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The 10-Minute Novelist writers' community will be running a Holiday Book Fair on Facebook starting November 28th, Black Friday. Dozens of authors are scheduled to take part, posting sales links to their books, organized in seventeen categories. I'll be there with Saving the Planet and perhaps one or more of my other eBooks.
The sale starts November 28th and runs through Wednesday, December 3.
Saving the Planet & Stuff is reviewed today at
Reduce Footprints, a blog dedicated to researching and sharing information about easy ways to do positive things for the Earth. My favorite line--"The story is also wonderful for adults, of all ages, as it touches on the challenges of living life as a "greenie", in a fun and interesting way."
Notice that blogger Cyndi runs a couple of activities designed to build the green community.
Another special event for Earth Day: The
Kindle and
Nook eBook editions of
Saving the Planet & Stuff are on sale this week for $.99. Kobo's not on sale simply because I couldn't work out how to change the price on the website. If that's a problem for anyone, let me know, and we'll try again.
On sale, all week.
And, remember, you can sign up for a chance to win a
free copy of the eBook for Kindle, Nook, or Kobo through tomorrow, which is Earth Day.
As I announced earlier this month, I'll be offering a free copy of the eBook edition of Saving the Planet & Stuff for Earth Day, which is next Tuesday, April 22. How do you get a chance to win? Leave a comment on any of my blog posts today through next Tuesday. We'll compile all the names and Computer Guy will use a program he created to randomly select a winner. You're welcome to comment as many days as you like, but we're only going to be counting you once.
The winner will be announced and notified next Wednesday, April 23. That just happens to be World Book Night, so we'll be celebrating two events at once.
Saving the Planet is available for Kindle, Nook, and Kobo.
"Sixteen-year-old Michael agrees to intern for an environmental magazine, The Earth’s Wife, and finds himself in over his head in politics—of both the environmental and the office kind. This eco-comedy contrasts the radical idealism of the 1960s with twenty-first-century “me-ism.”" That's how Saving the Planet is described on a list of science-themed books at the ALA website.
Wondering why I'm asking for comments instead of including one of those Rafflecopter things? Well, I rarely do giveaways here, so I decided that making the effort to learn how to use Rafflecopter wasn't a good use of my time. Besides, am I the only person who finds them less than attractive?
Let the comments begin.
As I mentioned yesterday, I'll be observing Earth Day all month in an irregular sort of way. I'll be bringing the Environmental Book Club back to life, putting the Kindle edition of Saving the Planet & Stuff on sale at a reduced price the week of April 20 through 26, and offering a free copy to a lucky commenter on Earth Day, itself, April 22.
Speaking of Saving the Planet & Stuff and all things environmental, I learned earlier this year that the original edition of that book was included on an ALA list of Science-Themed Novels. It's classified under Landforms and the Environment.
Landforms and the Environment. Does this mean I could be on the Big Bang Theory?
Saving the Planet & Stuff is featured today at
CT GreenScene. As you might suspect from the blog's name, the questions I was asked there relate to environmentalism. Or Connecticut.
Be sure to check out Question 3. Seriously, I obsess over that stuff.
In Saving the Planet & Stuff there is a recurring storyline about all the things Walt and Nora have been saving in their spare bedroom because they were dead certain that it was all useful. (Like hoarding, but different.) Michael is set to work finding useful and attractive projects to turn what he believes to be trash into...something else.
This isn't some far-fetched idea or an old one from back in my wish-I-were-a-hippy days. This kind of thing is going on right now. As I right these words, someone is making something out of plastic bags.
Check out Danny Seo turns trash into treasures in "Upcycling Celebrations" in the Los Angeles Times.
The Bibliophilic Book Blog has just posted an Interview with Gail Gauthier, author of Saving the Planet & Stuff. Notice the framed picture at the top of the blog? Our blog host's name is Star. Many thanks to her for featuring me today.
