BriarsBooks

See Books Below

From simple booklets to complex academic books of 300-400 pages.
Each sample shows front cover and double page spread

This author decided at 91 that it was time write up the short version of a long life lived well - for her children, numerous grandchildren, friends and wider family. For a woman raised in a children's home in Palmerston North from the age of 5 years, she went on to find, forgive and reconcile with her mother 44 years later, reunite with her siblings, raise a family of 5, find God, traipse round the country in a convoy of trucks, tents and caravans for 10 years preaching the gospel in remote Maori villages; marry a man she loved to the end, survive illness and accident and learn the keyboard in her 80s. "The view from the top is terrific," she says. Just 50 copies to test the waters and further print runs to meet demand. 100 pages with photographs, printed by CopyPress, Nelson. Layout and design by BriarsBooks.

The desire to leave a written record of one's life, or to give testimony to something life-changing, is a strong motive behind the writing of autobiographies. This book came out of several personal tragedies in which the author came to the growing realisation that God had been leading her throughout and that she was a pearl of great price. She also called her book Pearl of Great Price because Jesus Christ referred to himself as such a pearl, and because the fabulous blue pearl is cultured through processes painful to the marine shellfish. The life-history of the blue pearl runs alongside the author's own story. The author printed 200 copies and they are available both from RealNZ Books online and from the author by email. The book is reflective with plenty of breathing space for illustrations and photos. 100 pages, Layout and cover design by BriarsBooks, using provided art.

Fresh Fire is startlingly wide in scope - a broad-brush history of the moves of the Spirit of God in New Zealand from 1766 to the present. It is not a theological book but is drawn copiously from research, original sources and interviews. 340 pages, 275 footnotes and an extensive index. The author - a fifth generation New Zealander and a missionary for many years - chose to self-publish and to distribute using her own extensive networks and outlets. She also wanted a kindle e-book. Cover design, editing, layout and kindle ebook by BriarsBooks. The book is available from RealNZ Books online as well as directly from the author here, and from the Kindle Bookstore

This Hastings author demonstrates what someone can do who was dyslexic as a child. Growing up, Lynette would never have believed that she would write books but she is now on to her 7th children's book and has also written an adult Christian fantasy novel of 250 pages. She illustrates her books herself and chooses to self-publish. Her children's books are all 30 pages long and she prints about 400 at a time. Because they are short, easy to read, uplifting and cheerful she has no trouble getting them into primary schools. There's a lot going on in the illustrations to hold children's interest. Lynette also targets gift shops, markets, libraries, bookstores, doting grandparents and curious members of the public. Because of her own dyslexia Lynette has focussed Bubbles on children having difficulty with numeracy and reading. Bubbles will be available soon through Lynette's website

This illustrator and counsellor wanted to tell the story of her journey with grief in a way that would bring encouragement to others on similar journeys. Her 32 page book - illustrated by herself - tells the story of 2 caterpillars who were the best of friends. One day one of them isn't there any more, and the other disappears into a cocoon for a long time. But in her darkness she is always aware of the sun, and eventuallly she emerges to find she has grown wings and is now able to fly. The author wanted to self-publish and is able to distribute personally through her own networks. The book is her first and the message is,"Take all the time you need." Purchase The Sun and the Sad House online at RealNZBooks or through the author

This Auckland author - a former surfer and freewheeler - found out about biblical prophecies that had come true and became a convinced Christian because of it. The fulfilment of Bible prophecy has fascinated him so much ever since that he decided to write a book about it. 300 copies for a first print run with more to come. He also wanted a kindle e-book. Certainly not the cover I would have designed for this book, but the author had made a commitment to another artist and that's just how it goes sometimes. Maybe something about joining the dots?

This Wanganui writer, already the author of a traditionally and internationally published historic fiction trilogy, is self-publishing her next trilogy, and this book, When this Day Comes, is the first book in the series, set in the fledgling city of Wellington about 1866. The author, Julianne Jones is carefully true to the period and writes easily and convincingly of the struggles of her heroine, a young woman finding her way towards independence and maturity while staying true to cherished values. The book moves between Australia and NZ and hints at an aristocratic heritage. Christian fiction, 294 pages. Cover design, layout and editing by BriarsBooks. Also made into an e-book for digital bookstores.

