I made this video to review all our Dernier titles. I hope it helps you find what you want!
July extra news!
Yay! Book Bundles!
I just had to tell you about this new development . . . I’m getting the hang of updating the new Dernier website, which is a learning curve (I sometimes I go home with my brain well and truly aching!).
BUT I can now reveal *DRUM ROLL* I have made a new category: Book Bundles! https://dernierpublishing.com/product-category/book-bundles/
These come in at a lower cost than you’d pay for the books if you bought them separately. £19.99 for the four wonderful Beech Bank Girls books (including the brand new book)
£9.99 for The Treasure Hunt and Mystery in the Snow
and £14.99 for the three books in the ‘Rwanda’ series.
Oh, and you can buy one of every one of our fourteen books for £69.99, which is the perfect gift for a family, school or library!
I hope this will help make the ordering process easier, help people find the books that go together in each of these series, and that as a result of this, more children and young people will find Jesus through our stories. 🙂
You can see all the book bundles here: See Book Bundles
Do buy some – maybe for prizes for summer holiday clubs and camps? You just never know what seeds might grow from your gifts . . . one day we will find out and won’t that be soooooooooooooo exciting! 🙂
P.S. Your local Christian bookshop might have an offer on, too, as we have been working with our distributor to give an extra summer discount to bookshops on our books. Why not pop in and see? (Booksellers, please contact your Hughes and Coleman rep if you haven’t heard!)
Advanced notice: The City Kid free promotion!
While I’m here, I have to admit that sales of The City Kid on kindle have been disappointingly slow, and to date nobody has left a review. Christian magazines charge hundreds of pounds for adverts – we don’t have that kind of money, but if we work together we could bring this excellent story to more people’s attention . . .
Here’s the plan . . . would you be kind enough to download the book next week (18th – 22nd) as part of a FREE promotion? Would you also tell your friends and share our posts about it on facebook? Dernier Publishing on facebook Your support would be hugely valued . . . and it won’t cost you anything!
If we all work together I know we can make a difference. The thing is, the more downloads and reviews, the more Amazon promote a book in searches. If a book is more visible, more people are likely to download it, so by having a free promotion we could be setting off an upward spiral.
This story is worth every effort – our enemy would be glad if nobody read it. The City Kid touched many lives in Uganda back in the 70s and now that it has been completely revised it has the potential to touch many more young lives.
Clive Lewis (author) says this: “It was way back in 1970 when I first got the idea of writing a sort of African ‘prodigal son’ story, while I was teaching in a Ugandan secondary school. I can’t recall how I settled on the name ‘John Ouma’. Maybe it was suggested by a colleague of mine named Moses Ochwo. Anway, the name Ouma is a genuine Ugandan name commonly found in certain regions of the country.
I didn’t want an unusual name because the hero (or is he an anti-hero? – you decide!) of the story was meant to be a sort of Everyman figure. He was intended to embody attitudes and experiences which were, and are, common to so many people – especially the young as they face the choices and challenges of growing up.
At the same time, John Ouma is also a very particular young man, and I hope the new edition of The City Kid, which has been extensively rewritten since the first version back in the ‘70s, has given the main character a bit more depth and individuality. Yes, he is typical in many ways, but he is also his own man in very particular circumstances.
I’ve tried to bring this ‘city kid’ into the 21st century. His office (unlike the one where he worked in the first edition) now has computers. Mobile telephone networks cover most of the country, even the upcountry village of Mkandu where he has grown up. But his ambitions remain the same: to make it ‘big’ in the city, to enjoy the company of girlfriends, to drive a sporty car and to make a financial success of his life. And the same fault lines appear: his weakness when faced with temptation, his proneness to overspending and debt and his reluctance to admit his need of God.
So here he is, John Ouma, the city kid, who was dead but is now alive again. Even if you have never seen or even heard of the first edition, please download your copy from Amazon and discover why this young man from a small African village can speak to all of us, in any continent and from any background.”
