We are setting out on an adventurous journey to transform illustrated stories into books. This platform aims to unite illustrators, authors and picture book enthusiasts (both big and small) into a collaborative community that turns ideas into stories and stories into books.
What is Blue Boat Books?
We are making children's books
Books with emotive topics that are able to illuminate the fundamental questions on love and security, wealth and poverty, life and loss, culture, friendship, our existence and our future. We don’t want to use existing publishing structures – therefore we are looking to build new ones.
And this is how we do it
An illustrator comes to us with a great illustrated story, and we decide to make this story into a beautiful, special book.
We approach children’s book readers and introduce them to the story.
We ask these future readers to become our patrons by means of monthly donations.
We start working directly with the illustrator on the book production. Our time scale is four months.
We need a minimum of four euros every month during the production process to be able to achieve our goal: a finished and printed book for every supporter.
The direct involvement of the reader allows us to estimate precisely the number of print editions, therefore using the full budget to financially facilitate the artist and the creative design of the books. Of course, larger amounts are welcome, as they offer more freedom in the creative process.
We include our supporters at every stage
To reward our readers/patrons for their financial involvement, they receive an email each month with a sneak look at the current stage of production – something special that we prepare individually for each book. The preview may be a moving illustration (such as a stop-motion video), images with music, a storyboard, a peek at the illustrator at work, origami instructions for parts of the story – or whatever the picture book narrative encourages us to do.
Finally
At the end of a four-month period of full support, each patron will receive a printed copy of the final book that was made possible through his or her engagement.
This is what we are looking for right now:
Adventurous illustrators wanted
with a special story. We are looking for mesmerizing art and beautiful stories that pair to wonderful narratives, interesting and accessible to both adult and child readers alike. Your illustration style should be artistic, intelligent, humorous, new, uncompromising and off-the-wall. The story and the illustrations should form a significant unity.
About blue boat books – who we are
Blue Boat Books is a joint creative undertaking by Claudia Frickemeier and her close collaborative circle of artists and designers.
We look for great art and stories, and we experiment with new concepts, formats, narratives and genres in order to grow outside the traditional publishing world, where artistic decisions are build on mainstream marketing constrains that obiviate young artists and new approaches as incalculable undertakings.
Our focus is on finding and supporting young talent and exploring new paths with them. We do, of course, also admire established artists and authors and we do invite them to join us in our creative endeavours.
Contact
If you would like to get in touch for more information, to share ideas, scribbles or illustrations, to offer support or just generally to share your thoughts, then please contact us at claudia@blueboatbooks.org