Meg, Papa's favourite singer in the Kingdom, wants to visit the Other Realm to see what the Shining Ones - who have already been there and returned - are talking about. Meg also wants to be a Shining One because she knows they make Papa happy. Permission is granted and Papa proposes a preliminary tour. Meg's adventures - often amusing - give her an introduction to life in the Other Realm. The question is, will she decide to go there for real and become a Shining One herself. 86 pages with questions for readers. Cover design by BriarsBooks. Track the book down at torupatiki@gmail.com or buy it online at Real NZ Books

A colouring in book with a difference!! for senior secondary school students selected for a Young Enterprise Award scheme. The students had decided to create a children's colouring book on the sustainability theme, using recycled materials, crayons made from beeswax and natural dyes, and using local skills. They collaborated with Zealandia, Wellington Zoo and Staglands to source photos that could be converted to line art that could be coloured in by primary school children and be FUN and EDUCATIONAL. They found BriarsBooks online and asked her to design an attractive colouring book and create the line art.

As anyone knows, tracing every feature and feather to create lines to colour between was out of the question, so it was a case of ransacking Photoshop to find a combination of filters that would do the job for me, then removing excessive detail, and adding strong, simple lines manually. It would take a lecture to explain what had to be done. Facts had to be checked and added. Without enough text the National Library would not have provided the essential ISBN number! Anyway - it worked well, the students made their crayons and sold their books. They deserve to be nationally awarded! So does the designer!! Available at Wellington Zoo.

From a first time author. This writer believes God is radically restructuring the church in New Zealand and the world over into something much more organic and powerful - and by that he doesn't mean new buildings and institutions. 80 pages. Cover design by BriarsBooks. The truck is carting a derelict building off to the renovators. The background landscape is recognisably Kiwi, and the letters on the hill turn the T of Aotearoa into a cross. The author expects the book to be controversial and will distribute it using his own channels.

From a first time author who wanted to write up her personal story so it might help others. 82 pages with colour photos. Cover designed by BriarsBooks from provided photos. This was a short print run of 50 for distribution to family and friends. These days most books are printed on digital presses, allowing for short initial print runs and lower outlay, with options for quick turnaround times on later print runs if there is demand. Print on demand also allows for corrections or changes to be made to text at very little extra cost.

Front cover (left) and a set of facing pages (right) from this author's latest children's book - The Valley of the Dinosaurs. Lynette self-publishes, illustrates and distributes her own books but has no difficulty selling them to parents, grandparents, schools and members of the public. People everywhere respond to the bright illustrations and the cheerful, engaging content. Children are urged to go on hunts for numerous small creatures in the illustrations.www.lynettelovebooks.nz

An autobiographical account of what it's like to face death. This book was edited and prepared as an ebook (epub and pdf) for the author, a man in the USA who found his Christian faith was deeply tested when he was suddenly faced with a perilous sextuple heart bypass operation. Full of insight and "bon mots" from others who have had to look death in the face and lived - or not! Cover design by BriarsBooks. The author wanted a large image of the book cover on his website to lead the user to a downloadable pdf of the book (see here) The epub was for submission to digital bookstores.

The author of this book was awarded an OBE for a busy and productive career in the Army and in civilian life. Now in his 80s he was wanting to leave a memoir for his family and friends and preferred to self-publish. The book is full of anecdotes, photos, and accounts of hard work, achievement, leadership and overseas travel. It fitted well into the self-publishing niche. A traditional publisher would probably not have shown interest, but the author got a professionally edited and produced book of 152 pages that would look good on any bookshelf, a worthy heirloom for the children and grandchildren and a gift for friends.

Another children's book from NZ author and illustrator, Lynette Love. Lynette is now a regular at BriarsBooks - with 5 children's books and an adult fantasy novel, Paradox, in her portfolio. Lynette has no problems selling her books to schools and local bookshops and giftshops. She does her own illustrations and draws her stories from farm life and experiences that resonate with kiwis. Her children's books can be bought here. Lynette usually prints 500 books at a time. Her children's books are 30 pages, every second page illustrated in detail, with lots to interest curious kids. Her adult books (3) are also illustrated. Paradox, ran to 260 pages.

A first novel by a retired teacher - writing under a pseudonym - for teenage girls in particular. This genre often carries a lot of art, and this book had over 100 images. The plot ducks and dives unexpectedly between England, New Zealand and an imaginary, exotic principality in the Middle East and is a mixture of fantasy, romance, mystery, tragedy and the fulfilment of an impossible dream. We moved away from the usual A5 format for this book to a popular format for young people. 200 pages. Cover design by BriarsBooks. The author is now planning a biography.

