiasts out there with a dream to publishing their own book, what’s their first step? Although I develop new practical art titles, we do include some craft within that category, such as papercraft and printmaking, but as with any new book, the approach needs to be original, consistent and achievable for our readership. Like most things in life, it takes time, patience and lots of practice to become an author but I’d suggest that visiting a book or craft store will help you understand how many books there are already, so do your research and identify a new angle or approach for your book idea. Read magazines, listen to podcasts, spot trends, visit craft and art shows, ask your friends and family what they think too, then grow your online presence to develop a platform. What do you look for when you are commissioning new titles? I’m lucky that I spend a lot of time researching art (mostly online) looking for artists that have the ‘wow’ factor but also have an angle for the audience we publish to. A good example of this is one of our new titles: Me and My Ballpoint Pen by Jennifer Mullin that publishes July 2025. I was blown away by what can be achieved with a pen and that they were available in so many colours. Jennifer became an online sensation and the fact that ballpoints are plentiful and cheap, ticked the right boxes for me, making the book (and art) affordable for a wide audience of professional artists and casual doodlers. After that, there are two key things I look for: one is the ability to impart knowledge to an audience and the second is to have a good following on social media. I find that people who have taught art, either online, in a classroom or studio have a natural talent in sharing their skills, insight and experience. Having a strong presence online always help us to shout about a new title and help get the book talked about and hopefully sell lots of copies! Do you have authors in-house at David and Charles? Not as such, although sometimes we work with our growing network of freelance editors and writers to develop projects that are more complex. Our stunning new The Bouquet in a Book (publishing April 2025) was developed in-house and looks likely to be one of our most successful titles this year (it’s already been shortlisted within a Gift of the Year 2025 category!) How long is the process from book idea to print? We have a very complex scheduling system at David & Charles as there are so many layers of editorial, design, production and marketing that are involved. This means we invest heavily in the project to give it best start in the market. Our new How to Paint It by Sharone Stevens (publishing March 2025) took around 15 months from start to finish: as we had worked with Sharone before on our bestselling Watercolor for the Soul we knew we had the right team in place to
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