It has been a huge struggle to publish my first fantasy children’s book, Below the Floor – or “Das Dorf unter dem Fußboden”, as it is being published in German first. I have been working on this project for more than three years now and my little kobold Leto and me have had many ups and downs during this time (I even quit my safe job at an advertising agency which I really liked in order to write this book).

Say Hello to Leto, the hero of our little story.
No, it´s not the Panda. 😉

If you are new to this blog: Below the Floor is the illustrated children’s book story of a little Kobold who tries to save his tiny town, hidden below a wooden floor, from a savage lizard tribe. As I am an animation artist, I also illustrated the book. Feel free to check out how his project came to be here. 😉

I am sorry that I was not able to post new stuff on this blog for such a long time. As bills needed to be paid, I started working as an animation freelancer again and worked on some projects about which I might write here about in the near future. 😉 But the downside of having your own company is that you mainly have to do everything yourself – getting gigs, meeting clients, doing the accounting …and getting the jobs done (well).

Finding a Distribution Channel

Well, back to Below the Floor: While working on my freelance jobs, I have been trying to set up the distribution of my book, which was harder than I initially thought it would be. Mainly, if you self-publish your book, you are (of course) the publishing company. The problem is that most bookstores (at least in Austria) do not want to struggle with small indie publishers. They prefer doing business with one of the big distribution companies. I tried getting deals with these major book distributors, but this is not that easy when you are starting out.

I also also checked the options with Amazon and there are still some things that need to be taken care of. And I think that it is a good thing to support your local book store. Therefore, I reached out to bookstores.

A Bookstore in Vienna

So, I decided to talk directly to branch managers of the bookstores. And it finally worked. The manager of a well known book store in Vienna (facultas) really liked my book and accepted it. We made a handshake deal and I delivered my first set of books on the same day (actually, I already had them with me when I went to the meeting …always expecting the best 😉 )

This was really cool, as I had worked in one of the smaller facultas bookstores during my years as a university-student.

Making the Book Available Online

Then, the distribution manager of another bookstore contacted me. They needed a copy of my book, as somebody had ordered Below the Floor via their online shop. I had registered my book a while ago in a bookstore directory (VLB), in which many Austrian and German book store employees search up book titles. Some of these bookstores seem to also feed the data into their online shop database. Which is a good thing in my case. 😉

So I talked to the distribution manager of Heyn about the story, the book and the conditions and – voilá – I got another distribution channel for my book. Yeah!

What are the Specifications of this Book?

Das Dorf unter dem Fußboden comes out in German first.

It has 148 pages and about 60 coloured Illustrations.

Hardcover, approx. 14 x 21 cm, ISBN 978-3-9504367-1-6

Ok, now, where can I get this book?

You can order Das Dorf unter dem Fußboden without shipping costs within Austria at heyn.at .

And it is available in these bookstores:

Buchhandlung HEYN
Kramergasse 2-4
9020 Klagenfurt
phone: +43(0)463 54249 0
e-mail: buch@heyn.at
www.heyn.at

facultas Dombuchhandlung am Stephansplatz
Stephansplatz 5
1010 Wien
phone: +43-1-5123709
fax: +43-1-5123709-17
e-mail: stephansplatz@dombuchhandlung.at
www.facultas.at

And if you have already read the book, I would love to know what you think about it – what you liked or what you disliked. So feel free to comment below. 🙂