What's Up Wednesday

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk.  Head over to Jaime's page for links to find out what's up with everyone else. Here's what's up with me.
What I'm Reading

As the mother of two young children, I read A LOT of kids books. There are some books that my kids love that I tolerate. There are some books that I remember loving as a kid and have a nostalgic attachment too. There are some books I love simply because I see my children in the characters in the stories. Then there is Morris Lessmore. This is a children's book that I love far more than my children.

We checked it out from the library last week, and just returned it yesterday. I was so sad to see this book go, I'm seriously planning on buying it. I actually looked for it at my local indie bookstore and since it wasn't there, I think I may need to order it on line. It's that good of a book.

Seriously, if you are a writer, and if you're reading this post chances are VERY HIGH that you are a writer, you need to read this book. It's an absolutely gorgeous picture book about a man, named Morris Lessmore, who spends his life tending to a flock of magic books. Each night he writes all his hopes and dreams in a book of his own. At the end of the story, after Morris Lessmore dies, a little girl comes to the library and Morris's book flies over to her and lands on her shoulder. The last two pages read, "So our story ends the way it began... With the opening of a book."

Yeah! If you are an author, or even just a book lover, you need to read The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore!

What I'm Writing

The Evolution of Emily comes out next weeks. I think that means it's officially time for me to start working on book #3. I do have a title for my third book, Fragments of Life. Um yeah, that's about all I have.

I really do need to figure out how to fit writing into my regular routine again. But hey, The Evolution of Emily comes out next week.It doesn't matter if I wrote it months ago. I wrote it, and it's a fabulous story, so you should definitely read it.

In honor of my release, I'm having a giveaway. Sign up to win a free copy of The Evolution of Emily, or even better yet copies of both The Evolution of Emily and Counting to D!

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What Works for Me

Since adopting my kids last August, I haven't written diddly swat, so I never feel like I know how to answer this question. But even if I'm not doing a very good job at tackling book three, I do have a novel coming out next week, so I am working. And I expect some of you may want to know what works for me in the marketing/promotion side of things.

I did a lot of PR stuff before Counting to D came out last winter. In the month leading up to it's release, I think I did something like 27 guest blog posts and interviews. Um yeah, thanks to the whole new mom thing, I've done exactly zero guest blog posts for this release and have only managed to update my own blog three times in the past month. I sent C2D to more than 100 reviewers. I send EoE to like four. I feel a little bit nervous about this, because EoE is a great book that I actually like even better than C2D, so I really hope people read it, I'm just not doing very much to tell people about it.

One thing that I did do though was sign up for IndieReader In-Store (IRIS). Traditional publishers list all of their publications in either net-galley or edelweiss. This allows bookstores, libraries, and book reviewers to securely review ecopies of a book for free so they can determine if it's something they should carry. The fee for these services is steep though, making it virtually impossible for indie and small press publishers to use. Hence the creation of IRIS. IndieReader enables indie authors to band together and list all their books in the edelweiss network under a single account. The cost to sign a book up through IRIS is $525 per title. Not free, but still possible.

There are a lot of services available for indie authors and it's hard to know what to pay for and what to skip. Like I said, I haven't done most of the PR/marketing stuff for my second novel that I did for my first. A lot of this is a time management thing. I mentioned I adopted two kids three months ago, right? But also, it's a cost benefit issue. Many of the marketing services I paid for when publishing C2D had horrible rates of return. I believe, IRIS was a good investment, and thus opted to do it again. Here is why. LIBRARIES!

I love libraries, and more importantly, kids love libraries. I take my kids to the library every single week. And I know a lot of teens who visit the library just as often as my kindergartner son. Not every YA reader has a kindle, or a huge book buying budget, but most of them have a library card. And thanks to my presence in the edelweiss network via IRIS, I have sold more paper copies of C2D in the last three months than I've sold e-books. And more than half of those print sales have been purchased by libraries.

I do hope that my ebook sales start to increase, and I have some ideas of new cross-promotions to run once I have two titles available. But knowing my book is not only available online, but also in a library near you is so incredibly exciting to me.

What Else I've Been Up To

It's Veteran's Day today, because I always post my WUW post on Tuesday night instead of Wednesday morning. Thanks to the national holiday, there was no school today. The kids had yesterday off too, so the teachers could fill out their quarterly grades. Um, not sure what kindergartner's are graded on, but okay. When I was a kid, I loved long weekends, but the random four day weekend not around a real holiday is horrible on my schedule. I may only get 2.5 hours to myself a day, but I really like that 2.5 hours.

We did spend Veteran's Day at the zoo though.

So what's up with you?