An experienced counsellor's handbook for her clients about how to get free and how to stay free, drawn from 40 years of counselling practice. 75 pages. Cover Design by BriarsBooks. An A5 format suited this book, and because its style was warm and informal we moved away from the academic "serif" font to a non-serif and gave it a nice spacious layout.

The first book of a trilogy - the Coin Trilogy - written by a new New Zealand Author - PDDawn, from Canterbury. The book is a historical romance - and Christian fiction - but based on fact and set in the World War One era and a little later. Almost 300 pages. The author is already half way into writing the second book of the Trilogy. She decided to take the self-publishing route, rather than traditional publishing because she felt the process would be less complex and there would be a better and faster return on her investment. Pam is focused on writing well, and tells a good story; the characters are authentic, and she does her research. Her style is punchy and vivid. She approached BriarsBooks for help with editing, layout, cover design and a kindle e-book.

Cover design by BriarsBooks. 102 pages: An academic observes and recounts her experience over several years of teaching science in an indigenous school in New Zealand, in which respect was given to Maori worldviews and perceptions in the teaching of the scientific method. The author was a retiring university professor. She made the time-consuming mistake - as many do who self-publish - of providing images taken from the web or on a camera at very small sizes. These are unusable in print and always have to be replaced - a frustrating process both for the designer and the author. This author had also prepared tables but submitted them as small images - so that the text was illegible. She had no original backups and all the tables had to be redone. It's hard to know how to prepare authors for this before they bring their material to the process. This author also wanted a digital edition of the book for online viewing and that was easily done.

Another A4-size book from the pen of an increasingly prolific writer of children's books - under her Little Gems imprint. This NZ author, Lynette Love, lives in Hawkes Bay and illustrates and writes her own books. Billy the Bulldozer is about a neglected old bulldozer who misses the friendly farmer who used to care for him. But the friendly farmer returns, restores him and Billy is given a new lease on life. In the meantime he has made some unlikely friends. These colourful and heart-warming books with a NZ twist are 30 pages long and enjoyed by grandparents, parents and young children. Lynette has aleady written her next children's book: Back-to-front Weka which will be published next year. She has recently turned her hand to adult Christian fantasy. You will find her here.

A first-time author - in her sixties - wanting to put her Anglo-Indian history into a form that could be read by several generations of the family. The book is based on her grandmother's first-hand accounts of her life as a mixed-race child growing up on an Assam tea plantation in the time of the British Raj, until her father - the plantation manager - sent her out to New Zealand with a number of other children of mixed parentage.The book both informs and entertains. The author found she had good sketching skills and some delightful illustrations are scattered throughout. She also designed her own cover. Both the text and the illustrations needed work to bring out the best.

260 pages by a New Zealand author, 500 copies. This book is an unusual genre - part parable, part fantasy, part biographical. It tells the story of a fictional young woman who has extraordinary spiritual experiences. This author has been successfully writing and illustrating children's books for the last several years and this is her first attempt at adult secular fiction. The author has had many of the experiences related in the book but a lot of editing was required to make them accessible to her readers. This author does her own illustrations, designs her own covers and looks after her own distribution. It's unusual to have colour illustrations in the spiritual/fantasy genre, but this book defies a lot of conventions. It should have good success. www.lynettelovebooks.nz

500 copies, witten by a NZ scientist and academic inveighing against the rise of an elite class of people - megaphone in hand - who refuse to engage with policy makers having views other than their own. 128pages. Cover by BriarsBooks was intended to use humour and satire to pull readers in. The author drew on his experience in economics, science policy, business and management to present his views. The material came laid out like a scientific paper and significant changes were needed in layout and style. After considering traditional publishing routes, the author chose to self-publish and do his own publicity and distribution.

This author - a retired psychiatrist - lives on the East Coast of the USA. He was impressed by work done by BriarsBooks on a large genealogy for relatives living in New Zealand - Four Sons of Skye, see below - and wanted BriarsBooks to design and produce his own. Tolme Tales is 128 pages of text, with photos - all needing rescuing to work in print. The cover shows 7 generations of his family line. Though the book was produced and printed in NZ, at only 50 copies including postage, he was satisfied that costs were comparable to getting the job done on the U.S. East Coast. He has another book in the works and plans to use BriarsBooks again.

