Seven Tips to Grow Your Mailing List

This week the indomitable Katie Davis has agreed to fill in for Grace (who is on a 2-week school visit marathon). Katie Davis has published nine books and appears monthly on the ABC affiliate show, Good Morning Connecticut, recommending great books for kids. She produces Brain Burps About Books, a podcast about kidlit, a blog and monthly newsletter. Smart about marketing, books and balance, we're so glad Katie has agreed to share some of her insights with us here:



In my last guest post I talked about all the different things I do in my career as a writer and illustrator and how I balance them. I know a lot of people who read like that just shut down, overwhelmed by everything that could be done. Either that or their heads spontaneously exploded. So let’s pick just one thing you can do to promote yourself and your career.

Let’s get you a mailing list. You are going to grow your audience and then stay connected. (No, that is NOT two things. I promise. Besides, after you’ve collected a mailing list you will want to stay connected and it won’t even feel like a second whole thing. Think of it as part two of the first thing. It’s the psychology of just doing ONE thing.)

Here are tips to grow your list:

1 - Every time you make an appearance as an author, bring your guest book. Whether it’s on your iPad or in a spiral notebook, ask people to sign up. I’ve brought my guest book to school visits, book festivals, conference appearances …wherever people are gathering to celebrate their love of children’s literature, I bring it. Ask only for their name and email address. Make sure they know you won’t share that list, and, though this seems obvious, ask them to print clearly.

2 – When at professional functions, ask for people’s business card and then ask them if it’s okay to add them to your mailing list. At ALA I collected almost 100 cards and only one person told me he didn’t want me to add him. I separated that card from the rest and wrote myself a gigantic note on the card so I wouldn’t include it by accident.

3- Sign up on your site. Make it easy to find, right at the top of your home page (I’m in the midst of a huge overhaul of my site and I’m definitely doing this one!)

4- Don’t abuse your list. Send out things of interest that isn’t just about you and your books. Write articles, include info about other books, or include lesson plans.

5- Give to get…

Elizabeth O. Dulemba grew her list by establishing “Coloring Page Tuesday” which is when she posts a new downloadable coloring page. She has over 2,500 subscribers and over 1.5 million page views of her site last year. That doesn't even include RSS subbers, facebook followers, etc.

Dianne de las Casas sends a monthly newsletter that includes activities that link to her books, but also suggestions about things to do with kids, her tour schedule, interviews with reviewers and sometimes even a recipe or two!

My own newsletter (sample) has book recommendations and unique information from authors about their books, links to my podcast interviews with other authors and experts, videos and occasional tips. On my new site I plan to have a weekly drawing for all new subscribers.
On your site include a “Tips for …(writing non-fiction for kids/making friends on Twitter/whatever you are good at!” or “Secrets to…” article to download. The key to get the download is your visitor’s email address.

I contacted one of the most successful and well-known children’s literature bloggers, Cynthia Leitich Smith, creator of Cynsations to ask how she increased her mailing list. She actually doesn’t have one, because as she told me, “Email addresses change.” However, I’m not sure at her level she needs a mailing list. After all, she gets 80,000 views per month. She can put her message out on her blog and basically, a bazillion people will see it.

She also told me, “While nailing down specific reasons is about as effective for me as reading tea leaves, I suspect the following are factors: (1) the blog is hosted and mirrored (reproduced) at more than one location for greater outreach and subscription options; (2) I tweet links to the posts and feature them on my facebook author page; (3) I've been blogging for a long time--since 2004--which has allowed ample opportunity to build both an audience and create back links that continue to attract traffic; (4) Cynsations builds on the success of my already popular children's-YA writer and literature resource site, a portal to the world of creating, reading, marketing, and publishing books for young readers; (5) the content is of consistent quality, offered on a regular basis, and features notable voices and visions from throughout the field.
Building on the last point, the content is not only regular and substantive, it's consistently positive, with a focus on inspiring and informing the youth literature community, especially writers. While I may highlight, say, links about supporting library financing, I don't share the particulars of my own political beliefs or otherwise delve into matters beyond the world of books. Consequently, my blog readers know what to expect. At the same time, I do personalize it a bit. While I don't, for example, go into any detail about my Valentine's Day plans, I will be sharing a photo of the flowers I received. It creates a (hopefully) warm and inviting online destination, offering real value to visitors.”

