Author, school visitor, book lover, & librarian!

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?

If you have read any of the “Me, Myself, and I” portions this blog, or any of my previous blog, idea-girl, you’ll  that I have been struggling with work-life balance for the past several years – essentially, since winter of 2006, when I took a full-time school librarian job after 7 1/2 years working part time, raising my children, and starting my little publishing company, not to mention writing and helping my husband with his business (most intensely in the past year).

And even though I did a job-share this year and so cut my hours in half, I’ve had a lot on my plate. As those hours dropped, my work for our family’s business increased. We’ve also been struggling with my younger son’s medical-behavioral issues, which takes up a tremendous amount of energy, time, and patience.

Because of all of this – combined with the growth of my husband’s Home Performance business – we’ve had to make some hard decisions around here. We decided that I would quit my job.

Yesterday I gave notice – 5 months in advance, as I’m planning on finishing out the school year – but notice all the same.

I feel relieved. I feel guilty (if you’ve ever worked as a teacher I think you’ll know why). I will miss the kids and the people I work with and the books.

I also feel like I want it to be over with now, but I’m scared of relying only on a start-up business for our income. And despite the fact that my husband is 100% supportive and probably more on board with the whole idea than I am…I also worry about the stresses ahead.

I am trying to get to the part where I feel free. Where I finally have time to work in a little exercise and regular house-cleaning and WRITING into my day…as well as to be available to take my kids to whatever activities they want.

It’ll happen. Right?

We’ve had two days off of school this week, thanks to 5 inches of snow here in central North Carolina. The snow was exciting at first – and fun – but then it promptly froze, was rained on, then refroze again. I’m not sure we’ll have school tomorrow; I haven’t left the house in four days! People who’ve been out and about report mixed conditions on the roads and it seems as if it’d be foolish to risk peoples’ lives by holding school in the next 24 hours.
I have been using my unanticipated days off three ways: 1, listening to my children whine about how bored and unhappy they are; 2, listening to my children fight; and 3, working on this website. It took almost the four full days of tolerating the first two things, but I’m proud to say that the last thing is done.
Oh – and I also took a nice walk in the snowy woods before it started to rain, and made a lovely snow lady.
But back to this website…I had a couple of blogs before, and I needed a place to consolidate them as well as a place to tout myself as an author – specifically, an author who is interested in visiting schools.
So here it is. What do you think?

Hello there!

Welcome to my website. I’m an author, a publisher, a mom, a business owner, a book reviewer, and a school librarian. This site is a place to bring it all together.

If you are interested in inviting me visit your school please see my page on School Visits.

If you are interested in my small publishing company, please click here: DRT Press.

If you want to send me a book to review, please go to my Book Review Guidelines page.

If you want to contact me directly, email me at adrienne(at)drtpress.com.

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About the blog: all of the posts on this site written before Dec, 2009  were migrated here from two other blogs of mine: readabookaday.net, which was about the joy of reading and using children’s books in the classroom and library, and idea-girl.net: a blog about owning a small press, being a working mom (who mostly works when the kids are around), home-life balance,  writing, and book marketing.

Is that you are Zeus for Halloween.

This was an amazingly easy costume to make, which from my perspective (the mother and chief seamstress) was key.

Outfit includes 1 toga (instructions and helpful video for tying a toga found on youtube) made from a white sheet putchased at the thriftshop for $2; a wire crown gussied up with some gold leaves purchased at a crafts store; and a gold belt made from a scrap of gold fabric I had lying around. Shoes were this summer’s sporty sandals – they still fit him or else I’d have spray-painted them gold.

We also made a lightning bolt out of cardboard and tin foil. This was shoved into the plastic pumpkin after a minute of use. Good thing it was bendable!

His other idea was to be Poseidon as depicted in the Percy Jackson books, which would’ve involved bermuda shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and sandals. Maybe a shell necklace or something. But he worried that no one would get it.

No one really got the Zeus outfit, actually. Every other kid we went trick-or-treating with was dressed as a vampire.

I don’t know if we had H1N1 or not, but the week before last LittleJ (my 7 year old) was out for 2 days with something virusy-flu-like, and feverish, and last week BigJ (my 10-year-old) was out 3 days with the same.

Me, I had a little fever, too…but I went on in to school. I can’t be out 5 days in 2 weeks with my kids and let a little old fever stop me.

When my kids are sick I relax the screen-viewing rules. Normally the rule is this: no screen time (meaining TV or non-school use computer) on school days, screentime on weekends only after rooms are cleaned to momma’s specifications, and limited screentime on those days. Like not all day. Not even all morning.

But when a sick, feverish, headachy little boy is home for the day then I allow unlimited screen time while brother is off at school. Sometimes it’s part of the cure. Zoning and dozing in front of the TV for a day or two is fine in this situation.