These 2 books found their way onto Seven Sharp, TV1. They were written by a 7 year old Russian girl, Victoria, with brain cancer and only several months to live. Victoria wanted to write a "real" book as soon as possible. Her hospital social worker made the approach and BriarsBooks did the job at no cost. So did the printer. One of the books was in Russian and the other in English, both on diferent subjects. Victoria had her stories clear but her drawings were only half finished, because of her illness. She only wanted her drawings used, so I had to be very creative with the pieces of art on every scrap of paper she gave me. She was very clear about her cover design and her colours, and checked everything to make sure I was doing exactly what she wanted.

Hungry Little Dragon seemed to be Victoria's personal story - about a little dragon who was not intimidated by a slimy thing in a dark cave, but found friends and good food. Путешествие Кузи was about a grasshopper looking for "home" and unable to find a place she belonged - until she was befriended by a dragonfly who took her to a party. Victoria is one courageous little girl who said she never gave up. Her books were for friends and family and "all the children." Her story came to the attention of Seven Sharp and Hilary Barry flew down from Auckland with cameraman to film Victoria with her two books. Victoria didn't just get her "real" book written, illlustrated and printed, she got two of them and prime-time exposure on TV1. By the way - Victoria finally relented a little and let me add a tree and some extra grass to her front cover. She died about 4 months later.

A beautifully-illustrated (almost A4-size) 20-page book for children between 3 and 5 years. 500 copies. This is the third children's book by this author, who has discovered she not only has a flair for heart-warming stories for kids (and the parents and grandparents who read them) but also for colourful and detailed illustrating. This author does her own distribution and has sold hundreds in the course of several years. Her profound little stories are told in a simple and sometimes quirky way and are available online here. www.lynettelovebooks.nz Her first children's book, Nuggets of Gold is displayed below.

A local novelist's 300-page sequel to an earlier book - The Tarnished Necklace. Cover design by a friend. BriarsBooks added further editing, layout and pre-press services. The earlier book pleased its readers so much that they begged for a sequel. This book, set in 19th Century England and Wyoming, explores the tricky reconcilation between a pompous, aristocratic father and his estranged son in way that reflects the period and is authentic. Father gets his come-uppance in a way that delights the reader's sense of fair play. The type face was selected to reflect the period.

A beautifully-illustrated (almost A4-size) 20-page book for children between 3 and 5 years. 500 copies. This author lives on a farm and keeps her costs down by doing her own illustrations - drawing them from farm life. Her themes explore the intimacy between God and his children in allegory and story and are proving popular with parents and grandparents wanting simple and positive reading matter for their kids and grandkids. This is the author's 5th book and her second children's book. Her first, Nuggets of Gold is below. www.lynettelovebooks.nz

A medium-format children's book, appealing to all ages. 800 copies, 84 pages with colour illustrations and a glossy laminated cover. This book was entertainingly written and the stories well structured but needing detailed editing to get them to read well. The illustrations, done by the author herself, were attractive and brightly coloured and the concern was to get the best colour we could out of a value-for-money process. Glossy paper was too costly so we chose a standard coated paper and decided to wait for the printed proofs. The proofs were pleasing enough but the colours softer than we really wanted. We went ahead anyway, but a later test run by another printing company using the same files produced brighter colour, better definition and sharper text for an even sharper price, so the author will use them for her next children's book.

A5 book of 142 pages. 100 copies and a 2nd print run within several months. 40 stories from a pastor's wife about the ups and downs of life and her continual discovery that God could always be trusted to keep his promises. The author tells her stories as small "gems" - hence the title. The challenge of this book was the editing. Preserving the author's style while eliminating jargon and poor sentence structure is always a challenge. The nature of the book invited wide margins. The cover was designed by one of the author's friends who had a great designer's eye but was using older (incompatible) versions of software and a free font that promised problems at the print end. The author decided to start with a small print run and reprint on demand.

A5 book of 118 pages with 30 graphite illustrations. 400 copies. Travellers tales by a woman who visits many countries having supernatural Christian adventures. The cover and illustrations were done by a local artist and it was a balancing act protecting the soft texture of the illustrations while removing inevitable smudges; scanning and printing processes pick up the slightest smudges. Unfortunately the cover illustration had not been done with the ratio of an A5 book in mind so part of it had to be sacrificed to the process.The book needed editing to minimise jargon. This active author has already ordered another print run and files have been sent overseas to be used in a European edition.