If you don’t want to wait for the free promotion you can buy the book (for around £2/$3) and leave a review here:
Thank you so much for everything.
Janet
P.S. The City Kid has a wonderful foreword by the Archbishop of York.
Welcome to the July 2015 Dernier Publishing newsletter!
What are our children reading?
I like to keep up with what our children/young people are reading, so when I was early for an appointment in town recently I popped into a charity shop to look at the books. I bought these three from the children’s shelf:
The Replacement is about a boy from an ‘underworld’ (which includes the living dead) who is a ‘replacement’ – left in the crib of a human baby when just a few weeks old. He has fatal allergies to iron, blood and consecrated ground which are slowly killing him. The Blue Hawk is a different kind of fantasy. Tron, the protagonist, is a temple boy who is led by his gods to follow his destiny. Dancing in my nuddy-pants is the fourth in a series of eight ‘confessions’ written in diary form, for girls 13-15. The name of God is used continuously throughout the book, but not in the way Christians do. 80,000 copies of this book were pre-sold – that’s before the book actually hit the shelves!
All these books are well written and have attractive covers. But the content of all three books troubles me deeply because the stories we read affect us. In a study on how novels affect the brain by researchers at a university in Atlanta, USA, the findings “suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist [main character].” Read a short article about the findings of the study here: How novels affect the brain It’s definitely worth five minutes of your time . . . this shows how urgently we need Christian books for children and teens with characters who will encourage and inspire our young people to walk with God.
All I can say is, thank you for your support for Dernier – imagine if we could sell 80,000 books, reach 80,000 young people! Please keep praying and spreading the word, because we struggle to sell 2,000 of each of our books. There is so much tinsel around – we need to give our young people true gold. If we could sell 80,000 we could cut the cost enormously, too, to make them more affordable for us to send to children all over the world. This is my dream and my prayer! Please pray with me.
Have you downloaded Revenge of the Flying Carpet on kindle?
97 people did, during the free promotion last month! Please pray the story will touch many hearts and lives. Oh, and if you did download it, when you have read it, would you be kind enough to leave a review? Thank you! If you missed the promotion you can still buy the book here (this is the UK link) or in your own Amazon store.
Amazon Link to Revenge of the Flying Carpet
Paying the bills!
We have the final invoice to pay for the beautiful, encouraging, inspiring Beech Bank Girls, A Time Remembered books. I would be grateful for your help!
£1.99 would buy you The City Kid on kindle: Buy the City Kid
£5.99 will buy you the new book! Buy from your local Christian bookshop or right here on our website! Buy the new book here
£20.00 will buy you a pack of eight ‘seconds’ books – I have a growing pile in my office and would like to find a good home for them! More details here: Buy a bundle of ‘seconds’ books
£69.99 would give one each of our fourteen books – a fabulous present for a family, church or library:
Buy one each of all our wonderful books!
£150.00 would buy 30+ books for you to give to a school, church or library – this option isn’t on our website, but contact me if you might be interested.
Thank you for your help – very little helps!
Books change lives
Here’s an email I was sent recently: “I just wanted to tell you how much Joe and I are enjoying reading ‘I want to be an airline pilot’!! I’m reading it to Joe at bedtime and he’s really enjoying it – his favourite book so far!! And he’s read lots of books! He loves the bits about Rwanda and his bedtime prayers are full of thanks for all his blessings. We’ve had some really good chats following on from each chapter too. Each chapter he tried to persuade me to read on so he can find out what happens next – and not just delaying bedtime, he’s genuinely wanting to keep going!!! – just wanted to encourage you!! You are making a big difference, 1 book at a time, 1 child at a time.”
Isn’t that just so encouraging? 🙂
Our new website
I would love to receive your comments on this new website! Is there anything you would like to see, or doesn’t really work for you? Our designer is working on a logo so we don’t have such a big space on the home page and I have more ideas – I always have too many ideas and not enough time though!
Still, do keep in touch, it’s always lovely to hear from you 🙂
Enjoy the sun, and thanks for reading this far!
Janet
P.S. Do join us on facebook Be lovely to see you there!
