I'm gonna actually look at it
Hi, I'm Sanne. Welcome back. I don't even know how to start this video to be honest. I'm very excited
to share with you that I'm publishing a book club journal. I'm going to tell you how this came about
what it is, show you what it looks like but first here's a little clip that I filmed
while I was filming my 'looking back at 2020' video knowing that I couldn't
tell you about it yet. I'm currently in the process of recording all of my
2021 goals, exciting things that happened in 2020 video and there's one massive thing that I haven't
been able to talk about, which is that I wrote a book! I was writing all my resolutions for 2021
and then I like to go back and kind of think oh what happened this year that I'm proud of.
And they're smaller things, they're bigger things and this was obviously one of the main things on
the list and again something that I didn't know was going to happen at the beginning of 2020 and
I find that very often the things that I'm the most excited about were things that I didn't even
know were going to happen at the beginning of the year, because you can't really plan anything
anyway, especially not in 2020. So just wanted to add this moment in. I'm going to start at
the beginning and explain how this all came to be and then I'll give you a look at the outside and
the inside of the journal. In June of last year I got an email from a publisher called Alison.
Now my inbox, as is the case with many book reviewers and creators, is a very interesting
mix of bizarre messages and projects that will never happen, but this message immediately
caught my attention because Alison said they had come up with an idea for a guided journal
specifically for people who are in book clubs and they were basically looking for someone to write
the text, come up with all the reading suggestions and lend their expertise as a reader and also
someone who knows how to talk about books. And they really wanted to add a voice to it. At that
point it was basically just the beginning of the idea and I said I'd love to take a call with her.
As someone who's been making their own things on the internet for the last 10 years I'm really used
to having full creative control over everything. I never go into collaborations or contracts
without being able to make sure that what I share is something that I'm really proud of
and having worked in publishing and knowing that depending on different kinds of projects
there would be different levels of input from an author, so very often an author doesn't have a lot
of say for example in the cover of the book. So obviously it was really important to me that the
final look and also the functionality, because it's a journal, would be something that I could really
stand behind and that I would use myself as well and of course I wanted it to appeal to you people
who watch my video,s but also people who would come across it in a book shop. So we had more calls,
conversations contracts were signed and then got to work. I knew I was going to be announcing this
in January and I wasn't sure if we would have an early copy but I'm so excited that I actually have
a physical copy to show you. I think showing a flat image versus the real thing makes a huge
difference! I'm really happy to have that for this video. Alright the big reveal, here we go. Here it is!
Okay so let me quickly talk you through what's inside and I also have some clips that I filmed
throughout the process of creating this. Beautiful cover. I really really love the colours and then
there's a cloth bound side and spine with some lovely silver foil and then my handwritten
Booksandquills logo here and same on the spine. The idea of a guided journal is that of course the
majority of it is a journal but it also takes you on a journey. There is an introduction
from me, tips for how to get conversations going for your book club, how to host an online book
club, some thoughts for me about whether you want to like read up on the author or the book before
you go into the book club discussion and there are also 20 themed reading lists for if you need
inspiration for your next book club pick. But I'll tell you a little bit more about that later.
You might also have seen that I hosted a digital book club with some of you for The Secret History
in the autumn. The people who were part of that book club, I told them that I was partly doing that
for a project which was this book club journal, but that was one of the things I did to kind of put
the tips and tricks that I wrote about into action and see if they needed any adjustments. I just sent
off the feedback for the book club journal design pages. I just wanted to show you even though the
battery's about to die, but I basically took the designs that we discussed because I had sent over
what different sections and stuff I would like and then took them and then wrote notes on
them, because I feel like that's the easiest way to do it. I filled out myself and I did it for The
Secret History especially because I read that with a book club recently and then sent notes based on
that, very detailed notes. You know I find it really important that this is super user friendly and
that it applies to a bunch of different people and that it makes sense. I just wanted to make sense!
I also got to see another version of the cover today which is really fun. Super happy with
even the initial quick mock-up that I got. I already felt like had the right
atmosphere. We had to do some more color preference picking today. I think I'm gonna get edits in soon
So someone will have looked at it and then it comes back to me and then I look at it again.
I'll see you in the next bit. So like I said the majority of the book club journal consists of
journaling pages where you can document every book that you're reading, so there's something
similar to what you might document when you're doing this online. How many pages the
book has, what date you started reading, when you finished it, some space to put the date of
the book club and things like that and then these journaling pages are also guided in a way where
it kind of takes you through different steps of thinking about the book. Writing down your first
impressions as you start reading or your initial response right after finishing the book. There's a
space to make notes about themes and characters but then there's also a full page to write any
questions for the book club or notes or anything else you'd like to write down and then for each
book you document there's also a page to write down final thoughts, whether you'd like to reread
it again, your rating which I've left open so it doesn't need to be a star rating if that's not
what you're into. Further reading, pages to remember and your favorite quotes. There's 50 entries of
four pages each so if you're doing let's say one book club a month or even two
this should last you for a good while. Then in the back we get to the section that I think was
the most challenging, I had to come up with 20 themed reading lists with 10
books each. Coming up with the themes from scratch is interesting because I know what themes I'd
want to share but I also wanted to make sure it was accessible but if you look at these you'll
definitely recognize some of my favorite themes. There's things like imagining the future, some
dystopia, sci-fi, apocalyptic fiction, classics rewritten, coming of age. I am about to finish off
the selection of books for the reading lists in the book club journal and I realized I hadn't
really filmed any of the process. I've written and re-written these lists I've shown them to
friends, I've taken suggestions, I've done so much googling. What I really wanted to make sure of
was that all the recommendations in this book were ones that either I have read myself or that come
highly recommended by people that I trust, Because these are 200 book recommendations, Iread a lot
of books, but also a lot of the books i read i wouldn't recommend so this is going
far far back in my reading history. Some of the books are also ones that I've picked up
multiple times at bookshops because I'm interested in them, they're ones that I want to read, there's
a few of the reading lists that immediately i just typed in one go, there's ones that
required a bit more research because i understand that not everyone wants to read apocalyptic
fiction all the time. Originally i came up with 23 or 22 reading lists we got it down to 20. And then
yesterday I sat down with Rosianna and we were just like going through like title after title so
I have this extra list of books that I can kind of divide up over the different categories to make it
all fit. There were some that I thought that maybe I would struggle with a little bit that actually
were really easy to find titles for. Family stories and grief and breakups interestingly. Rediscovering
childhood favorites was hard because everyone obviously has different childhood favorites.
