McGilchrist’s indie Dinosaur brings children’s fiction into modern day

Sonya McGilchrist, the one-woman-band behind new children’s publisher Dinosaur Books, says that “underpinning every book is a story we think that a child would really want to read: engrossing, exciting tales with fascinating characters that transport children to another world.”

McGilchrist set up the firm in 2015 when she struggled to find books “with main characters that were from a range of backgrounds” for her children to read. She also couldn’t find “fiction with a dinosaur theme—my son loved dinosaurs, like so many children—but when he got to seven, it became difficult to find dinosaur-themed books. The majority seemed to be picture books or for younger readers.” Dinosaur Books was born; its first series, The Secret Dinosaur, is for seven to nine-year-olds who love dinosaurs.

Before publishing, McGilchrist worked as a producer for BBC News, “Today” on Radio 4, “BBC Breakfast” and for documentaries for BBC Two. She pursues the same values in publishing that motivated her as a journalist: integrity, a belief in quality and, above all, respect for the audience. This translates into page-turning stories that feature a range of characters and locations. “We enjoy championing underrepresented voices with a current focus on working-class and Black writers,” McGilchrist adds.

For McGilchrist, the biggest challenge when starting out was marketing and distribution

The press currently publishes three books a year and is hoping to increase that to five a year by 2025. The press’ lead title this year is Last Girl In by British-Jamaican author Cheryl Diane Parkinson. “It’s a story with a Windrush and cricket theme that moves back and forth between Jamaica of the past and the UK of today and of the 1950s,” says McGilchrist. “The main character is a 13-year girl, Kerry-Ann, who has inherited her Jamaican grandpa’s love of cricket but is facing a problem of prejudice and bullying at her local club. Via a fun time-slip adventure, she learns more about the struggles her grandpa faced as a child and when he first arrived in England—and this inspires her to overcome the bullies. And of course, there’s a lot of sporting and cricket fun.”

For McGilchrist, the biggest challenge when starting out was marketing and distribution. “Getting our books into the hands of readers was the greatest challenge—like all publishers, we are always looking for ways to make our (potential) readers aware of what we have to offer,” she says. “It’s a pretty crowded market and it’s hard to break through. We decided to grow organically, so there wasn’t a huge marketing budget... There still isn’t!”

Opportunities abound though, making the endeavour worthwhile. “In the days when I used to do much more direct selling at school-fair stalls, I can still remember the Black mum who approached me with the words: ‘I’ll have one. Got to support independent publishers.’ It meant so much because it showed me that customers actually like to buy from micro-companies,” says McGilchrist. “It had been hard to get the industry to trust our titles. The open-mindedness of customers encouraged us to sell directly, and when we started out it was our best sales opportunity.”

Book bloggers and reviewers were also “kind enough to take a chance and read books from an unknown micro-publisher,” says McGilchrist. “We ended up getting some high praise for our books and that was both encouraging and useful in building further connections. It is still hard to convince booksellers to take a chance on smaller publishers, though it is getting easier and we’re very grateful for the booksellers that support us. And there are some fantastically generous ones out there.”