Definitely feeling really nervous and apprehensive, but I'm really glad to have gotten this far at the same time.

I'm so nervous, but very happy to be here too! And especially against someone as strong as Louise!

Nervous and apprehensive - could you expand? This sounds like a bit of a self-defeating sentiment.


Do you consider yourself lucky to have made it here with someone as strong as Louise?

No, I don't feel defeated in the slightest. I'm just up against a strong contender, and I really want to win, so it's a natural feeling I think.

Lucky to be here - no, I think I've worked hard and deserve my place here. It's nice to be up against Louise though as I have a lot of respect for her and she's done an excellent job in the competition so far, but I do believe I have as well, and so I think my place here is justified.

I really enjoyed the task! It's a subject matter that interests me a lot, and I had a lot of fun going through the various tasks with my team! All in all I really enjoyed the task, and I think that reflects in what I came out with a very good overall final product.

I think the task went well for me. I enjoyed the main focus point of it and coming up with an idea, as well as researching book promotion - I learned quite a bit. It was very different to the other tasks, not having a million voices and opinions directing in every which way. But I did enjoy it and I'm confident it went well.

Great! You say you went through the tasks 'with your team' - I hope you found them helpful. Did you discuss things together, or did you take on more of a supervisory role?


I'm glad you enjoyed it! Didn't your team members voice their opinions at all, though?

No, I didn't really use my team. At first it wasn't really a conscious decision, as I had planned to put together my ideas and send them out but then I just got on a roll with my one idea and went with it. I did the bulk of the work on the last day once I had everything planned and felt it would be inappropriate to ask then, so I just didn't. In a way, I slightly regret this decision as it would've been a help but I enjoyed the challenge regardless.

Well, Val didn't show so my team was Amroussi & Naruto, but they really were the perfect team for this task! I generally used my team to discuss ideas, they were incredibly helpful and really helped me get the best from this task, Amroussi designed the logo, which I think is absolutely perfect, and Naruto was excellent in helping me research my marketing plan, but I did all of the writing on the task myself.

I'd like to back this up by saying that on MSN they seemed to work superbly together.

I think an element of personal taste came in to my choice, I'm a bit of a comicbook geek so that had something to it, but I chose it because I think there's a genuine market for graphic novels, and I wanted to choose something 'different'. I came to my team with two ideas - photo books and graphic novels, and together we invesitgated and saw that graphic novels really were a great way to go - it's a niche market but it's growing, and on this task I could really do some justice to the idea.

Yes, mine was definitely down to personal taste, as well as what I know is there's a huge market for. I think the intrigue supplied by the whole "dark" aspect of the publishing house and it's books would attract people to at least check it out. There's a huge thing about "morbid curiousity" and there are so many websites, such as creepypasta and the like, that are dedicated to just horror and thriller type stories. So I do believe it would work very well.

The weakest area in my proposal was certainly my logo.

I thought the content of my 4-week plan was strong and would realistically work very well, but I wish I had gone into a bit more detail (such as times and places) and fabricated it a bit more.

As for the weakest part in Gav's proposal, I'd say the launch party. It was good, but the rest of the pitch was stronger.

I think every area is 'strong' however, if I was to go back and redo one of my sections it'd be the launch party. I think it possibly seems a little bit vague, and I could have expanded on things further, although like I said, I think it's still strong.

Louise again has a very strong idea that I think was excecuted brilliantly, however some aspects of her marketing could have been improved - the flyer idea seems a little wasteful for a book - the number of people it'd expose the book to is minimal and I think money/resources could be better utilised elsewhere. Likewise some of her other marketing ideas aren't what I would have gone for, but I would like to re-iterate, it's a strong campaign.

From researching the idea, I was aware that graphic novels are quite expensive to produce, however, I wanted my idea to be an 'experience' to read - with intricate designs and quality materials, not a 'premium' product but definitely better than your average book, and with the graphic book market, fans are genuinely willing to pay slightly more than average for a decent product.

I definitely think my idea is stronger, but I also think Louise's idea is good.

I think E-books are excellent, but for my specific idea, the graphic novel, illustrations wouldn't translate too well on to electonic form on, say, a kindle. While there's scope for them to work on ipads, it's limiting and more development would be needed to transition them over. I would definitely leave room for e-books in future, but at the moment I think my publishing house would be wiser to consolidate a fanbase in print form, which I feel would probably appeal to the corefanbase slightly more, than to venture into potentially costly territory in transitioning the work over.

I do think my proposal and idea is better, don't get me wrong.

Yes, it's a popular genre at the moment but you can find a lot of books of many genres. I think the idea itself is original and I feel like, although there are a lot of "dark" types of books out there, there isn't really one specific place for them. I think the idea as a whole would entice horror/crime/thriller fans to look up books specifically from our publishing house. I feel in turn this would boost the calibre of books submitted.

As I said, I think it suited my target market and while I do agree that e-books are very good, I thought it fit better with in my plan to go with the paperback ones.