This has been a really fun process but by far these have been the hardest decisions to make so
I hope you like what comes out of it. I basically decided that every time something happens that
otherwise I would have wanted to share on Instagram or put in a video but I can't at the
moment, I'm just gonna sit down and film a little bit. What I've really found with this process and
I've heard a lot of other people talk about this as well, that it doesn't feel like there is like a
specific celebration moment, so it could be when you sign the contract but when you're doing that
you're actually just kind of worried about stuff. I'm reading through it and checking with
people, so that doesn't quite feel like the moment and then maybe it's when you hand in the text but
when you hand in the text you're awaiting feedback and it's going to go back and forth, so that isn't
quite the moment and when you initially start talking about things on email you just feel like
it's not going to happen at all, so that isn't the moment either. It's currently November and the
reason I wanted to film now is that I think it's done. I've been given the final spreads of the book,
I read through everything again. So last time I read the main text was probably about a month ago
and what I was most excited about is that I still liked it. I think the further you remove yourself
from something you've written or something you've created it starts feeling like it was like someone
else that wrote it because you forget specific phrases that you used and some of it will seem
really really familiar and some of it will come as a little surprise. I also did a last round of
feedback on things like the borders that I used for the quotes and the illustrations and a lot
of it was very little things just things to make it a little bit more me. So there were
some bookmarks with polka dots on it and I said oh maybe we can have some dried flowers on it instead.
I felt like that was a little bit more me, so just adding those little details and then getting that
back and I think that is something that to me personally makes all the difference.
So the last thing that we were finalizing was the quote licensing. There's a lot of lovely quotes in
there. I'm currently in the process of doing the final paperwork for those last few quotes. so I was
just going about my day doing some work and then a package arrived and I unwrapped the outside of it
and I knew it was coming but I didn't know it was coming this fast! And also it's kind of a surprise that
I'm getting it ready for the announcement which is happening in a few days. Basically an advanced copy
of the book just arrived and they've just sent it over to me, so this is the first time I'm gonna see
it in its non-digital form. I had to go and like set up my filming stuff first before I could
open it so. Ohh! Dear Sanne, here is the printer's advance, thanks for hard work and insights through
the whole process. Looking forward to seeing your video. Now I'm gonna actually look at it.
It's really pretty! Okay it's bigger than I thought it was going to be, which is lovely.
It's so lovely oh my gosh! It feels very nice. I'm gonna have to smell it obviously.
Yeah that smells good, fresh from the printer. It's really nice so it's the first time I'm seeing
the illustrations in action and kind of the scale of it and everything. It comes with a ribbon bookmark
which I think I knew and then maybe forgot about. The colour is so beautiful and I think especially
color is really hard to see digitally. If you've only seen a jpeg image before you can
always say yes I like it, but you never know what it's going to turn out like and it's
gorgeous. Oh my gosh I'm so happy! I'm actually part of a few book clubs at the moment and I want to
start filling it out. I feel like for now I should probably keep this the only copy that there is
pristine. I want to see my photo in the book. Oh there she is! There you go. In the back it has
a reading wish list and a book loan tracker, very important if you often borrow or lend
books from friends. There's also a tracking log in the beginning where you can document all the books
that you're journaling about. T should probably say when this is out. The Book Club Journal will be out
on May 6th. It's currently available for pre-order in a bunch of different places
including bookshop.org. I'll put a link in the description that has every pre-order link in it
for different countries as well that are available at the moment and then I will keep updating that
link as new ones become available, but I would also highly recommend if you're thinking of
pre-ordering call your local bookshop if they're currently taking orders or email them and they
should hopefully be able to do that as well. It's so bizarre that like all of this has happened
just over calls and online. I had my first marketing meeting with the team recently. Book
release parties events etc doesn't look very likely but hopefully I will be able to do lots of
fun stuff online. I'll probably do some more themed videos around maybe book clubs and journaling
and showing some more features of the journal and if there's a lot of questions maybe I'll do
another Q&A. I think I've covered everything. It's still bizarre that this is here in person I'm just
kind of keeping it on my desk and I just look at it from time to time. Working on things like
this is always like equally stressful and exciting. I'm so happy I finally get to share this with you,
hopefully some of you will find this a helpful tool after I did. After the book club in September I got
a message from one of the girls who was part of it and said that that group had actually
continued the book club without me and some of them had become friends, which is just so
heartwarming. I think any experience I've had where I've met up with people to discuss books
it's been such a lovely experience. I think also most of the ones I've been to it was
mostly people coming by themselves and trying to find that connection, that conversation
and obviously that's one of the big reasons why we're all here, you know in this video box on this
website. I think that's all for me for now, thank you so much for watching and I'll see you soon.
Doei!