On Wednesday night, I was a featured writer at the Norwich Free Academy Book Expo in Norwich, Connecticut. This was the first time I'd been invited to such an event since my books have been available only in eBook editions, and the first time since self-publishing Saving the Planet & Stuff as an eBook in February. As you may recall, I had plans:
"What I plan to do," I wrote back in March,
"is show up with a laptop that will have a display of my four available books. I don't know if I can get Internet access there, so I'll have various pages from my website loaded onto the computer and available for viewing. And, of course, the Saving the Planet & Stuff trailer. This techie set-up, I've read, is how authors such as myself can make public appearances."
And that is what I did.
Because my four eBooks were published in paper and ink back in the day, I did have "books" people could see and handle, though they couldn't buy them. But additionally I had the laptop loaded with
the
Saving the Planet & Stuff trailer The Saving the Planet & Stuff page from my website
and the
website, itself, which I could maneuver through there on the hard drive, meaning I wasn't dependent upon the high school library where we were located having WiiFii. (Though it did.)
So how did all this work out? Well, there are two factors to consider.
1.
Sales. No sales have yet been generated as a result of this appearance. This isn't necessarily an indication of failure. Many authors with paper-and-ink books making public appearances will make no sales at all. Selling just a few books at an appearance is about as much as most writers can hope for. Years ago, I had a bookseller tell me that if he could get four sales from an in-store appearance, he was happy. I've attended many book fairs that generated long lines for the one or two big names who were invited to draw customers while the rest of the writers sat looking bored or embarrassed. This is a fact life.
2.
Connecting with the reading public. Here is where I saw a big difference between the NFA event and other events at which I've appeared. I definitely did more chatting and interacting than I've done in the past. I think this was due to two factors. A. Though there was a book sale going on, because I had eBooks, I did not expect to make any sales that evening. The only people who would be buying my self-published book, the one I was really promoting, would be people who owned a Kindle or a Nook, because those are the only two platforms we've published it to so far. In all likelihood they would make their purchase, if they were going to make one at all, at some other time, not right there. This took a big burden off my shoulders. There was no anxiety about whether I was going to "succeed" or "fail" with sales, because I went in there knowing there would be none right there on the spot. I was feeling kind of light-hearted. Jolly, even, which is not what anyone would call characteristic of me. B. Look at the next two pictures. Notice the difference between Gail with the laptop and without it?
Without the laptop, I am behind a table, as most authors are at festivals and book fairs. There's always something between the writers and the public. You sit and hope someone will come talk to you. There is a stilted conversation between the person on one side of the table, who is the "writer," and the person on the other side of the table, who "is not."
With the laptop, I had to be at least to the side of the table, so I could get to the front and operate the mouse, arrow keys, etc. There was no physical barrier between the person on one side of the table, who is the "writer" and the person on the other side of the table, who "is not." There was far more natural give and take. I talked with other writers far more than I have
at other events, because I was moving around and could. I got into a discussion with a couple of people about
Goodreads, one of whom had never heard of it. I wrote "Goodreads" on one of my business cards so she could remember it--and me, presumably. In fact, I gave out more business cards than I usually do. Which, okay, wasn't many. But it was still a different experience.
The connecting with the reading public part of an appearance is important. In the short-term, invitations to speaking engagements and school visits can (and, in my case, have) come about because of connections made with the public. In the long-term, meeting other writers, librarians, teachers, and booksellers and making new Facebook friends of all kinds can help out down-the-line in ways we can't foresee at the time of the meetings.
So I think there is a workable method that eBook writers can use for public appearances. A much bigger problem will be, I believe, finding opportunities for public appearances in the first place. Most festivals and book fairs are fundraisers for some group. (The one I attended this week was not.) The group sells the writers' books, just as a bookstore would, and the profit it makes is its fundraising. Groups aren't going to be able to sell an eBook, self-published or not.
