What Authors are Doing for their Books

I read that some authors are holding birthday parties for their books online for fans, which got me thinking of all the ways that authors try to get their books OFF the shelves.  Have you heard of any other creative ways to promote?

5 Options for Promoting Your Book

• Print: flyers and posters, ads in magazines/newspapers/specialized publications, sample chapters, direct marketing, newsletter, interviews, business cards, slogans/pitches
• Audio: radio or online interviews, read samples of your work, give reader’s reactions and comments
• Web: website and/or blog, email marketing, online ads, sample chapters, RSS, feeds, bulletin boards or forums, ezine or newsletter, affiliate programs, online contests, webinars, advertisements (from Craigslist to GoogleAds), ebooks, podcasts, vlogging, internet memes
• Personal appearances: BEA, ALA, local library, bookstore signings, literary festivals, teaching, school visits, speaking engagements, seminars, conferences, asking for referrals, elevator pitches, personal PR
• Social Media: Facebook, GoodReads, Twitter, LibraryThing, delicious.com, StumbleUpon.com; spending enough time to become part of the community; using announcements, contest, giveaways

Curious George

I mentioned the other day about Curious George which reminded me of an article in the New York Times found HERE about an exhibition of the books and history behind it called “Curious George Saves the Day.” The story behind the Curious George series is fascinating–and could be a book of its own. Margret and H.A. Rey fled Paris in 1940 on bicycles, making their way to Lisbon. They went initially to Rio de Janeiro, then New York, and finally settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Now that Curious George has become a franchise, he has been tamed to a great extent. The ether scene in one of the early books can no longer be found in versions of George’s adventures today, but I do have the book with him smoking.  

 

Books Everywhere!

This is what my house looks like many times a day.  I have lots of little one's at my house and probably five or more times a day, I have to pick up whatever books have been lovingly handled and thrown to the floor.  The mom in me is annoyed, but the reading specialist in my is delighted with the building relationship my baby and toddler are getting with books.  Many times, my third grader will request a title and we'll go searching through the shelves.

The problem is that I've only kept two shelves of children's books for my temporary home and the rest are in storage.  By "the rest" I mean probably five bookshelves worth.  Not shelves but bookshelves, worth! My next house will need a library.  I've given a lot of books away, sold many and still have books, books and more books.  These aren't even the library books which go in a special basket.  So...stay tuned for my future library pictures one day.

Reading Challenge for Kids

For those of you who like to do reading contests, there is one sponsored by US Airways and Reading is Fundamental (RIF).  Go to this website to sign up.  If you are a person who reads to kids, you can log in your hours and earn prizes.  It only goes from Sept 1 till October 31 and you even can win a vacation trip to Orlando Florida.  Harry Potter World, I'm coming for you!

Go to this website to sign up and start logging your hours!


http://www.readwithkidschallenge.com/

Lost's Literacy

Here is an excerpt from a blog written by a harvard professor found HERE about the references to kids books in the show LOST.  It is followed by a link to a place that lists them all for all you fans out there.

Astonishing to me was the number of references to stories for children.* Alice in Wonderland is almost de rigueur these days, and it did not surprise me to find an episode called Through the Looking Glass or talk about Wonderland. But I did sit up and take notice when The Turn of the Screw appeared on a bookshelf, when Hurley corrected Sawyer’s pronunciation of Babar, and when a character named Henry Gale showed up (an allusion to Dorothy Gale’s Uncle Henry in The Wizard of Oz) and claimed to have reached the island by a hot air balloon (the Wizard of Oz is also an aeronaut).

Why all the literary allusions in a visual medium? Well, for one thing, Lost was created by writers who are inserting themselves into a storytelling tradition with deep roots in print culture. And by paying homage to stories from the Age of Gutenberg, they are in a sense establishing their cultural legitimacy and revealing themselves to be defenders of the literary tradition rather than rivals of it. In aiming to create a new mythology, Lost also draws on biblical discourses and resorts to bricolage to create its own foundational story about origins and meaning. The discussions about faith versus reason and meaning versus nothingness may feel reductive but the premise itself demands them.

*Sawyer (note the name!) is an unlikely expert in children’s books, but in Season 2 he refers to Pippi Longstocking as well as Little Red Riding Hood.

For more on literary allusions in Lost, see http://www.losttvfans.com/page/Literary+…