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Sudbury couple turn to Indiegogo to print children's book

Tracy Baker and Josh Turnbull have turned to crowd-sourcing to come up with the funds to self-publish a children's book.

Tracy Baker and Josh Turnbull have turned to crowd-sourcing to come up with the funds to self-publish a children's book.

The couple, who both grew up in Sudbury but are currently living in Toronto, plan to move back to the Nickel City later this summer.

Baker just finished a graphic design program at York University, and one of the projects in her course was designing a book. For his part, Turnbull is a musician and songwriter.

They pooled their talents to write and illustrate The Awful Alphabet, a hard-cover alphabet book dedicated to all the awful things that can come your way.

Because it's difficult to break into the children's book market, they decided to self-publish the manuscript.

“Children's book publishers, we've researched like crazy, and most of them don't accept manuscripts,” Baker said.

“We thought we'll do it ourselves, see if we can get a good fan base, and bring all of the fan base and our books and say this is what we have to offer to publish.”

They're attempting to raise $6,000 through Indiegogo to defray the printing costs of a 500-book run. Baker and Turnbull were at Northern Lights Festival Boréal over the weekend to promote the campaign.

They've already raised $3,700 over the past week, with three weeks left to go in the campaign. Depending on how much people donate, they receive different perks, including copies of the book, stickers and posters.

If they reach their target, Baker and Turnbull hope to publish the book this November.


The Awful Alphabet isn't your typical alphabet book — it has more of an edge, while still remaining cute. For example, in the book, B is for barfing, L is for lice, V is for volcanoes, and W is for watermelon seeds growing in your belly.

“I think it's fun to take all of these horrible situations that we've all been through, or theoretically been afraid of for whatever weird reason, like the watermelon seeds thing, and just normalize them, make them funny,” Baker said. “It's a lot more engaging then.”

The couple also plan to give back through The Awful Alphabet. One dollar from every book sold will go to Nkosi's Haven, a Johannesburg, South Africa facility that looks after children and mothers affected by HIV/AIDS.

To donate to the Indiegogo campaign, search for “The Awful Alphabet” on Indiegogo. Learn more about the project at www.tracybaker.co.


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Heidi Ulrichsen

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