Cicada Books is a (very) small company that has been publishing high-end illustrated children's books (picturebooks and non-fiction) since 2018. We produce between eight and ten titles a year and we’re distributed by Thames and Hudson in the U.K. and Consortium in the States.

The U.S. market has been a tough one to crack and I have made a great many painful mistakes over the years. These are some lessons I’ve learned the hard way.

Lesson 1: Get someone to help on publicity.

The American review system is fantastic. In the U.K., beleaguered libraries and a crisis in journalism mean that there are virtually no avenues to widely publicize your books unless you have a major marketing budget to play with. In the U.S., SLJ, PW, Kirkus and the New York Times all take a genuinely meritocratic approach to reviews, no matter if you’re a big player or a small indie. I don’t really have the time or the contacts to get the books into the right hands, so I use a publicity agency (Publishers Spotlight) to make sure review copies are sent out to the right people. It’s money well spent.

Lesson 2: Produce a single print run with a single ISBN.

For a micro-publisher like myself, printing two ISBNs causes an epic headache, so I don’t bother with a U.S. edition unless I have a million metric measurements in a book (which does happen occasionally). I feel like American readers are smart enough to work out what “mum” or “jumper” means. And a single ISBN gives me the enormous benefit of being able to move stock to and fro as it's needed. There’s nothing more heart breaking than pulping stock in the U.K. whilst simultaneously arranging a reprint for the States, or vice versa.

Lesson 3. Deliver the books to the U.S. six months before their release.

Distribution in the U.K. (or at least my distribution) is pretty haphazard and analogue. If the books are in the warehouse a week before publication, everybody is happy. Or at least resigned to the reality. In the U.S., not so much. Barnes and Noble seem to place orders a year before publication, at which point the book is barely a twinkle in my eye. After much huffing and puffing, I realised that there’s no point fighting it – the books need to be released in the States a season after they’re released in the U.K.

Lesson 4: Don’t pander

Our books are distinctly British in flavor. Illustration in the U.K. is very edgy and dynamic at the moment, and there are lots of really amazing young artists who are trying out new approaches (I put the proliferation of cool talent down to free healthcare, which makes freelance work more viable). The result is books that often have a wacky, challenging aesthetic. Sometimes this goes down well in the States and sometimes it doesn’t, but what I’ve learned is that you can’t always predict which way it’s going to go. Never underestimate your audience and never try to predict what they want to read. Publishingis a high-risk, low-return industry; it’s pretty hard to make millions. So do the things that you love. You might as well.

Ziggy Hanaor is the founder of Cicada Books.