Dear Readers,
It has been a flurry of activity since Ilyse Shapiro, my excellent publicist, sent out press releases for The Month of Zephram Mondays and The Kids' (and parents', too!) Book of Good Sportsmanship.
Ilyse (Let's Be Direct) sent the first press release on January 5th for Zephram, and the second one on January 12th for Good Sport.
It is so exciting -- I couldn't be sure how the books would be received (especially Zephram, because everyone talks about how hard it is to break into fiction) but I had to order more author copies of the books because I ran out after all the requests for review copies!
Requests from kids magazines, education/teacher newsletters, blogs, newspapers -- even from a tv show -- have come in from all over the country and are slowly being promoted. I'll post the links when I receive them.
In the meantime, I was very, very proud and happy to receive the following review (from another connection) on the Good Sport book from Perry Perkins, a writer and reviewer for the Portland Examiner. If you'd like to read it, just click here. Perry is an author and blogger himself, so you'll be sure to enjoy his column.
In addition to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and The Self Publisher Store, the books are starting to appear in local bookstores and schools, and the bookmarks have been dropped at grocery stores, libraries, pizza parlors, toy stores, and clothing and sports equipment consignment shops. I'm finalizing my first book signing/fundraiser at our daughters' old day care (hoping to work the kinks out in a friendly environment before a couple of others), and working on another fundraising plan.
Plus, I've been posting links all over the web, and participating in several Tag my book on Amazon forums, which really do help to raise your relevance and ranking for key search words.
On the down side, I've hardly had any time to work on my next two books; but I think the biggest push is over and I'll soon have some time to view this all more calmly. Except that I'm thinking about book trailers, and podcasts, too ... there are so many cool (and free or almost free) tools available!
Hopefully I can report next that all this effort has resulted in monster sales for Good Manners Kids Stuff Press! Hopefully.
While I wait for that to happen, I'll be reading the second book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Just picked up the first book last week and really loved it.
Happy Reading,
Leslie
