Golden Oldie - SONG QUEST
For those of you who are curious about debut books and authors, this is how it all started for me.
My first book Song Quest was originally published in 1999 by Element Books, and went on to win the inaugural Branford Boase Award, presented annually to the author and editor of an outstanding debut novel for young readers published in the UK that year.
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| Song Quest (Element Books, 1999) and my very own Branford Boase Award |
When Element Books became part of a larger company, Song Quest was republished by its Branford Boase Award winning editor Barry Cunningham's new children's fiction venture, The Chicken House.
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| Song Quest (Chicken House, 2001) |
The book was also published in America by Scholastic US, working with Chicken House to bring Song Quest and its sequels Crystal Mask and Dark Quetzal to a fresh overseas YA audience.
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| Song Quest (Scholastic US, 2002) |
A few years passed, with a few foreign editions along the way, before the book finally went out of print at Chicken House/Scholastic. The paperback rights were quickly snapped up by Catnip, and Song Quest got a brand new cover design for a new generation of UK readers:
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| Song Quest (Catnip, 2012) |
At the same time, Song Quest and its sequels got a Kindle ebook edition with an early (be kind!) cover designed by its author (me):
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| The Echorium Sequence (Kindle editions, 2011) |
By the time the Catnip edition went out of print, digital publishing had well and truly arrived. So I redesigned the digital covers and published print-on-demand paperback editions of all three books.
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| Song Quest (POD paperback) |
Despite going out of print several times at its different publishers, this book is a survivor. I like to think it has aged gracefully from the era of typewriters - yes, I actually wrote the 70,000 word first draft on a manual typewriter! - through the somewhat easier word-processing on a personal computer, into the digital age of ebooks and print-on-demand. You might still be able to find secondhand copies of the older print editions, maybe even track down a first edition (Element Books 1999 hardcover). But if you prefer a new paperback, you can now order Song Quest online from amazon and get your personal copy delivered, literally hot off the press!