Category — My small press: DRT Press

I’ve been neglecting this blog terribly the past several months – it’s as if after quitting my Day Job I’ve put everything on hold ’til I’m finally outta there! Not really; I’ve been doing other things, notably, thinking about ways to get the news out there about The Forever Friends Club: the great little easy-reader chapter book my little press has just produced!

The book’s gotten fantastic reviews. Adoptive Families magazine called it “a delight,” and Motherhood Later said it was “ a wonderful twist to the adoption tale.” Plus, it has tons of free downloads, including a complete educators guide as well as a printable kit so kids can start their own club for forever friends!

I love this little book and I know that once adoptive families (and all families!) get their hands on it they’ll love it, too!

If you want to be eligible for one of 3 copies of this well-reviewed, well-written, and beautifully illustrated book about a group of kids who put the friendly in friendship, please comment below this blog entry and answer this question by May 30:

What makes a good friend?

Well, folks – spring has sprung! And I only have 9 weeks left of work at my Day Job until I’m free! Free of the Day Job, that is. I’ve been working for my family business quite a bit – that, plus my press and my cataloging business (plus my kids, of course, and the little one’s plethora of dr. visits these past few months) have been keeping me busy and will continue to do so forever!
Here’s a quick update on what else has been going on with moi:

• My small press’s newest title, The Forever Friends Club, is puttering along. Sales are off to a slowish start but then again, marketing’s been off to a slowish start, too. As with all my other titles, I don’t get too concerned about the book’s first month’s sales. That’s the luxury of being a micropress. I’m in it for the long haul. The book’s gotten some fantastic, well-deserved reviews. Next stop: blog tour!
• I’m really excited about a new writing project: retold ghost tales of the Carolinas! Not sure what my plan is when they’re done – to produce them myself or to find another publisher – but they’re super fun to write.
• We’ve extended the deadline for submissions to Bless Your Heart, the anthology I’m co-editing with Kay Marner about parenting children ‘easy to love, hard to raise’ to June. Kay’s offered some advice on her blog to people interested in submitting.
• On Easter Monday we’re doing a give-away of The Big Fun Guide to Tar Heel Country through our Facebook page. Fan us to enter.
• On May 8 I’m teaching a workshop at Central Carolina Community College on self-publishing. That will be an adventure! How to cram seven years’ worth of what I know into 5 hours?
• I’m enjoying writing a blog and newspaper columns about energy efficiency as a way to educate people about the benefits of energy audits and weatherization.
• I’m rewriting the novel I wrote a couple years ago for a small publisher in California. They accepted it (after 4 rewrites) and had a publication date…which passed, was reset, was passed again…and I’ve come to believe they won’t ever publish it. It’s a decent enough story, however, and worth a 2nd look. That’s a big part of my summer’s plans.
• I need to write teacher’s guides for Mishka and When I Met You before I do a big mailing in the fall. The reception for the Teacher’s Guide for The Forever Friends Club has been really good; I think it’s a great, useful tool for teachers, guidance counselors, and parents who want to use the books in the classroom. Plus, it is a marketing tool! You know how I love marketing tools!

But first, finish the Day Job!

If you are an author I want to be sure you know about the usefulness of Google Alerts for tracking reviews, mentions of you, results of PR activities, or whatever it is you’re interested in following on the web. I won’t get into the hows of creating a Google Alert for oneself- Google it! – but suffice it to say it is very useful, particularly when trying to keep track of ones promotional efforts.

I have Google Alerts set up for me, the titles of my books, the titles of books my publishing company has published, and the authors who have published with my company. Come to think of it, it would behoove me to set up a Google Alert for my company, too. That’s only logical.

It’s because I have a Google Alert set up for my books that I recently came across a brand-new book review for Mishka: An Adoption Tale. Mishka came out in 2007 – not that long ago in people years, but ages ago in book years. Most of the reviews for that book came out in late 2007, early 2008. A couple of bloggers reviewed it last year, but that was it the result of a little blog-tour experiment by yours-truly. But this review, sitting smack-dab in the middle of a website devoted to International Adoption, was completely unsolicited and unexpected. The very best kind of review a book could get!

I’m a little bit embarrassed about what happened yesterday, mostly because it could have been avoided by simply THINKING about the ramifications of accepting a shipment of books at a storage facility with no loading dock or overhang whilst it was pouring rain (and paying a small fee for the shipping co. to keep the boxes over the weekend)…but these are the results:

The cardboard boxes got wet. Very wet. To prevent the water wicking into the books (which, for the first time in my little adventures as a publisher I didn’t have shrinkwrapped in plastic) we brought all the books home and unpacked them from the boxes.

Books are fine.

Boxes are trashed.

Husband still annoyed.

Next on the agenda: repacking the whole mess when the new boxes I ordered arrive.

Does Random House have problems like this?

I’m a bit behind in really using web 2.0 to promote the books I publish through my little independent press, but since I’m on the eve of promoting my press’s next book, The Forever Friends Club, written by Sue Gainor and Sarah Gibson, and illustrated by Miranda Mueller, AND November is National Adoption month, it is an opportune time to try new things, like making book trailers.

In preparation, I’ve been looking at book trailers for picture books on the Internet. I’ve found a few that I think are well done.

First, here’s one for Up! by Kristine O’Connell George, illustrated by Hiroe Nakata:

I like it because, while the text stays still, the illustrations move, which gives the impression of animation although the image is static. It’s also a very clean, clear, playful trailer with un-annoying music. It’s also short, but not too short, and importantly, isn’t the author reading the book.

Here’s another one that is super-cute, for the book Chicken Butt, written by Erica Perl and illustrated by Henry Cole. Within about 3 seconds it pulled my 7-year-old in from the next room over:

I really like the 3-D effect of the first few frames, and I also like the voice-over. Again, the music is unobstrusive and the illustrations amusing and well chosen.

