Blog

Reaching a Middle Grade Audience

By on June 23, 2014   /   Publishing & Promotion  

z Middle Grade Book PileThe internet constantly buzzes with news of book launches, making it hard to keep track of all of them. So how can you show the world that your book has arrived? I’ve heard so many authors say that it’s easier to reach readers of young adult novels online, but middle grade authors often need to reach out to the gatekeepers—people like teachers, media specialists, and parents who help put great books into the hands of readers around the ages of eight through twelve.

Here are some tips that might help you figure out what to do (and what to avoid).

* Spreading the word on established blogs can really help! If you’re doing a launch blitz, try not to have similar-sounding interviews flooding the internet. Do your best to give something unique and interesting each time. Dig deeper than just facts about your book, show how it’s connected to your heart and your life. Don’t just think about yourself and your book when replying…try to share something that will appeal to potential readers as well.

* Holding a giveaway is a wonderful way to reach potential readers, and I’ve seen how much word about a book can spread when people shout out about a giveaway. Plus, I always feel better about sharing a link for a giveaway on places like Twitter and Facebook instead of just announcing that a friend has a great new book out—then I’m helping both the author and the people who read my post.

* Keep your website up to date. Let people know the story behind your stories. Give them a glimpse of yourself, and let them know about any upcoming appearances and how they can get a signed copy or bookplate. I’ve seen some authors work with an Indie bookstore, where people can order a copy that they’ll sign before it’s shipped out. Try to include fun activities on your website, and link to sites your audience and/or the gatekeepers will enjoy. One of my main characters loves cupcakes, so I plan to create a Pinterest board full of great cupcake recipes on it. Laurie Friedman, author of the Mallory and April Sinclair series, has done a wonderful job setting up her Pinterest boards.  She created a board for each series, plus boards that are just for teachers, classroom reading spaces, young authors corner, etc.

* Try to speak at conferences, bookstores, libraries, and schools. Many authors offer short Skype visits for free, and I think that’s a wonderful opportunity to help out a school or other organization while also spreading the word about your book.

* Visuals can be a huge asset to an author’s website and can draw more people to it when shared online. Create an amazing book trailer, and post other videos that could interest readers.

* Include teacher’s/reading group guides on your website and bookmarks. I posted helpful tips for creating guides a couple months ago. Click here to read that post. Speaking of bookmarks, it’s great to have handouts like that with more info about your book/s, your website, and links to teacher’s guides or other book related activities.

* Team up with other authors and form a group blog that provides a constant stream of helpful information, or consider starting a marketing group. I’ve seen writers with similar types of books team up for book tours, and it seems like they attract more attention than most authors can on their own.

* Make it easy for people to contact you for potential interviews or author visits. Some websites make me feel like I’m navigating through a maze filled with dead ends while trying to contact an author I’d like to interview for our site.

* I absolutely love SCBWI (the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators), and think it is a huge asset. I’m the SCBWI FL Newsletter Editor, and am always surprised when people don’t let me know about their great news. I love shouting it out to our members! If you aren’t involved in your local group, definitely check it out. In addition to local events, they probably have some kind of newsletter, too. Even though the info goes to other authors and illustrators, most of them are avid readers and some may have children who would enjoy your books. Plus, quite a few teachers and media specialists are writers, too! And the amount of support and friendship you can find with people who ‘get it’ is priceless.

Z Middle Grade Books and Ruby* My teen girls laughed when they caught me doing a photo shoot…of middle grade novels. I told them it was for my Mixed-Up Files post, but they didn’t see the point of photographing a pile of books by themselves, and helped me pose one of our dogs into the shot. It made me realize how much I love seeing pictures of children and animals reading books—so you can share photos or video clips of that online, too!

 

Here are some promotional red flags

* BUY MY BOOK!!!! Seeing blatant self-promotion always makes me shudder. When someone is obviously on a social network site for the purpose of selling a book, it often has the opposite effect. Don’t send a promotional link to your book thinly veiled as a thank you for following or friending you on a site. And don’t blitz people with a link to buy your book or news about it multiple times an hour on places like Twitter or Facebook. You want people to smile when they see your cover…not cringe.

* The same is true of forums. Don’t be a drive-by poster who only hops onto a forum to promote a book, then disappear until it’s time to promote the next book. Interact with other forum participants—share some of your knowledge to help them, ask questions, shout out congratulations and send some support to those going through a rough time. If you want people to be happy to celebrate your good news, you need to be there for them, too.

* When sharing news about your book, don’t make it sound like a formal press release. You’ve worked hard to get your book published! Share your genuine thoughts and enthusiasm throughout your publication journey. Even better, reach out and help others. If you learned some tricks while creating a book trailer, share them. And if you win an award or get an amazing review, don’t just post a general statement and link all over the internet—let us experience the moment with you. Shannon Hitchcock did a fantastic job when she blogged about how she discovered that her middle grade novel, The Ballad of Jessie Pearl, won the 2014 SCBWI Crystal Kite Award. What she wrote was personal, and it made me laugh, smile, and cheer for her.

I’d love to know what you believe works and what to avoid while trying to reach potential readers for middle grade novels.

Mindy Alyse Weiss writes humorous middle grade novels with heart and quirky picture books. She’s constantly inspired by her two daughters, an adventurous Bullmasador adopted from The Humane Society, and an adorable Beagle/Pointer mix who was rescued from the Everglades. Visit Mindy’s Twitter, Facebook, or blog to read more about her writing life, conference experiences, and writing tips.

Back to Top

Low Tech Lemonade and Simpler Times

By on June 19, 2014   /   Book Lists, For Kids  

It’s summer. Time to relax.

