Wednesday 19 December 2012

JELLY BEAN PROJECT - 'JUST ANOTHER DAY'

In October we created a poetry book for Philomena A’Herne. She wanted to print a book which contained the poetry of two of her family members – Gus and Bernadette A’Herne. We helped her decide on an order for the poems and worked with Philomena to write biographies for both Gus and Bernadette to go in the beginning of the book. Next we proofread the text, and Shaun did the typesetting.

Philomena wanted to call the book ‘Just Another Day’, after one of the poems that Gus had written, so we worked around this title to design the cover. Philomena requested that there were trees on the front cover, and we eventually settled on this photo.



We decided to put photos of Gus and Bernadette on the back cover. They were edited and cleaned up in Photoshop to blend in with the overall design of the book.






As there was a theme running through both Gus and Bernadette’s poems, Philomena decided she would like an illustration at the beginning of each section to reflect this. We decided on cogs for Gus’ poems and shells and ferns for Bernadette’s. We comissioned Terry Cooper to draw the images.

 

Once the book was finished we sent it off to the printers. We were very pleased with the final result and Philomena was too!



If you have a book that you’d like to print through Jelly Bean Books then please get in touch.

Thursday 6 December 2012

SELF-PUBLISHING WORKSHOP SUCCESS

On Tuesday 4th December Candy Jar Books hosted its first self-publishing workshop. Twenty participants attended the day, which had sessions on editing, social marketing, cover design and how to get started as a self-published author. The course was fully booked and participants came from all over South Wales to learn about self-publishing from the Candy Jar team.

Some of our workshop participants and South Wales Short Story Competition winners
(L-R Carly Holmes, Laura Foakes, Stella Wells, Jane Fraser and Noelle Bryant)
The day was a great success, with participants leaving glowing comments:

“Thank you once again for giving me the opportunity to attend yesterday's workshop.
It was motivational to hear from other writers and has certainly given me much to think about.”
Laura Foakes

“By the way, forgot to say a big 'thank you' for putting on the workshop and what you are doing. How kind of you - lunch, opportunity to have some work read and feedback etc.”  
Beverley Lennon

“Thank you so much for putting on such an interesting and thought provoking workshop yesterday! It was lovely to meet you all as well. Despite feeling a bit under the weather with a sore throat I really enjoyed the day, and it's given me plenty to think about!”
Carly Holmes

As the day was such a success, we hope to run a similar workshop in 2013 – watch this space!