Proof and Advance Copies have Arrived!

A deceptively unimpressive jiffy-bag came with the postman on Friday. I opened it and pulled out an advance copy of Baby Goes Baaaaa! and the proof of my newest book Baby Can Bounce! 

I am so pleased with the production. The colours really zing out on the glossy, lacquered paper. I'm totally happy with the pale blue cover now, after my slight grumpiness when it was changed, and I love the way the yellow cover of book 2 works with it: much better than Egmont's initial plan for lilac would have.

I love the choice of the rounded corners too - a sensible idea (not mine, I hasten to add) to stop sharp edges going into little eyes, but it also makes the books so cute and friendly looking! I've already shown you the insides of Baby Goes Baaaaa!, from the printer's dummy we got a while ago, so these are all from Baby Can Bounce!:

Another thing I can't claim credit for, is the fab title page of Baby Can Bounce! - all the work of my lovely designer, Sarah, who I've worked with for years and years, even though in that time she has moved between 3 different publishers (they just happened to always be ones I've was working with at the time!)

What happens now, is that both myself and all the design / editorial team at Egmont scrutinise the proof copy to try and spot any mistakes or flaws, before they go into production. I chatted with Sarah yesterday, and let her know of a few little things I had spotted.

Mostly it's slight adjustments to the colour balance: because we had such problems with the original scans, I had to do a lot of tinkering in Photoshop to brighten things up, and it's hard to judge what print contrasts will be like by just looking at your screen.


There is the occasional little glitch though, like this 'miss' in the type on the title page above (did you spot it?):

The books are due out in April and July respectively. You can pre-order Baby Goes Baaaaa! from Amazon (don't be thrown by the provisional cover image), but I'll of course be reminding you when the time comes!