But the boys surprised me. Sure, there was plenty of TV watching. But there was also plenty of reading. BigJ reread The Last Olympian twice (perhaps his 5th and 6th readings of these books?), and started D’aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths for the third time. He also got a ways into the relevant section of Bulfinches before he became frustrated with the Roman names for the Gods. And his 3rd day of being sick, when he wasn’t sick at all (we were obeying the 24-hour fever free rule of school), he read the most recent Cressida Cowell Hiccup Horrendous Haddock book as well as Syren, the most recent Septimus Heap.

Yes, the kid can read.

Now, LittleJ is in 1st grade and just jumping on the read-to-himself bandwagon, but he is certainly very text aware and he looks at books all the time. He especially looks at graphic novels – mostly his brother’s. He has memorized every picture in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, loves his Scooby Doo and Batman graphic novels/picture books – really more the length and size of chapter books, but not comics – it’s hard to categorize exactly what these are. His interest match up exactly with the interests of many of the 6-9 year old boys at the school in which I work – most of whom are both emergent readers and English Language Learners. It convinces me that we need LOTS and LOTS of this kind of text in our library…but I digress. The long and the short of it is that LittleJ also spent a lot of his sick time looking at books. Lots more than I’d have thought for a very early reader. I read one or two to him, but that wasn’t what he was interested in. He was making sense of the books by himself.

I am convinced that the reading was what cured us of our flu so quickly. And me? I was cured by the happy little readers at school…and at home.

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.

I read this article “Publishers Must Change the Way Authors Get Paid,” on PublishingPerspective.com with great interest. In it, the author argues that traditional publishing houses should pay authors more, since in the current publishing environment authors seem to bear the burden of marketing. Here’s what she says:

Times have changed, and with them, every aspect of the publishing landscape is morphing. And from my vantage point, nowhere is it changing more than in marketing. Authors aren’t waiting and watching to see what publishers aren’t doing for their books — they are jumping in feet first and months ahead of their houses to make sure there’s a serious marketing and publicity effort.

And publishers aren’t gnashing their teeth over the author’s involvement anymore — they are encouraging it…In almost all cases, publishers are making it clear that they expect authors to supplement their marketing/PR effort in various ways and, in some cases, even soliciting the author’s help with both time and yes, money.

As a result, today the author’s marketing/PR effort is often equal to or even greater than what the house is doing.

I have no doubt that this is the case if one is dealing with a large publishing company. I don’t have personal experience with this, but I’ve heard many writers describe magnificent marketing plans and I wonder if they are seeing a true return on their investment (of time or money) since they are making pennies every time a single book sells. Since I am self-published (and only recently have begun to publish others) I make anywhere from $4-10 every time one of my books sell. So even a modest booksigning or storytelling event is worth my while. And any marketing I do always pays off. Of course, I did put up a significant sum to publish my books, and even if I’m making dollars and not pennies for each book sold it takes a while to earn my output back. But if I were only making 35 cents for every book I sold, I’d probably think twice about doing appearances or giving out free bookmarks. Why would I be doing it? For the fame?

I’m not saying traditional publishing isn’t the way to go. Fact is, my books have such a small niche audience that they’d never have seen the light of day in a business where selling 10,000 copies in a year is small potatoes and bookstores are the primary ways of selling books. Even if my books were the best written picture books in the world they would’ve never made the cut. If my books were for a more general audience, however, there’s plenty to be said for the marketing and distribution channels of a large traditional publisher. Plenty. Heck, I’m working on something right now that I’d love to submit to a big house. I’ve certainly submitted my share of ideas and manuscripts to traditional publishers, big and small, in the past and I will continue to do so. But it’s important to enter the situation wisely. Authors get paid for their work.

1. You have $15,000-$20,000 just sitting around and you can’t think of anything better to do with it.
2. You are positive that you can do a better job picking an illustrator, a designer, a distributor, and marketing the book than the big publishing companies that have been creating award-winning books for years and years.
3. You have the best story in the world (that’s been rejected by every publishing house out there, but still, it’s really good!) and you know everyone will love it!
4. Your son’s pre-k class really liked it when you read it to them.
5. If you publish it, they will come.

Yes, yes, I know. I was being facetious. But truthful, no?

Okay, now for real.

1. Your book fills an untapped niche.
2. You’ve done your research and you know that there’s a market for your book, and…
3. You know how to reach your market.
4. You have the time, energy, and passion to get the word out about your book to the people who will buy it.
5. You have created a solid business and marketing plan and have read every book out there on self-publishing, lurked on the self-publishing listservs for months, and have a detailed schedule for production and marketing. Despite all this, you know you have a lot to learn, but you’re ready to take the leap nevertheless.