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 Recently, I have discovered how to turn social anxiety and dyslexia, which have long posed significant challenges for me, into advantages.
Several years back, I conducted a workshop titled 9 Ways to Become a Super Creative Teacher. Moments before my presentation, the organizers informed me that it had received the highest number of registrations to date. "Please don’t say that! " I joked. My entire life, battling severe social anxiety has been a constant challenge. Yet, in the past decade, I made the decision to tackle it directly and confront it head-on. Dyslexia being my other former enemy has become a blessing, opening doors for me and allowing me to help people through my creativity. I find it difficult to focus for more than several minutes without my mind going into daydream mode. However I found that drawing what i see helps to me focus, remember information as well as to visually structure ideas. During staff meetings, I would pull out my pen and paper, and surprisingly, I found that I could not only stay engaged but also remember everything discussed. The images I drew seemed to stick in my mind. I started watching live discussions on environmental and social topics that mattered to me. I drew the main points out quickly, then immediately shared my work on social media tagging anyone involved. Others found my sketches helpful for their own recollection. The speakers appreciated my work and often shared it with their audiences. Soon, I began receiving requests to create sketchnotes professionally and was even compensated for it. The United Nations frequently reached out, commissioning me to attend their private meetings with CEOs and political leaders to take notes. It felt incredible to capture and create visual representations of the key points whilst assisting others in remembering without them having to sift through lengthy transcripts. At Bookazine, I thought I could create visual notes again to support fellow dreamers in grasping Simon's main ideas. In doing so, I could reinforce my own memory while being of help to others. So as I sat down and took out my ipad, I began to draw and take notes. Simon smiled at me and said 'It's always interesting when someone's drawing you in the front. Can you make me look younger? That's my dream.' 'I'll try' I replied. I eagerly continued my sketchnote until, moments later, the dreaded 'low battery' alert flashed on the screen. "Guess that's the end of that," I thought to myself. However, this time I found it easy to maintain my concentration. Simon delivered a fantastic presentation, and his words completely engaged everyone in the audience. Since then, I have been piecing together video clips and audio recordings from various social media platforms to compile this Sketchnote. I truly hope it proves to be helpful for you.
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  Yesterday morning, I woke up with a clear sense of purpose. My goal was to seek advice from Simon Squibb on how to chase my dream. After work, I arrived an hour early at his book signing, sitting right in the front row, wearing a bright orange jumper. It worked. Out of a crowd full of eager dreamers, I was selected to ask a question—one question that had the potential to change my life. Simon offered me invaluable guidance on what steps I need to take to become a Children’s Book Author and Illustrator.
Writing and illustrating books has always been my passion. I’ve shared my creations for free on my website, www.MagicStorybooks.com. My stories touch on important topics such as global issues, the challenges of growing up, standing up for others, and navigating anxiety. Now, I’m ready to take the next step: turning these stories into physical books so they can reach a much larger audience. As part of this journey, I will be documenting every moment—both the highlights and the setbacks—through blogs and vlogs, sharing insights and lessons along the way. My aim is to inspire and support others who share the dream of bringing their own stories to life. I would love to hear from you if you have any connections, advice, or know someone who might be able to assist! Please feel free to reach out! @chrisgadbury or [email protected] Below is a transcript of the question and Simon's answer. Chris Gadbury: Thank you so much. I'm a primary school art teacher. I'd really love what I do, but I also want to be a children's book author and illustrator. So I've written lots of books, made lots of resources. I'm quite well known in my field for giving away free resources, and I started doing that. I started writing books and then putting them on YouTube. But I think having read your book, part of me giving away books on YouTube is the fear of rejection from a publisher. I wanted to know from your experience, self publishing, is that a good way to go, or should I keep pushing to find a publisher? What is your opinion on that? Thank you so much. Simon Squibb: I'm new to publishing, so I've only been now a published author of a year. So, in short, I think, you need to sell the book. And so, I signed with Penguin. Anyone here from Penguin? Okay, penguin are awesome. But, I think there is an element in publishing where people think that penguin are gonna do the sales. So you still need to do the sales. So this is why I like personal brand, because if once you build up an audience that trusts you, you can sell a book, right? And so the publisher, in reality, like in Hong Kong, I connected the publisher with Bookazine. I’m friends with folks at Bookazine. So I made that connection and the folks at Bookazine are the ones that then helped me make it happen. So in reality, I made it happen. But penguin, because of a 1st time publisher, a 1st time author, I think having a penguin brand on a book helps a lot because they only actually publish seven, this type of book a year. So you do have that credibility with a publisher. The penguin has definitely given me, right? So, they vet the book, they don't just say yes, they give you a lot critical feedback. And then the other thing they did is they got it sold into 90 markets. It's translated into 26 languages, which isn't something I can do either, right? So I think basically, though, the key is actually getting agent. So there are agents that talk to the folks like Penguin, and the best scenario is you get them into a bidding war. So actually, I had an agent, penguin inquired, I got an agent, the agent then went to all the publishers, and penguin won the bidding war. Which is kind of a nice place to be, right? Now, the downside to a publisher is you have to market yourself. So there is an argument, the second way of doing it, self publishing, if you're gonna have to do the marketing anyway, why not take all the profit? So, from a book, I make about a pound, or, you know, $1.2 per book, which, when I think, you know, took me two years to write it, I pretty much wrote it every day, took me 35 years to understand it all, and I made a very small amount, if you put... It is not the what people think. Now, we've sold a lot of books, so in the end, it is a lot of money. But, um, I think that self publishing is actually quite a good way to go. But that being said.. Penguin are amazing! Yeah, and I mean, there is a hybrid now where you can get someone who does all the stuff that penguin does. But you pay them to do it. And if I've got another book coming out, I also signed with penguin on that book. And I've got a kids book coming out, which I started with Puffin, which is a penguin partner. On reflection, I think it's absolutely the right thing to have done, got a publisher, from a credibility point of view, it really helps. But if you just want to get books out there, I actually think self publishing is really powerful. Work with someone who's got a distribution channel. So look online for someone with 10,000 followers in the kids' space, or find a YouTuber who's making YouTubes for kids, or whatever, and partner with them. And every book they sell, you can give them a dollar, right? And then things like TikTok shop, which I know you don't have TikTok here, which is bizarre to me… It's a major plus TikTok, because you can do TikTok shop…and I love, I don't know what the equivalent might be in Hong Kong. But I can put the book on TikTok shop. I can get the book to you. You can then post a video about it. could go viral and you sell the book for me. Right? So, I think the affiliate sales on books is really interesting. So if you find a group of people that are in your space, there'll be YouTubers that sell to your demographic. There'll be Instagram folks that sell to your demographic. You give them a commission system, you can, you can do pretty well, without you having to sell it, because you're clearly the talent that makes it right. Okay? Does that help? Chris Gadbury: Yeah, so helpful. Thank you so much! |
AuthorChris Gadbury - Art Educator, Author, Illustrator, Graphic Designer, Sketchnote Artist. Archives
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