Still selling well

This is almost as exciting as seeing seeds come up. Sales charts! Working in publishing, in the end you live or die (or at least get paid or don't) according to whether your stuff sells or not. And last Sunday I opened the newspaper and in the book reviews section they had a sales chart for Australia's Top 10 gardening books, and our book is number one! That's such a thrill.

In fact, to be more accurate, we're still number one. A similar gardening books sales chart came out last November, just a few months after our book, 'Organic', was released, and while we were absolutely delighted to be the top seller then, we knew it was a great book and our high hopes for it were confirmed by that first result. Now, a few more months down the track and we're still number one. That's an even bigger thrill somehow.

Now, working in publishing for many years, this isn't the first book I've worked on, but this is the most important one for me, personally. For one thing there's a chapter on our little inner-city garden in it, and for another thing I worked very hard on every single page – I must have read it at least a dozen times now, and there are a few of my photos in it too, plus a few words here and there, and my name's in it, too, so is Pam's (she did the planting plan illustrations, and they're lovely).

Mind you, it's Don's book from cover to cover, and especially it was his vision for how it would look, how it would be based on real people's vegie gardens, with an emphasis on kids and parents growing healthy food together. But everyone who works on a book or magazine feels like they own a part of it, and I'm sure everyone on the team who helped to put this book together feels that way, and that's a good, natural outcome of so much work.

So, please forgive me for blabbing on about a simple sales chart and a book. But in publishing a sales chart can be cause for either celebration or drowned sorrows (either way we hit the bottle, but that's just a journalist thing).

Going Organic

November is definitely going to be my month of shameless self-promotion. Yesterday, my radio spot, today, my book. Well, it's not really my book. But my garden is in it, and I worked on it, and it has some of my photos and words in it, plus my wife Pam's illustrations, too. So it feels like 'my book', even though it's Don Burke's book. It's called 'Organic', it's all about growing food the organic way, and it has just gone on sale in bookshops everywhere in Australia. And, quite frankly, I'm thrilled!

This is the cover. It's a hardcover book, 304 pages, and priced at just $29.95, so it's brilliant value, although I guess I'm biased, aren't I? We've been working on the book for more than a year. My garden is just one chapter in the book (we're the 'gardening in small spaces' inner-city gardening bit, and there's another chapter on a great country vegie garden and the young family making all that happen).

As well as providing stacks of info and tips on growing all the different vegies, herbs and fruits, plus some recipes, the book follows a whole year of vegie garden in the backyard of a family of beginner vegie gardeners. We helped Teresa and her kids set up their vegie beds, prepare the soil and plant it out. Then they took over looking after it all, but of course our gardening experts, Don Burke and Geoffrey Burnie, offered lots of tips along the way and helped out with some of the work, too. We grew a full set of summer and winter crops, and those chapters are filled with step-by-step how-tos and advice, plus planting plans, pest control tips and everything else an organic vegie grower would like to know. And at the back of the book you'll find a full A-Z of vegies and how to grow them, plus chapters on fruits, herbs and organic pest control.

Here's the opening page of our chapter. There was no way anyone else was going to write about our garden, and so I wrote this bit. It just tells the story of how things have grown and changed over the years, plus there are tips on herbs, composting, feeding soils and other food growing tips, as well as Pam's illustration of our garden layout.

In fact, Pam's illustrations are used in several places throughout the book, including the planting plans for each of the beds for summer and winter crops at Teresa's place. This is just one of them, and they're all really lovely, but then again, I might be just a bit biased!

And if any of my relatives are reading my blog, guess what you're getting for Christmas - our book, with us in it!

Working on a 300-page gardening book is a long, hard, slog. It's a lot of work, especially when it's in addition to my day job on the magazine. But once you get the real deal in your hands, the published book, all the thoughts of those long nights poring over text and photos disappears and all you feel is excitement and a sense that you've accomplished something worthwhile that will actually help a lot of people do what they love - growing their own food.