Are you Barking Mad? :-)
Welcome to the latest Dernier Publishing newsletter!
Brand new Beech Bank Girls!
Wooo hooo, yippee, hurray and hallelujah! Here they are, folks, real Beech Bank Girls, A Time Remembered books in the flesh, all ready for you to buy!
Now the final bill needs to be paid, so if you could possibly help out by buying a boxful for the girls in your life (Guides and Brownies, Girls Brigade, daughters’ friends, end of term prizes) I would be very grateful! And of course it’s a win/win situation, because you get to sow seeds in girls lives! Here’s the blurb:
“Teenage friends Chloe, Willow, Annie, Rachel, Holly and Amber become absorbed in a diary from the First World War, and discover that the choices they make have consequences, just as they did for fourteen-year-old Grace one hundred years ago.
Amber makes a bad decision but finds forgiveness, Holly’s honesty pays off, Willow finds hope in her grief . . . and lots more! The girls continue to live, love and laugh together through all the trials and joys of life, and discover that even when everything seems to be going wrong, God is still at work.”
Now there are four of these inspiring books for girls – praise the Lord for this miracle!
The Archbishop of York writes for us!
We have heard back from Dr. John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, and are delighted that he has written this foreword for The City Kid for us! Here’s an excerpt:
“The story – a loose adaptation of the Prodigal Son parable in the Gospels – seemed to be very relevant to the lives of young people in Africa, but the problem was: how to present it on a stage. It existed only as a prose narrative with songs. It fell to me and a small group of friends to adapt it for the stage, and I had the privilege of acting the lead role, John Ouma a.k.a. the City Kid. So you could say that John Sentamu was the original City Kid – but only as an actor!
I am delighted that the story is now being brought to a new generation of readers. The text has been updated and extensively rewritten, but the essential story remains the same – of a young man, brimming with ambition and self-confidence, who is overwhelmed by the temptations and problems of city life until he finds new hope in Jesus Christ. This is a fast-moving story with plenty of thrills and spills, but, more importantly, it confronts with honesty the harsh reality of surviving (or perhaps not surviving) in an unforgiving, dog-eat-dog environment. And, above all, it shows that apparently hopeless situations can be redeemed through the intervening love of Jesus Christ.”
You can read the whole foreword if you buy the book on kindle now!
Scripture Union, Uganda
Scripture Union in Uganda made an order for some of our books, but the cost of shipping is proving to be prohibitive. If you would like to donate any amount to help them out, please let me know – they do a wonderful work in challenging circumstances among the children and youth of Uganda. Thank you.
Barking mad!
I would have loved to have had a stand at the recent International Christian Resources Exhibition at the Excel Centre in London, but a 2m x 2 1/2 m stand was £1375+VAT . . . way beyond our means! Advertising in magazines is also hugely expensive – often hundreds of pounds, even for a ¼ page advert . . . I’d so much rather our money went back into producing more books!
Here’s a thought . . . would you help us to publicise what we do? If we all network with the people we know, we can get the message out the ‘Twilight Barking’ method (with apologies to anyone who hasn’t read/watched 101 Dalmations!). What do you think? 🙂 Here are some ideas for ‘barking’ (sorry, I know you’re not dogs!):
- Could I come and speak to your group about Dernier?
- Would you pass on the news about our books in your church notice sheet?
- Could you tell all your friends with children?
- Tell your Sunday School leader, local Christian school and club leaders about us? Our books might be exactly what they are looking for!
We are also on facebook, so please come on over! If you like, share and comment on our posts, they will reach so many more people than we can alone.
None of these things will cost you a dime! But if we work together we can make a huge difference in the number of people who would hear about what we do.
Pongo and Missis got their puppies home through all the dogs passing on the message – how about that for an inspirational story? 🙂
Phew, I’m all out of room – I hope I haven’t bored you! Thank you for reading this far and for all your support and prayers. Without you, Dernier Publishing would cease to exist.
May the Lord bless you and keep you!
Janet