2000 copies, 68 pages with colour and b/w illustrations. A surfie and drug user turned believer, reflecting on life. The writer was a busy man who didn't realise that the illustrations he wanted to use were copyright-protected, so alternatives had to be found. He only knew about traditional publishing and didn't realise the advantages of self-publishing. Because he wanted the book out quickly he decided to pay for printing. He was a friendly type who conversed easily and could freely distribute the book himself. The cover didn't do the book justice so BriarsBooks designed one to suit. The book had about a dozen illustrations but because few were in colour we went with uncoated paper.

A popular local wildlife park - Staglands - commemorated its 40 years with a 60-page book documenting the full story of the park from its beginnings as rough farmland through to its current status as a sanctuary for breeding and protection of endangered species. It allows families and children live and closeup encounters with NZ native birds and animals and domesticated creatures of all kinds in a beautiful environment. The cover design was provided and the text arrived needing little in the way of editing. A lot of the early photos however, needed rescuing.

This book was a challenge that ultimately took me 4 years. A 328-page genealogy, with 160 photos, genealogical charts and maps, appendices, bibliography and index. 400 copies. The author was meticulous in her research and checking and was always turning up new material. Every chart was provided hand-drawn and had to be recreated digitally. Old maps needed rescuing or redrawing. All photos needed editing and tonal adjustments. The cover was a combination of a black and white photo of the old family home and a coloured photo of a Scottish landscape that worked together. The clan tartan was placed along the cover, front and back. This book hit problems half way through with software incompatibilities - very trying for both client and designer. There were so many additions and corrections to this book it was a challenge keeping track of them all. It was an expensive book to print, but demand was strong within the clan internationally and interest was shown from libraries. There will soon be a third reprint. The client is now working on a sequel. Help!

An academic book: 290 pages for a Japanese Professor of Physics - in English. The Professor's spoken English was good but his written English was odd. Because this book was intended for an international readership it needed a complete rewrite and almost all its many diagrams and photos had to be redone or edited. I needed continual help from my husband - a scientist - who came to the rescue when the science baffled me. The book took 10 months to complete and the publishers based in Singapore say it is one of their most popular titles. The professor believed he could account scientifically for many of the unusual phenomena reported before large earthquakes. The cover design combined a photo taken after the Kobe earthquake and a postcard of the legendary earthquake-causing catfish said to reside under Japan. Bringing legend and science together on the cover seemed a propos.

A book of 312 pages with some diagrams but mainly text. Something of a classic among those who want out of homosexuality and those who want to understand what homosexuality actually is. Straightforward to do. It was also turned into a kindle e-book and an .epub and .pdf for download from the author's website. The book has also been translated into Korean and distributed internationally. This was a third edition and was given a change of cover for the occasion. Found here: www.cravingforlove.nz

A5, 144 pages for international distribution: God has a mother's heart. Theology and reflection. The author of this book provided her own cover image. Care was needed with choice of font and decorative motifs to keep the look feminine, in keeping with the subject matter. This book is regularly reprinted. Cover Design by JordanCreative.

A son's account of his communist father's life - adapted from a National Radio documentary. Jack Perkins, an award-winning producer with National Radio talked about his father on air and listeners found the account so memorable that he decided to turn the documentary into a small book of 28 pages. The old photos needed a lot of editing.

An A5 book of 114 pages with photos: The life of a drug addict and violent offender, who had a life-changing encounter with God in prison. This book had a central section of colour photos most of which were badly under or over-exposed, or distorted and needed a lot of photo editing. Cost issues meant the colour photos could only be printed on uncoated paper (which is cheaper than coated but doesn't give as good a finish) but the end result more than satisfied the author who is raising funding for each print run and giving the books to prisoners.

This academic book of almost 300 pages has a complex index and long chapter references, numerous diagrams and footnotes. It has had multiple print runs and also been converted to an e-book for sale on Amazon. Amazon's obscure and contradictory guide to working with images for kindle books didn't make the job easy but 40 images eventually made it through the process. This book has also been converted to pdf and is steadily downloaded worldwide from the author's website. It has also been translated into 6 languages, most recently Mandarin and Arabic. www.mygenes.co.nz

An autobiography of 176 pages about an adventurous South Island kiwi couple who invested everything they had into a former TB Sanitorium in Central Otago and have spent years restoring it and turning it into a Christian rehabilitation, retreat and conference centre. The book needed heavy editing to remove jargon. Photos were also in a bad way so I put filters over them to stylise away difficult blemishes. The cover shows the superintendent's house in the 1920s compared with the house after they had restored it. It was meant to convey the heart of their project- the rehabilitation of buildings and people. A couple of thousand copies of this book have been printed and sold or given away to the hundreds of people who visit the sanitorium each year privately or in busloads.

