Interview with Victoria Azaro - Part One: 'every day I learnt something new'

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From the course by Commonwealth Education Trust

Writing for Young Readers: Opening the Treasure Chest

832 ratings

Commonwealth Education Trust

Writing for Young Readers: Opening the Treasure Chest

832 ratings

This course is for curious students and aspiring authors with a passion for writing for young readers. Participate in a dynamic online community of writers as you experiment with your own writing and develop your voice. This course will guide you with a combination of video lectures, online readings, peer reviews, and guest appearances from world-renowned children’s authors. As you work through the writing exercises, you will give and receive feedback from your peers and gain tools and techniques for improving your writing. During this course you will identify stories that matter to you, explore cultural significance and boundaries, and shape your identity as a writer; become familiar with standard elements of narrative (character, setting, plot, theme, language, dialogue, point of view); reflect on your own work and practice essential self-editing skills; see the different ways in which words and art interact, and the possibilities of longer narrative forms; come away with practical insights into publishing options; and create a plan for pursuing your enthusiasm for writing. By the end of the course, you will have ten to twelve extracts of writing that you can develop into a portfolio. Join a dynamic community of many voices from around the world. Find inspiration in your own voice, heart, and place so that you can tell the stories for young readers you’ve always wanted to tell.

From the lesson

Publishing

In this final module you’ll learn about different ways that you can get your work published and into the hands of young readers. We have included information about a range of different publishing methods available to you, from traditional print publishing to digital publishing. You can also listen to our guest writers talking about how they publish their own work. This MOOC is just a starting point for your writing life. You will soon be ready to join a global network of writers.

Interview with Victoria Azaro - Part One: 'every day I learnt something new'6:48

Interview with Victoria Azaro - Part Two: 'you need to wear lots of hats'5:07

Interview with Victoria Azaro - Part Three: 'I really draw from my culture'6:04

Interview with Victoria Azaro - Part Four: 'write from the heart'5:29

Meet the Instructors

David Hill
Author
Maria Gill
Author
Alex Alexandrou
Dr

We'd like to welcome Victoria as author here today.

She's originally from Argentina now living in New Zealand.

VIctoria writes and illustrates junior fiction chapter books.

She has been published with multinational and

local publishing houses as well as publishing herself.

Welcome.

>> Thank you.

>> Victoria, tell us about your traditional publishing experience...

>> Well, it was first my first book was published traditionally and

it was a lovely experience.

I was really lucky to have a wonderful publisher in New Zealand,

Miles and Randall.

Then I was published Penguin in New Zealand published the second and

the third book in the series.

And that was another experience with a traditional publisher, I guess.

And then just recently last year, I self-published two books.

And that was another lovely experience, but very,

very different to being published by a traditional publisher.

The main difference for me, when you publish with a traditional publisher,

you have a very devoted editor to work with you the whole time.

The first three books, I did it in that way, so

I worked with that same editor for five years.

She loved the series,

I loved that she loved the series because she spent hours and hours on it.

And I learned so much from her, and not only editing,

I learned about my own writing style, things that I wasn't aware of.

I would edit things that she would edit them back onto the text.

So, I learned so much from her, and then also because I did the illustrations,

I learned a lot from how the relationship between the illustrations and

the text in a generic chapter book, which is completely different to a picture book.

So, I feel that I was going to school pretty much for

five years whilst I was publishing my books.

So, I learned everyday, I learned something new.

So when you self publish you don't have that, you don't have the editor.

You don't have anyone patting you in the back, you have to pay for

everything, and everything falls back on you.

So, even though it sounds really negative,

it's lovely to have the freedom to do everything.

But I think that I enjoy the whole self-publishing processing because

I have had all that experience in the past.

So, I have built up my knowledge incredibly, and because I was in

the industry for five years, I knew who to actually approach to help me.

I payed for first class editing.

I payed for first class book designing.

I already knew who to send my books to, to get reviews in the market.

I asked for advice from the most prominent New Zealand book sellers,

which is very important thing to do, I've learned.

And I had people, I had friends in the industry, other authors,

I had other illustrators that were keen to share the process with me,

and It's good to have that support as well.

So I think that I couldn't have gone straight into self publishing,

because I wouldn't have known what to do.

The quality of the work would not have been there,

because I feel them myself publishing work is very, very high in quality.

But that is because now I know what it is to be, to produce a high quality work.

Before, I didn't know because I was a starting out author,

I didn't study creative writing.

My background is in fashion and fine arts.

I'm not a native English speaking person, and my books are written in English.

Even though I'm a fine artist, I had never done illustration as a course, so

it was all very self made.

And being in that traditional publishing model, allowed me

people that would work with me and teach me everything that I needed to know.

My first book, my first illustrations, I would put my little character and

they would fall all in the middle of the page here.

So, all my faces were here.

[LAUGH] So after I finished the whole book, illustrated the whole book.

I had to go back and re-illustrate the thing, and

shift those characters slightly to the left or the right.

I didn't know that until I started doing it.

So, can you imagine if I did that with a self published work?

That would have not been up to scratch.

So tha it is a great experience to do it,

but I feel that you need to have the background knowledge to be able to do it.

And in my case, it was by having had the traditional publishing model first.

>> Do you prefer one over the other?

>> No, I don't, I love, I think that I am very happy self

publishing my Saffron series because I spent, as I said, five years working with

someone that taught me exactly how the structure of the series had to work.

The relationship between the distractions and the text,

that took a work between the publisher and myself to work that out.

But this is, that is relevant to this series,

if I was to embark on another series or another piece of work.

I would definitely go for

traditional publishing simply because I would like to get the knowledge from them.

I feel that I wouldn't be an expert on that subject, I would like to get that.

So in that case, I would like to go.

>> And Ed Mallinson was a local publisher that then went on to be

published with a multinational publisher, didn't he.

>> Yes, Ed Mallinson sold to Penguin New Zealand, and

then Penguin New Zealand published my second two books for the series.

Slight difference there again,

because Ed Mallinson was much smaller than Penguin New Zealand.

So, the publicity of the book, the whole process was different.

I think there was more money devoted to promoting the books.

I was sent on bookshop tours a couple of times,

and book signings in bookstores.

And at Storylines Festival, we created a Saffron competition.

And they engage me in being a judge for

the Puffin short story competitions as well.

So it was a little bit different, and they really treated you as an author but

they had programs that you could fit in.

With a small New Zealand publisher in,

you felt very important to them, so that was in my mind.

You weren't just another author, it was in a list authors ideas, so

that you dealt with them directly.

And whilst with a bigger international publisher, you deal with a publicist or

the editor, but not necessarily with the head of the publishing house.

So that would have made the difference for me.

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