Here’s another I found for Captain Cheech, a book by Cheech Marin and illustrated by Orlando L. Ramirez. Again, the soundtrack is appealing, and I like how the words are animated, but you can still read them. No voice-over, but kids laughing and water splashing add a layer to a simple soundtrack:

The trailers I seem to like have a couple things in common: they’re short, they’re cute, and the creators have paid special attention to the soundtracks. They also give the impression of animation although confined to static artwork.

Have you made a book trailer for your book? Let me know how it went for you, how you came up with the design of the trailer, and what tips you might have for a book trailer newbie. Feel free to post a link to your book trailer in the comments section, or post a link to another book trailer you think serves as a great example.

Hey! Is your child easy to love, but hard to parent? DRT Press (my baby easy-to-love, easy-to-parent business baby) wants you!

DRT Press is seeking personal essays written by parents of children with ADD, ADHD and/or other mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders for a book about the experience of parenting children with such conditions, for publication (expected) in January 2011.

Essays in this collection will be ones in which parents who care for challenging children can see themselves.  Parents/readers will laugh, cry, and find comfort in these stories.

Focus should be on the feelings and experiences of the writer/parent, rather than simply a description of the child and the child’s condition, behavior, and treatment.  We are looking for honest feelings, lessons learned, epiphanies, commonplace and extraordinary experiences.   Although we are not looking for how-tos on the best way to parent a behaviorally challenged child, we would like to see essays that give parents glimpses of what has worked for individual parents.

To read more guidelines, including HOW to submit and WHO to submit to, please go to the DRT Press website.

Hey ya’ll -

I’m rocking the Web 2.0! Just made a fan page for my small press on FB.

Here’s the link, in case you want to be my fan: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pittsboro-NC/DRT-Press/105121020847?ref=mf

The Big Fun Guide to Tar Heel Country, our most recent book, has its own page: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=15776054398

Come on, be a fan! And if you have tips on using social networking sites to promote your books or your small press, please leave a comment. Information is power!

I’d like to take this opportunity to formally introduce you to Isabel, Sam, Nick, and Madison – the Forever Friends ! In the first book in the series, The Forever Friends Club, by Sarah Gibson and Sue Gainor, Sam lives all alone on his street until one by one his new friends move in. They become fast friends and in a fit of inspiration they form a club…but what should they name it? And when they do come up with a great name – the Forever Friends Club – why does Sam feel so left out?

You can guess that this book is about adoption – if you’re a member of the adoption community you’ll probably recognize that “forever friends,” sounds a lot like “forever family.” But I will leave it at that. I don’t want to give the plot away just yet!

I’m excited about the book. Miranda Mueller, who did the illustrations forMishka, is doing the illustrations for The Forever Friends Club, and she is very close to being done. She’s doing a marvelous job. And Sarah and Sue have managed to write a very sweet story that’s just right for any kid, but really right for adopted kids. The Forever Friends Club is a gap-filler in the adoption literature: inclusive, but it doesn’t hit you over the head with it; an early reader chapter book on a subject that has no early reader chapter books, and a story that acknowledges and celebrates adoption but avoids being didactic. I think that’s really hard to do, and I feel so lucky that these two ladies chose me to work with them!

When it’s spring in North Carolina! Or, more accurately, it’s not a good idea for a person like me to schedule a book launch anywhere between April and September. Which I realize is spring and summer, but since a book launch isn’t just the day the book comes out, but actually starts about 6 months ahead of time – is a bad time to have lots of indoor work to do.

This is why:

and this

and this:

I garden!

I’m not one to create New Year’s resolutions. I think there are some things you should probably do around New Year’s Day: clean your office, put away the Christmas tree, think about the year that just passed. But resolving to do better in the year ahead? I prefer to set goals for the new year. Goals provide an end product. Resolutions don’t. Resolutions are too wishy-washy. I like to think that I’m not a very wishy-washy person.

That said, here are my goals for 2009:

#1: find a way to get out of full-time work outside of the home. This is such a major goal for me that my 9-year-old finishes my sentences when I start to talk about it. I don’t know if this will actually happen, as I am also the only person in my family bringing in a steady paycheck right now, but some plans are in the works to try to make this happen. The rest of the goals for my little business support this goal, as the success of DRT Press both depends on and is depended on for its attainment.

#2: Continue publicizing and selling and marketing the heck out of my current books. I was going to add a qualifier - as much as I can in the time I have - but that’s been my S.O.P. and in order to be successful I’m going to have to do MORE than this. I will have to push myself – hard. Included in this is:

• create teacher’s guides for 1st 2 books, then school/library mailing to promote books w/free teachers’ guides
• write articles about school and adoption, both to promote 1st 2 books but also to promote possible future project (TBA later…)
• find 8 new place for BFG to be sold
• get BFG reviewed in all NC state-wide publications as well as ALL local
• place articles in free article banks to promote BFG
• author appearances for BFG – at least 3 before summer
• press releases EVERY MONTH about BFG
• work the social networking for BFG as well as adoption books; write guest blogs on adoption sites; work the Facebook, join appropriate networks/blog rings, etc.
• complete fundraising mailing for BFG

#3. Continue production of next 2 adoption books so they both come out next spring

#4. Create imprint! Yee haw! This is a TBA project, but one which I’m really excited about.

#5. Start personal blog – also TBA. This is a big part of quitting my full-time job. But I’m not ready to share just yet.

Phew! This is actually a lot to do – and much depends on that #1 goal. To do all of this I’m going to have to accomplish 2 personal goals: 1) work less at the Day Job, and 2) really support my husband so his salary can carry us for a while.

Good luck to me!