Brontosaurus Books

This weekend we confirmed going ahead with a quote from Australian printer, Finsbury Green. Sometime soon, Finsbury Green’s Melbourne based printing operation will be churning out 2000 Audrey picture books and of course we’re very excited about it (Finsbury’s Thebarton based plant has been closed due to the South Rd extension and they haven’t set up their new place somewhere on Grange Rd yet).

I will say here though that I am AMAZED how many picture books are not printed in Australia at present. To me, the picture book industry these days seems very much absorbed in teaching kids about morality in different arenas ie how to treat people, how to treat the environment, how to treat oneself etc etc and yet my guess is that more than 95% of the books preaching these things are printed offshore by Australian publishers taking advantage of cheap labour and less stringent environmental manufacturing regulations to save a couple dollars. And in our experience it is literally just a couple of dollars!

When printing The Very Steep Hill, we ended up paying $4.80 per book to Finsbury Green and a Chinese company quoted us $2 per book (that was with poorer quality paper weights and binding options - we didn’t get another offshore quote matching the Finsbury specs to compare exactly but obvs the gap would’ve been smaller still). I’m a huge fan of Australian made things and I was worried the offshore quote would be miles more affordable than any Australian options but it wasn’t.

I don’t want to be mean about what’s happening with the manufacturing of books in Australia right now but for me the hypocrisy of the situation is certainly there and I think more people should call it out. Don’t people think it’d be better if WAY MORE books that were written and illustrated in Australia were printed here too?

Of course I’m no saint, all three books I had published with Scholastic and New Frontier were printed offshore. I don’t recall requesting those publishers consider an Australian printing option… I would request it now. I don’t think I cared much whether something was Australian made or not for years with my different purchases and it took me a very long time to work out how damaging almost-everything-being-manufactured-offshore has been to Australian society. Here’s a link to a Facebook post I made years ago on this topic if anyone’s interested:

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DpysevbrA/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with a fun picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide/Melbourne by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

PS If you know anyone who might be interested in our content/books, please let them know we exist . 🙂

PPS I asked ChatGPT how many CO2 emissions in transport alone, locally printing 2000 books weighing approximately 380 grams would save and it came back with 97kg in sea freight and between 100-150kg in total with truck transport from printer to ports etc added in. Interesting hey!?!

Yesterday Megan and I sent a fully-illustrated Audrey PDF to Sally Odgers for a final edit before printing. If you are a writer and you’re trying to work out if your work is any good or how to improve it, I highly recommend Sally O and Affordable Manuscript Assessments. When I received nothing but wordless rejections/redirections from publishers, Sally helped me see that my efforts did have value and that I should persist. And I didn’t need to take out a second mortgage for her super sage advice!

Sally is first and foremost an author herself and here’s a link to an interesting article about her:

Sally Odgers – The Creative Mind Behind 400 Books - Reader’s House

And here’s a link to Affordable Manuscript Assessments:

Affordable Manuscript Assessments

Brontosaurus Books says, “Sally Odgers for PM!” 🦕😄

PS Sally Odgers also put Megan and Chris Collin in touch with one another so that’s how that very productive collab started! Are there any limits to Sally’s spectacular utility? None have ever been recorded. 😄

As a kid, the Berenstain Bears absolutely cracked me up. The family of bears were always getting involved in whacky situations and they were very, very funny. Even though I was small I could tell I was being taught “life lessons” as well by the books but they were super secondary considerations compared to the wild narratives.

Megan and I have a few copies of different Berenstain Bears books for our classes (The Spooky Old Tree, The Bike Lesson and The Bear Detectives) but we need to expand our collection. Midway through discussing this post with Meg, we have just ordered another nine! Obviously the fact you can still buy these books brand new is a testament to their epic quality.

If you have a little student, kid, grandkid, niece, nephew etc, we super highly recommend snagging as many Berenstain Bears books as you can. In our experience, the Berenstains get kids very excited about reading and this, as previously stated, is perhaps the greatest gift of all!!!

