I worked with Selu Mdlalose on How Zebby the Zebra Lost His Stripes, and my three-year-old daughter has been delighted to read the final book again and again. I was especially impressed with Selu's interest in providing books in South African languages to children living in the UK and around the world. Here is the interview:

LA: I enjoyed working with you on How Zebby the Zebra Lost His Stripes. Can you tell me what made you to decide to self publish and why this particular book?

SM: I’ve always had a love for children, books and language, and believe that parents are entrusted with cultural heritage to pass on to the next generation. The trigger for publishing the first book was having our own son to whom my wife and I spoke our respective Southern African languages. We were surprised to see that there were practically no available pre-school books that we could to read with him either online or when we visited bookstores in Southern Africa. Knowing many parents in our situation, we decided to create Vezani Publishing to make books available to them.

LA: You publish in three Southern African languages and are based in the UK & Ireland. Can you tell me a bit more about the aims and missions of your publishing house? Where do you sell your books?

SM: Our aim is to make tools available to parents who teach their native languages to their children. We think that children’s books and reading are the primary way to do this but that language reference, audio guides and word games and activities are important in creating an home environment where children can delight in their native language. We sell mostly to people like ourselves – Southern Africans in the diaspora but now also within the domestic markets within Zimbabwe and Botswana.

LA: For others who are considering self publication, especially of a picture book, can you say something about what you learned and pass along tips about the process?

SM: Check, check and check again! We did that and still there are a couple of errors in the book. Quality is very important for the self publisher since the first book in particular is the only bit of you that the customer may ever see. It’s what the market will use to form a hard-to-change impression of what your values are. Also remember that any quality issues apply a downward pressure on the price of the book and so will make it very difficult to meet your financial projections.

Choose your date of publication with care. The year and date of publication is important when attracting the attention of reviewers, for awards, etc. We had the misfortune of our shipping agent going into liquidation while our first books were at sea. They were held for a very long time while the situation was resolved and by the time we received them they had the previous year’s publication date! This was very unusual but if your books will be ready at the end of the year consider a publishing date early the following year.

The best decision we made in publishing our Zebby book was in asking Laura to edit the book. Having come from a non-publishing background it was invaluable having someone like Laura go through the book and suggest changes, not just to the language but the flow of the picture book, which we believe took it to a different level altogether.

LA: One of the big challenges we hear about self-publishing is marketing, as there are so many other people out there doing the same thing. How have you approached that part of publication?

SM: Our marketing challenge was unique in that our customers are geographically dispersed and mostly accessible only online. We tried to identify the different social and cultural online communities that our customers inhabit and tailor different marketing approaches to them. With this as a basis these are some of the things we have done:

• Used our small size to our advantage – we’re able to respond quicker and more directly to customers and interact more closely to potential customers on social media.
• Used other media – we’ve found that improving technology has meant that its much easier for small publishers like us to produce eBooks and to be visible on handheld platforms such as smartphones and tablets. We’ve also been able to produce read-along audio tracks which are important for some of our customers who may not be fluent themselves in the languages.
• Targeted market – we’ve concentrated our marketing effort and time into penetration rather than cover. We have found that most of our customers have encountered us more than once before buying their first book. Our strategy, in particular with social media, is to be visible in different ways in the same place.
• Linked events – we think that books are only a part of the overall cultural heritage that parents want to pass on to their children so we try to be involved in cultural events and initiatives. For example Jacqui Terry, the illustrator of our Zebby series, has promoted the books through cultural events in Canada through her Positively Cultured project.