Have a glass of lemonade and take things easy.

pic

These lazy days even super readers love a stack of picture books. So how about these picture books that celebrate the simple things…

9780395259399_p0_v2_s260x420

Go back to the basics with Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, a classic story of the triumph of out dated technology and a return to simpler days. Mike and his old-timey shovel Mary Ann can’t keep up with the  new backhoes on the block, but when they dig themselves into a hole (literally!) Mike and Mary Ann make the best of it, with Mary Ann serving as the brand new building’s boiler.

9780689832130_p0_v3_s260x420

Have your kids even heard of a typewriter (that old-fangled noisy thing we used to write on, before computers!) Everyone will have a clattering good time with Doreen Cronin’s Click Clack Moo Cows That Type, a tale of a barn yard of journalistic bovines who have their say as soon as the farmer’s back is turned. Get typing!

9780399239861_p0_v2_s260x420

Olden days weren’t always golden days. And a jump rope today could have been something very different in times gone by. Explore serious themes with your kids while reading Jacqueline Woodson’s beautiful This Is The Rope.

9780399255373_p0_v2_s260x420

I love the next one so much– It kills me that I didn’t think of it first. The Day The Crayons Quit. And if you have a quirky sense of humor you’ll love it as much as your kids do, too!

9780061953385

Steamy today, sweater weather come author. Get ready for knit one, pearl two with Extra Yarn!

I can’t think of anything better than snuggling on a porch swing with my favorite reader with a big stack of gorgeous books and a glass of ice cold lemonade. And I can see these books prompting lots of great discussions– not just about how things used to be but also how things ought to be!  

Read any wonderful old fashioned books lately? What’s your favorite simple summer pleasure?

Tami Lewis Brown is attempting to write her next novel on a clickety clackety old fashioned typewriter but she hasn’t given up on the internet. She’ll blog about that next Thursday at Through The Tollbooth.

Back to Top

Revisiting a Classic

By on June 18, 2014   /   Book Lists  

The phrase “instant classic” is a uniquely American oxymoron (emphasis on the moron). Breathless as we all are for the next best thing, and abundant as those dazzling new things are, who has energy to spare for the old? Woe to us.

Nobody guided my childhood reading, and it was pathetically scattershot. I was a devotee of “Nancy Drew, Girl Sleuth” and “Cherry Ames, Student Nurse”. Somehow I found my way to Pippi Longstocking and Mary Poppins, but I grew up ignorant of Narnia, Charlotte and her web, that famous little house in those big woods. It wasn’t till I had my own kids that I discovered how much I’d missed. Edward Eager! E. Nesbit! L.M. Montgomery! Dodie Smith! Of course it wasn’t too late–it never is–to enjoy these true classics.

little white horse

My kids are grown but my education continues. My latest find is the dreamy enchantress Elizabeth Goudge. Some classics–I’m thinking Arthur Ransome’s delightful but poky “Swallows and Amazons”–are a hard sell with today’s kids, but not “The Little White Horse”, first published in 1946. For starters, its cover features a castle and a silvery unicorn bathed in moonlight, along with this quote from K.K. Rowling: “I absolutely adored The Little White Horse.” She’s on record as calling it her favorite childhood book.

 

Consider the character and place names: Maria Merryweather, Miss Heliotrope, Marmaduke Scarlet, Moonacre Manor and the village of Silverydew, the enormous dog (can he truly be a dog?) Wrolf.  (Hearing Harry Potter echoes, anyone?)

 

Lovers of language will be in heaven. Here we meet Maria’s eccentric, tender, puce-nosed governess: “Miss Heliotrope raised her book of essays and held it within an inch of her nose, determined to get to the end of the one about endurance before darkness fell. She would read it many times in the months to come, she had no doubt, together with the one upon the love that never fails.” Wit glints on every page. Our first glimpse of Maria’s uncle: “He had a huge white wig like a cauliflower on his head.”

Goudge’s descriptions are lavish and lush but rarely cloying. We read about embroidered waistcoats, dresses of primrose silk, silver branched candlesticks, luscious meals, whitewashed cottages thatched with golden straw, a vast park sparkling with moonlit frost. Oh, the atmosphere! Readers who love  being swept away into other worlds, look no further. Families looking for an all-ages read-aloud, ditto.

There is, of course, a plot, and it’s classic in the happiest sense. Maria, an orphan, is forced to leave her home in London to live with an uncle she’s never met. (Maria, by the way, is big-hearted, curious, and noble as can be, but also possesses a love of luxury and takes great pride in clothing, particularly her shoes–ever since reading the book, I’ve longed for my own pair of boots made “of the softest gray leather, sewn with crystal beads around the tops, and lined with snow-white lamb’s-wool”.) At first all seems too wonderful to be true, and so it is. Maria begins to learn disturbing facts. A tragedy haunts Moonacre Manor, where no woman has set foot for twenty years. The village lives in fear of the wicked Men from the Dark Woods. Maria’s ancestors were guilty of greed and treachery. If it’s true, as Old Parson says, that “Nothing is ever finished and done with in this world”, Maria has work to do.

Goudge was a Christian, and her beliefs color but never dominate her story. Maria sets old wrongs to right, triumphing through courage and smarts, topped by a nice scoop of magic. Needless to say, it’s a happily-ever-after ending, with the bad guys reforming, the good guys–even purple-nosed Miss Heliotrope–finding joy, and a mouth-watering feast.

“However old you are, you never forget the time when you were young, or the people you loved when you were young; indeed, the older you get the more clearly you remember the times and the more deeply you remember the people.”  Our classics sit patiently on the musty, dusty shelf, waiting to be re-discovered, waiting to be loved by yet another lucky generation. Please share your own favorites!

 

Back to Top