Kobo has an arrangement with independent bookstores that enables participating stores to keep a percentage of the sale of eBooks sold from their websites. Will there one day be a similar arrangement for book fair and festival organizers, which will then welcome eBook authors? Until there is, I don't know how often writers like myself will be appearing at public events.
Tanita Davis and Sarah Stevenson have posted an interview/conversation with me at their collaborative blog, Finding Wonderland: The Writing YA Weblog. The subject? Self-publishing Saving the Planet & Stuff. Note the great intro story about finding a self-published gem among the SFF Cybil nominees a few years ago.
Just in from Finding Wonderland: The Finding YA Weblog, a review of Saving the Planet & Stuff.
Tanita and I are going to be talking self-publishing at Finding Wonderland sometime soon.
In l
ast week's comments, David Elzey raised the question of self-published eBook writers using business cards at appearances, because otherwise they won't have anything material to show potential readers. My response included the news that business cards are the only real-world promotional items--the kinds that are created, touched, and thrown away--I plan to use for
Saving the Planet & Stuff.
During the years that I've been publishing books, marketing materials have increased dramatically. In days of old, you were talking a bookmark, maybe a post card. Now you see pins, cups, pens, pencils, and shirts.
Bumper stickers, mouse pads, and key chains. Lip balm. I heard that rolls of toilet paper were sent to bookstores to promote
Walter the Farting Dog. Evidently
whoopee cushions went out, too.
Some of these things are more utilitarian than others. It seems as if some of them would get a little use before making the trip to a transfer station. But we are talking material items here that are being created not for functionality but to get attention, and they will, indeed, one day end up in a transfer station. Or, in the case of the
Walter the Farting Dog T.P., maybe a septic system of some kind. But given that to this day everything I read about bookselling and marketing suggests that the publishing world doesn't have a clue what sells books, it seems to me that bling is generating trash for nothing. Note that in this 2012 post at
Meghan Ward's Writerland, not a soul she quoted said, "A key chain put me over the top!"
Given the futility of it all, it seems very inappropriate for me to be generating this kind of trash for a book in which a main character actually voices her frustration with people squandering resources on promotional items. It would be a hypocritical act (of some kind) for which I believe I'd have nothing to gain.
Now, this is not to say I haven't done my share of producing marketing trash in my day. I've been personally responsible for creating and distributing thousands of bookmarks to elementary school students. I always had them made on the cheap at Kinko's because, being an experienced mom, I knew what was going to happen to them. Some other experienced parent was going to find them at the bottom of a backpack weeks later, if the recipients didn't toss them themselves. I would be surprised...no, stunned...if any of those bookmarks generated one sale for me. I got a kick out of signing them all in the evenings before my appearances and giving them out, but the reality is, that's the extent of what I got from them.
I've also done postcards in years past and even mailed out some of them with all kinds of info on the back to booksellers. However, even ten years ago I was hearing from more experienced writers that that was a waste of energy (not so much talk of resources) because booksellers are buried in promotional materials such as postcards. You've got to send them something really unusual--say that toilet paper for
Walter the Farting Dog--before those poor people will be able to lift their heads up over the heaps of stuff in their offices and take notice.
Refusing to create bling isn't a big stand for me to take because
Saving the Planet & Stuff is now an eBook. Booksellers aren't involved so there's no one to send postcards to, even if I believed that would do any good. And you don't use bookmarks with eBooks. On the other hand, I may be shooting myself in the foot by not making some of this other cr-- junk because being able to offer bloggers bling to give away through their blogs might get me more attention there. But, once again, any evidence that blog reviews really sell books? I'm not aware of any.
So, for now, I'm sticking to distributing business cards when I want to distribute something. Why use even those? Because I keep business cards on hand, anyway. I don't have many opportunities to give many away. I don't know anyone in any field who does. But they're something I keep around, with one book cover or another on them, and something I can use in a number of situations, not just for marketing one book.
I think they're a better use of resources than, say,
Saving the Planet & Stuff pot holders.
