Elizabeth Fama's Blog, page 6

My First (Lame-o) Giveaway

My friend bought a copy of Monstrous Beauty at my Chicago book signing. "Make it out to my niece, Phoebe," he said.

"That's P-H-O-E-B-E, right?" I asked

"No, I think it's P-H-E-O-B-E."

"Really? Because that wouldn't be standard."

"I'm pretty sure."

"Okaaaay..."

Needless to say, Phoebe is never spelled Pheobe, so I bought my friend a fresh copy of the book and signed it, exchanging it for the ruined one. But now I have this nearly-mint condition copy Monstrous Beauty that I need to unload. I will cross out "Pheobe" and put your name in its place (or leave it as is, or white it out, or anything you'd like). It's yours for free, along with two Monstrous Beauty buttons! Just enter the Rafflecopter below. You have from now (Dec. 6, 2012) until Midnight on Sunday the 9th. (P.S. This is OPEN INTERNATIONALLY.)



Thanks to Coranne of Short and Sweet (One Minute Books) for the tips on how to run my first (lame-o) giveaway!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Jen J's Starred Review Data and "Best Books" Data

My friend Jen J is a data nerd like me. Each year she compiles a list of every children's book that earned a starred review from the six major journals (Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Horn Book, School Library Journal, and Booklist). She also keeps track of the Best-Books lists. It is a heroic effort.
She puts the data into a Google spreadsheet, and makes them available to anyone who is interested, mostly through humble little comments on other people's blogs (she doesn't have her own web site). I can never remember where her spreadsheets are on the Internet, and I always forget to bookmark them, so I decided to post them here. 
I could scroll through them all day, and you might like to, too.
Jen J's Starred Review Spreadsheet:  http://ow.ly/eMaDT
Jen J's "Best Books Lists" Spreadsheet:  http://ow.ly/fs615  

Meet My New Author Photo

My brother Gene took it when he was in Chicago for Veteran's Day weekend. He's not only a talented photographer, he's apparently a wizard with Photoshop.

Photo credit: Gene Fama Jr.

I Need an Award

So I didn't get nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards 2012, but you can TOTALLY MAKE UP FOR THAT by nominating Monstrous Beauty for the 2012 Nerdies. You get to list 10 whole YA titles if you feel like it, so there's really no excuse not to give me a little nod. C'mon, you know I won't win the Printz, toss me a bone.

And while you're at it, vote for the German cover of my book (German title: Syrenka) in this readers' choice "Best Cover" event, by clicking the word abstimmen below the thumbnail photo of Syrenka.

It Would Have Made a Swell Cover

This is a painting my daughter made to "audition" for the cover of Monstrous Beauty. Much as I adore the final cover that Macmillan designed, this image is still my favorite. 
In a recent panel discussion about young-adult mega-hits, Megan Tingley of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers said something that I agree with fervently: not creating a “strong consensus between jacket and title” can lead to uncertain positioning. Sally's painting conveys so much of the real book: it hints at the historical fiction inside, and it gives a sense of Syrenka's natural sensuality, her openness (approaching naivete), and her eagerness to learn. 
In the end, I think Macmillan came around to a (truly lovely) photographic version of Sally's work without realizing it.
See more of Sally's art here.

Monstrous Beauty Shortlisted for German Award!

Leserpreis says that it runs the largest Readers' Choice awards event in Germany. I got an e-mail today that Monstrous Beauty, which is called Syrenka in the German edition (arsEdition), has been shortlisted for an award. But before you get all excited (as I did) that my writing is being recognized...
The nomination is for "Best Cover," which I had nothing to do with.  

But, hey, it's fun! And you can go vote for it! In fact, please vote for it. Click on "abstimmen" (vote) beneath the thumbnail of sexy ol' Syrenka on this list of nominated books.

I Got Bitten By the Stock Photo Zombie

I occasionally rant about cover design, which is an obsession of mine. One of the things I've complained about is the overuse of stock images on covers, because there's a danger that more than one book will feature the same photo.

Imagine my amusement when I discovered this 2010 book by Jennifer R. Hubbard in a post on Stacked:


Here's the back cover of my own book, Monstrous Beauty:



Haha! I got bit! (But it doesn't stop me from loving that kiss.)

What'dya Know? Author Tours Promote Book Sales.

Click to enlarge.
Amazon Author Central allows authors to see Bookscan data about their sales. Amazon warns that the data do "not report every book sold" (thank the gods, I know for a fact that I've sold more than 689 books) but that "[Bookscan] is widely regarded as the industry standard for tracking print book sales."

Here's the interesting part for me: if you ignore the artificially low number of sales and assume that the geographic distribution is accurate, seven of the top ten individual cities on the "Sales by Geography" breakdown are cities that I toured, in the first month after Monstrous Beauty's release—five as part of the Fierce Reads tour (Milwaukee, Phoenix, St. Louis, Denver, and Cincinnati), and two (Salt Lake City and Chicago) on my own. The only Fierce Reads tour stop missing in the top-ten cities is Asheville, NC.

Now, lest you trust these paltry numbers and think, "Fama only sold books at her actual bookstore events," I think I can prove that wrong. Just as a back-of-the-envelope check: according to the data, Phoenix is the second-best-selling city for Monstrous Beauty; it was our first stop on the tour; I botched the description of my book; one person in the audience had heard of me; I didn't sign more than four books that night.

I'm sure someone at Macmillan marketing is doing a more comprehensive analysis to judge whether tours are successful, but this tiny, not very statistical peek into one book's sales does seem to indicate that book tours have an impact on public awareness of a title in that region, and on subsequent sales.

If anyone has more insight into what Bookscan's data mean in general, or why the tour cities are so well represented in my sales, I'd love to hear what you think.

Housekeeping

I changed the pages bar at the top of the blog. I removed the tab entitled "Teacher Guide for Overboard," and I added a "Professional Reviews" tab to hold the reviews of the major children's literature journals (and other industry outlets). I'm very happy with the reviews of Monstrous Beauty—they're uniformly positive, which is a rare treat for an author. Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Booklist are particularly awesome.

Tumblr

I have a Tumblr now.

I'm thinking of not blogging anymore.

This is because it takes too much time to write down Big Thoughts, and not much time to re-blog GIFs from The Emperor's New Groove.

http://elizabethfama.tumblr.com/