88 pages, A5. 24 short stories of little miracles in the lives of everyday people - hence the title, Bread and Butter Miracles. Cover design by Tania Lee. This book was quick and easy to do - just a case of finding an attractive font and layout and repeating it through the book for each story. The author - a local senior citizen - tired of hearing about miracles that only happened overseas had wanted for years to write a book of authentic home-grown kiwi miracles. She was delighted to have achieved her dream and the book had 2 print runs before she died several years later.

An A5 book of 174 pages. A South Island pastor shares his experiences and adventures with the Holy Spirit in growing a church from about 8 people to 300 over many years. We anchored the account in New Zealand by using a photo of the front of the church rather than stock art and adding circles of fire intended to represent the Holy Spirit. The little chapter symbol was created after copyright permissions were refused for another preferred symbol. Straightforward - no indices or references or footnotes required. About 500 copies of the book were printed and another book is waiting in the wings.

A5. 132 pages: Poetry anthology (NZ Poetry Society). The title of the book, Take Back Our Sky was based on the theme of one of the prize-winning poems about the eviction of state housing tenants into unwanted "superior" accommodation in an urban environment. So the cover design sought to convey the loss of wide NZ sky and landscape to unwanted cityscapes. The layout of a poetry anthology can get tricky. Often poets have a detailed physical shape to their poem that they want retained, e.g., one of them was in the form of a question-mark, so more artistic effort goes into it than into layout of regular text.

A 126-page national anthology of haiku poetry on textured cream paper. Haiku are fastidiously crafted 3-line poems using extreme economy with words that capture a universal "Ahah!" moment that works for any reader in any culture. The clients were so pleased with the finished book that they nominated it for a design award. I was able to get calligraphers in Japan to create the kanji characters used on the cover. The characters read "Haiku Collection". As Japanese unfamiliar with haiku written by western poets the calligraphers spent an entire week looking for the most appropriate kanji to use decoratively inside the book, rejecting "masters of the haiku" for a phrase meaning "a group of haiku poets who are friends."The book was an exercise in balancing shapes against each other in pleasing and different ways on each double-page. I felt like an artist rather than a layout operator getting a book to print. Because we were using paper and card stock a bit outside the usual range special care had to be taken to make sure the cover colours remained true and that it all worked well together.

76 pages of poems and prose poems from the pen of one of NZ's most prolific writers of haiku and haibun poetry, Nola Borrell. Nola wanted this book illustrated with 12 full-page photographs. Fortunately one in my own collection suited the cover nicely and complemented her own in other parts of the book. We chose a lightly textured paper for this book and a satin finish to the cover. The usual detailed attention went into choosing and finely balancing the verses to best visual effect

Tales from the Farm Publications create illustrated books of about 40 pages for children based on the childhood adventures of two sisters - the author and illustrator - on a New Zealand dairy farm in the sixties. The company was in its inception when I took these two books on and the illustrations for the first book were done before the format of the book was decided so I needed to do a lot of image-editing to get them into the right shape. The sisters decided to print in Asia where total costs - at the time - for print runs of several thousand books and freight to NZ were cheaper than getting the book printed locally. They preferred the glossy look - which I initially advised against because of its annoying way of reflecting light off the page so the print is not always easy to read. Old Truck was the story of the renovation of an old truck, the kids' favourite, that was left forgotten in a shed, till a brother decided to restore her to "brand-new". The story has a message for everyone who feels forgotten and the book is doing well.

Another illustrated children's book - the first - from the Tales from the Farm stable (see above). Another member of the family - a designer - has now taken over production of these books

BriarsBooks edits, designs and produces books and e-books for DIY (self-publishing) authors who need assistance getting their book out to the public. BriarsBooks is not a printing establishment but works with printers by providing print-ready computer files for trouble-free printing. Briar uses trusted local printers where possible who have experience in printing, trimming, binding and laminating books. Whether it's a small booklet or a complex academic book, Briar can work with you to get it looking the way you want. This may involve creating diagrams, charts or illustrations - or bringing them up to standard - photo-restoration and cover design. It always involves some level of editing. As a writer herself, Briar has these skills. She is also an experienced user of illustration, photo-editing and book layout software. You can trust her skills.