While I have four books "in print" and available to the public, they are all eBooks. How does an author such as myself make an appearance at book fairs, festivals, or signings when she has no paper and ink book to show, sell, and inscribe? I've read it can be done, and next month I'll have a chance to try to do it.
I was invited to a school book expo at which there will be an eclectic array of authors. Some of them will be local, some of them graduates of the high school who have been recently published. And there will be me. It's the school's first attempt at doing this, and this seems like a safe place for me to experiment.
What I plan to do is show up with a laptop that will have a display of my four available books. I don't know if I can get Internet access there, so I'll have various pages from my website loaded onto the computer and available for viewing. And, of course, the Saving the Planet & Stuff trailer. This techie set-up, I've read, is how authors such as myself can make public appearances.
I don't expect to make any sales. Assuming I attract any members of the public at all, my expectation is that any of them who own Kindles or Nooks will make any purchases at their leisure. I know that's what this Kindle reader would do. So I'm wondering if this could end up being a more comfortable situation than writers usually have to deal with where their books for sale are piled up in front of them or somewhere nearby, and money is changing hands somewhere in the room.
Without that "Is he going to buy?" "Is she upset because I'm not buying?" "What if I make a mistake signing her book?" "No one is going to her table; what a loser." "No one is coming to my table; I'm such a loser" vibe, will author and readers be able to interact more naturally. Will we chat about eBooks and the state of publishing?
We shall see. Report to follow next month.
My "long and varied history with libraries and the books in them" is the subject of my guest post at GreenBeanTeenQueen. GreenBeanTeenQueen is a librarian's blog, thus my focus on libraries, books, and whether or not it is at all odd that someone with a past like mine would choose to wander into the world of e-publishing. Thanks, Sarah.
Go over there to see pictures of a couple of schools I attended. I kid you not. I have at least two Facebook Friends who went to those schools, too. I am not making this up.
I am a guest today on science writer Alison Pearce Stevens' blog. My post is part of her Marketing Monday series, and I write about how I'm marketing the Saving the Planet & Stuff eBook. Thanks to Alison.
Yes, finally, the eBook edition of Saving the Planet & Stuff has been published and is available for both Kindle and Nook.
I believe my first mention of this project here at OC was on March 1 of 2012 (when we hadn't yet settled on the spelling "eBook"), so it has been very, very close to a year that the Saving the Plant eBook has been in the works. Go back to Saturday's post on publishing to get an idea of what we've been dealing with while I've been trying to juggle other work-related tasks that are in various stages and my computer guy/publishing partner has been holding down a full-time job.
You'll continue to hear about my experiment in self-publishing as I work on promoting this title over the coming months. In the meantime, look at what we did! A book trailer!
i've just been hosting as the in-house bookstore for a medical writer's conference, and some of the authors speaking had postcards for their ebooks that they wanted us to carry on the tables alongside the hardcopies. the problem for us (as a bookseller) is that we essential become a "showroom" for their book that the customer then buys elsewhere and we lose the sale.
that's not your issue, but i had another author who had a business card printed up that allowed anyone who bought their print book a "coupon" for a free ereader version. again, not your situation necessarily, but...
is it possible to have business-sized cards that will allow people to purchase the ebooks down the road while letting them "browse" samples in person? no awkwardness, and perhaps as a result, more sales than with the pressure.
don't know if that's helpful...
Yes, I will have business cards. I was saving that for an eco-post for next week. I'm limiting "bling" for my new eBook to just the business cards (which I would have, anyway) because the book is about environmentalists, and I see a lot of book merchandizing as being materials on a direct route to transfer stations. I may regret that.
I'm also going to bring copies of the original editions for people to see.
A bookstore is going to provide books for some of the authors. I suggested to the organizer that the booksellers might not be crazy about having an epub writer there, but she didn't think it was an issue. It's the first time she's done this, so we'll see how this goes.