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with a quirky picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

PS If you know anyone who might be interested in our content/books, please let them know we exist . 🙂

If you’re looking for a wholesome, imaginative kids’ movie, it doesn’t get much more wholesome or imaginative than My Neighbour Totoro. Megan and I pop this on for our Year 1 classes as an end of term celebration and it’s always received very, very well. Heaps of people already know about Totoro and Studio Ghibli but it seems like even more people don’t know about them at all so this post is for them. At BB we believe the sooner kids can be exposed to absolutely amazing, incredible narratives (in any format) the better.

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with a fun picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

PS If you know anyone who might be interested in our content/books, please let them know we exist . 🙂

School holidays have allowed more time for Brontosaurus Books activities and the art and marketing departments have been pretty busy.

Megan has made it up to page 33 of 44 in Audrey. More timelapse reels to show this coming soon. Megan always has absolutely no social media comment to make re her artistic endeavours. Last Week When Pterodactyls Came to School storyboarding has also continued and is a welcome break from unsolicited solicitations for Ben.

Further to marketing, Ben has now managed to call every library (or library purchasing cluster) about TVSH in SA, WA, the NT, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT. There’s only NSW left to go now and he’s made it up to Clarence (Yamba, Iluka, Urunga, Bellingen, Maclean, Dorrigo and Grafton libraries) in an alphabetical list of council shires. Also Ben says some library clusters in Victoria are now buying more copies of The Very Steep Hill as borrowing has been strong. Ben says most library calls end up feeling good but they all start somewhat uneasily as it is basically telemarketing after all. Ben hopes to grow his list of library contacts so that cold calls down the track don’t exist.

In other Brontosaurus Books news, there is no news. 🙂

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with a quirky, entertaining picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

For picture books, we believe Pamela Allen is the absolute GOAT. Her stories are often imaginative but they’re always grounded in a reality kids UNDERSTAND and are deeply interested in. Her illustrations are also beautiful and super endearing.

Pamela’s books are guaranteed winners with kids and if you’re a parent, grandparent, teacher, librarian or booknut, you should have many or all of them in your collection.

The pictures for this post are from an exhibition called The Curious World of Pamela Allen. The exhibition is running at the State Library of NSW for a few years so yep… people don’t get exhibitions like this about their work very often… Pamela Allen is CLEARLY the PICTURE BOOK GOAT.



Know a 3-8 year old who could do with an entertaining picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

At Brontosaurus Books we’d like to see way more PICTURE BOOKS aimed at ENTERTAINING kids (rather than proselytising a position on a social issue or giving behaviour regulation tips).

Last Week When Pterodactyls Came to School is another story we’ve created with KIDS’ ENTERTAINMENT front of mind. Having recently finished the text, storyboarding LWWPCTS will be a fun past time over the next few weeks for me and maybe one day Megan will make the deluxe version.

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with an entertaining picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

Watershed week at Brontosaurus Books. We are now giving away free Brontosaurus Books stickers with orders! Colourful stickers are obviously right up there in terms of humanity’s-all-time-greatest-achievements so yep… we’re very happy about it. A huge thanks to and for their cricut wizardry. 🧙😄🦕

If you already have a Brontosaurus Books book and would like a sticker to pop on your car, skateboard, front door or forehead, just yell out.

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with a fun picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

Brontosaurus Books Diary Entry Number ?

It’s been a different few weeks at BB. Lately we have been an email-only marketing enterprise and so far it’s been pretty good (selling maybe 5 books a week on average). With different time zones preventing the calling of the remaining public libraries in Vic, Tas and NSW, we’ve pivoted to emailing school librarians instead. We’ve had to tweak a few things so that we can get through more often and we’ll perhaps have to tweak things further. It’s a lot easier than being on the phone though and the list of librarian contacts grows each week so perhaps getting return customers down the track will be easier.

Generally the last few weeks has been a step in the direction we want to take; Brontosaurus Books selling books without Megan or I having to do any kind of song or dance. Without us being visible at all really. With no more school, library, kindy or OSHC visits planned and now not even being on the phone much, things are moving towards the space we were always hoping for marketing-wise. Maybe we’re shy. Maybe we should go even more incognito and start wearing helmets like Daft Punk or wigs like Sia… certainly an option…

In other news we recently partnered up with another library supplier, Sound Text Media. STM have purchased 20 books already so that’s a great start!

Some more news has also been the creation of social media QR follow slips which we’ll be popping in with our book orders for a while.

That’s it for now!

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with an engaging, fun picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.