Introducing Inside Story: A Unique Project

United Publishers of Armidale is delighted and honoured to be collaborating with the New England Writers’ Centre on the unique and innovative Inside Story project, centred around the creation and production of children’s books. The Inside Story project, funded by a generous grant from Create NSW under its Arts Restart Strategic Initiative program, has a twin focus on the production of a book and the launch of a capacity-building professional development workshop.

The book, Inside Story: the wonderful world of writing, illustrating and publishing children’s books, is being worked on right now by us here at United Publishers of Armidale. It will be a full colour illustrated production in both print and e-book form, and aimed at aspiring writers, illustrators, editors and designers, but also anyone involved in or interested in the children’s book sector in Australia. Commissioned by NEWC, Inside Story will be fully created and produced by us, working with a fantastic core team of local professional writers, illustrators, designers, and editors. Contributions from other creatives and professionals in the region, across the State and across the country will also be included. The book will be published under the brand-new UPA Books banner in early 2022, and the New England Writers' Centre will share in all sales profits with us. It is a really exciting project and we have already had a fantastic response to the concept from book people in every part of our industry!  As work goes on, we’ll be updating this page with progress on the book and taking you behind the scenes of the creation of a unique book project.

Meanwhile, the Inside Story professional development day, themed specifically around children’s picture books, was held in Armidale on March 27 and presented by UPA.  It featured talks and presentations on all aspects of the creation and production of children’s picture books, from the first glimmer of an idea for a text to the drafting of illustration roughs and storyboards for the book’s visual world, right through to the many production processes that eventually end with the book appearing in bookshops. There was also a fun interactive activity, which put people in the publisher’s shoes in the creation and production of an imaginary picture book. The workshop was a sold-out success, with participants coming from all over the region and a wide range of people represented across the sector, from aspiring writers and illustrators to new editors and designers, and even a prospective publisher. Feedback was excellent with attendees remarking how fantastic it was that it was about the whole process of creating a picture book, not just writing or illustrating, as might be more usual, but all the aspects of production, publication and beyond too. We hope that this workshop might become a model for many more such professional development opportunities in the future.

The Inside Story project is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW