Friday, August 20, 2010

Monkeys would do a better job promoting than I am!

Tip of the Day: My new picture book, LITTLE CHIMP'S BIG DAY, is showing as shipping from Amazon. If you have little ones, I hope you'll check it out! 


I think I'm supposed to be promoting my new picture book, and I'm totally and completely lost as to how to do it.

I know some people do book trailers, but I don't have the money to hire someone and I don't really feel skilled enough to do it myself. Besides, unless it's really creative and I can think outside the box, I'm not sure a book trailer for a picture book is all that effective.

If I had postcards done, I don't know where I'd send them.

The only thought I had was I could try and get in touch with Sara Gruen (WATER FOR ELEPHANTS) who also has a book coming out Sept 7th called APE HOUSE and see if she would take me on tour with her. She could sell her monkey book to adults and I could sell my monkey book to kids.

Something tells me, she probably wouldn't take me up on it though. But what a good idea, huh? We could call it the Monkey Tour! Or, uh, monkeys on tour. Ha!

It's hard to feel motivated about it too, because a big part of me feels like people simply don't buy picture books anymore. At least not hardcover ones from an unknown author anyway.

So, if you were me, what would you do? Put on a monkey suit and walk around town? Spam your facebook friends every day for the next month with stuff about the book? Other ideas? Not a thing?

Can I just say that I really don't like promotion much?

But yay - a cute picture book with adorable illustrations and fun, rhyming text!! That part is fun. The rest, um yeah, not so much.

~Lisa, Miss Crafting a Career

7 comments:

Kat said...

Libraries! Arrange with libraries to hold a 'show and tell' at one of their kid's days. My sister is a librarian who would love a 'guest speaker' for one of her Saturday kid's programs (Patty Petrus at the Chester Library in Chester, CT).

Cynthia Leitich Smith said...

Thinking...

You could make a book trailer of yourself in the monkey suit reading the book. (I would definitely post that).

If you have postcards done, you can send them to librarians in your state/city. (Texas Library Association here locally sells lists on nice labels, so maybe your state library association does too).

You could interview your illustrator.

You could write a guest post for me on writing animal characters (say, 500-ish words).

These are my initial thoughts. Also, just as a reminder: you have fans! I'm a fan. I found out about your new book from this post, and I'm very excited about it! Yay, Lisa!

Kristina Springer said...

Set up signings at zoos in front of the monkey area! :-)

Emily Marshall said...

Ha...these are some great ideas! Love the monkey costume idea and the zoo!

I definitely third the library publicity. Almost all the authors I had come to speak at my old library were picture book authors. Everyone (even adults) usually find them much more interesting! And parents almost always bought books!

Harmony said...

Email librarians! Email reviewers that review pictures books! (There are some out there, they're just usually not the ones that review YA.) Send an email out to your current readers. Many of them (like me) have younger siblings and it'd make a great Christmas present!

(I know I'm def. planning on buying one for MY little brother.)

Lisa Schroeder said...

Thanks you guys!

I actually thought for a second - hmmm, where could I get a monkey suit? HA!

DeenaML said...

Yay Lisa on the new book! Our 2 library copies have arrived! Definitely send out postcards advertising its release to local public and school libraries to see if you can do book readings there. I think the pic book audience is a great one to do presentations for -- you can read and show pictures and tell the kids you wrote it and impress them. :)

Also, listen to Cynthia bc she is another YA, MG, and PB writer....