We have our showroom all arranged to welcome you, if you come to beautiful Prince Albert in the heart of the Karoo. It is literally the first building you will see on the left as you enter town from the Swartberg Pass side.

If the sign is out on the road verge, we are home and open, so ring the cowbell on the top of the front steps for attention. Or Whatsapp call 083 261 9671 to make an appointment. (Our cellphone signal is awful.)

Our showroom stocks a full range of our print books, as well as an exclusive range of stationery gift items, such as posters, greeting cards, gift tags and postcards. El Gecko Publishing shares the space with Sue Hoppe Art, so you can browse the gallery walls at the same time. Credit card and Snapscan facilities are available.

We also have a bright and user-friendly new website to host you online. (For that, HUGE thanks to the very talented Karen of Kay-Afrika, who can be reached via info@kay-africa.co.za).

Our books are available in many leading padstalle, bookshops etc around the country, and we will shortly publish an updated list of our stockists.

So we are heading into this festive season, and the coming year, all new, fresh and looking forward to meeting you at our showroom or online.

So, just a roundup of some recent events, highlights, products etc:

The launch for Santa’s New Helpers, hosted by Theresa and Mark Hardman, was such a fun evening, and the books are officially a HIT!

Thanks to Louise Liebenburg of the Herald, for your enthusiastic support of the event, and to Karen Vollaire for being official photographer!

On the afternoon of the launch, we also received a VERY LIMITED EDITION print run of 4 book previously only available as PDFs. The Postcards from Abroad series was born out of Travels Abroad (also on PDF) They are collections of black & white photos, of Bulgaria, Turkey, UEA and Jordan, which resulted from our travels to visit family. Somehow, it just feels better holding a physical book in your hand. So we will load these onto the website shortly, and it will be a case of first-come, first served for now. We hope to do a bigger print run in future, but honestly, there are so many new books in the pipeline that we are scrambling to keep up!

The day after the launch, we left for another cross country road trip to get them settled into some of our favourite stockists across the Karoo. (We might have got a little sidetracked when we did a short detour into the Kgalagadi, but hey, we couldn’t be so close and not pop up there! And anyway, you know what they say about all work and no play!) We will feature highlights and new stockists in another post, soon.

The night we returned, we ran around like crazy people, setting up our home for the annual PE ART MEANDER… we opened the house and Sue’s art studio to the public, and set up all the publishing products on the dining room table. It was a great weekend, with a constant stream of visitors. Thanks to those who came, for the enthusiastic response! Theresa also did an open studio, with prints and originals of the book illustrations amongst her other fab artwork, and sold up a storm!

So that’s it for now, look out for all the new stuff in a shop near you, or in the online store.

Keeping the hamster wheel spinning at a crazy speed, we have just gone to print with our first illustrated children’s book, Santa’s New Helpers. This is book 1 in Max Hoppe and Theresa Hardman’s new Tales from the Waterhole series, which we will be rolling out in future. We are particularly thrilled that it will be coming out in 3 languages, namely English, isiXhosa and Afrikaans. This makes it a wonderful tool for helping kids to learn other official languages, as they can compare pages and understand what is being said in each language.

Next time, I’ll introduce our growing team, who have made all this growth possible.

To a background of music from the song titles in the new Climax Collection book (songs windmills might be singing when they think we aren’t listening) we shared some of the rapid rise, from a simple idea, to the first book, Koos (Max’s eccentric 4×4) joining the family and giving rise to his own series of books, to the new online store and e-books. We also introduced the growing “El Gecko family” in the form of Karen Vollaire, who built the online store, Mignonne van Heerden, who translated Travels troubles with Koos and Max’s new children’s book (Santa’s New Helpers) into Afrikaans, and Theresa Hardman, who is busy with delightful illustrations for that book…. Great news is that, since the launch, Mpumi Buyana has joined ‘the family’, and is translating Santa’s New Helpers into isiXhosa. Watch this space, we go to print in the next week or so!

How did El Gecko Publishing come about?

For us, it’s been quite a ride, from having an idea, to deciding we believed in it enough to take the large financial gamble of making it into a physical book, to figuring out how to get people to see and want the book, to printing another, and so-on. And it all started with a CLIMAX! 

Our road trips have always involved hunting for windmills. With the advent of digital photography, and a slower style of travel, we’ve built a huge collection of windmill photos, many of which are of the Climax brand. As we explain, in the intro to our first book, ‘Of course, the name Climax lends itself to all sorts of double entendre. And even more so when the more accurate term ‘wind pump’ is used, or in Afrikaans, ‘wind pomp’. After all, everyone enjoys a good “pomp.” 

It is precisely this play on words that led us to come up with naughty interpretations for our hundreds of windmill photos. Since the idea for the book was born, we’ve had a huge amount of fun, looking for shots and matching captions. But it’s a long and expensive road, from an idea to a real hold-it-in-your-hands book!

With no prior publishing experience, we jumped in the deep-end of indie-publishing with The Climax Collection: The secret life of Windmills, a tongue-in-cheek look at what windmills might get up to when they think we aren’t looking, and have been delighted with how well that book has done (and continues to do!) We’ve learned a lot along the way, and still do on a daily basis.

Some other print titles from El Gecko Publishing:

The next book to be printed was Travels troubles with Koos. This one takes a slow journey around some of the towns and back roads of Southern Africa, in Max’s less-than-reliable car, called Koos, who is also past his prime. It is part travel-guide, with informative maps and info, part travel-journal, detailing routes, adventures, and escapades, always made unpredictable by Koos’ erratic behaviour, and part coffee-table photography, and is also doing well around the country.

After many requests for “more windmills,” the latest book to go to print is The Climax Collection 2: The secret life of windmills, which continues the fun; this time eavesdropping on songs windmills might be singing, when they think we aren’t listening.

Publishing e-books:

At this stage, it’s still early in the growth of El Gecko Publishing, and full-colour books need to be printed in large quantities to make them viable, so although several titles are currently available, not all have gone to print yet. In addition, many Saffas and overseas visitors want books with a South African flavour, and prefer the convenience of getting them online. So the next logical step was to produce all our titles as e-books, available on the El Gecko Publishing website. 
 

In addition to the original print books, the new e-books are:
•    Travels troubles with Koos, as well as the Afrikaans version, available as Padlangs probleme Met Koos. 
•    More Travels troubles with Koos 
•    Travels Abroad, which looks at our journeys further afield, to Turkey, Bulgaria, the Emirates and Jordan, through the lenses of South African travellers. Bursting with photos, maps, stories and information about the destinations, they show some fascinating “off-the-beaten-track” aspects of these destinations.
•    Some lovely black-and-white photos from these trips did not fit into the format of the colourful book, so we wrote four companion books, namely Postcards from Turkey, Postcards from Bulgaria, Postcards from the U.A.E., and Postcards from Jordan. These are sparing with text and let the photos do the talking.

In the pipeline:
•    Further Travels troubles with Koos is coming soon. 
•    Max has written a series of fun children’s books,Tales from the Waterhole, about African wildlife, which are currently being illustrated by Theresa Hardman.

So, lots to look forward to!

The result of all this has been so positive, that one small idea and some windmill photos, has turned into a growing indie-publishing enterprise. Watch this space!