6- Put your signup link in your email signature.

7- Freebies! It’s always nice to offer something for an email address. How about a weekly drawing? I met a guy on Twitter who actually gives a tee shirt for every email address he gets. That’s a big expense if you’re getting a lot of sign ups! Just giving a signed copy of your book would be a huge prize, and would get your book out there. Other great prizes would be, if you are an established writer, to offer a critique to any unpublished writers who sign up.

This isn’t brain surgery, I’m not saying anything new, and if you google “how to increase your mailing list” I’m sure you’ll find even more ideas. The thing is to do something. And my most important tip of all, which should have it’s very own category: once you start building that list, use it for good, never for evil.

Guest post: Beyond the Book--HAPPYFACE by Stephen Emond

Guest Post: Connie Hsu

Beyond the Book: Happyface by Stephen Emond

I'll always remember my first--first acquisition, that is: Libby's beautiful Blow Out the Moon. And so, with the recent publication of my assistant's first acquisition, I asked if she'd like to do a guest post. Connie's first acquisition was not the typical "agent sends in a submission, editor acquires said submission." Nope. Connie WORKED for this one. And what an acquisition it was. Happyface is a beautiful, awe-inspiring, unique book--each page has fully integrated text and art. The book itself and its creator, Stephen Emond, are both absolutely brilliant. And with that, I'll let Connie take it away. (P.S. Connie is brilliant, too)

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Hello, Blue Rose Girls readers! I’m excited and honored to guest blogging about HAPPYFACE by Stephen Emond, a young adult novel that just came out this month. Not only is this is my first post on Blue Rose Girls, but it’s also a post about my first acquisition ever.

To give you the full back story of HAPPYFACE, I will need to take you all back in time with me, to a time when Brangelina only had four kids and Lehman Brothers was still in business. It was February 2007, and I was less than a year into my job as editorial assistant at Little, Brown (my first job in book publishing, in fact). I was volunteering at the LBYR booth at the New York Comic-Con, where I met Stephen Emond, who was signing his EMO BOY comic book series. I walked up to his booth, picked up EMO BOY, read it, liked it, and decided he should write a book.

I was young, green, and naïve, so I approached him with the line, “Hey, do you want to write a book?” I didn’t even have a business card or anything proving that I was from Little, Brown, but for some reason, Steve believed me. He said he was definitely into YA, and that he had ideas galore (I later found out he didn’t). A few weeks later, Alvina and I met Steve for lunch, and he had seven ideas on hand, each concept typed up on full-color one-sheets with art.

Steve had many amazing ideas, running the gamut from a metaphysical sci-fi fantasy romance adventure involving a re-imagined Greek underworld to a realistic story, told through journal entries, about a boy, a family tragedy, and how he reinvents himself to hide from his painful past. It was called HAPPYFACE, and there was something about it that felt really raw, honest, and compelling, even though the description was under 300 words. It spoke to both Alvina and me, and we agreed that he should pursue HAPPYFACE.

After nearly a year of developing the outline, shaping the story, and working on art and design, Steve finally had a full outline and 70 or so pages with the text and art fully laid out. Like DIARY OF A WIMPY KID, the text and art complemented each other, and each page/spread as its own design. At this point, Steve wasn’t signed up yet—he had done all this fantastic work on spec, and now it was up to me to bring it to our acquisitions committee. I was a wreck. What if it didn’t pass? What would I tell Steve? Where would I hide so he couldn’t hunt me down and make me pay for wasting a year of his life?

Fortunately, it passed! (and I nearly passed out when I heard the news)

At this point, Steve had about six or seven months to write the rest of the story and complete all the art. Keep in mind, he’d done about a quarter of the book over a year, but somehow, he did it! (I promise you, I didn’t threaten him! Just made whip cracking sounds over the phone.) He had somehow transformed from comic book guy to YA super hero.

And then… the design process. When we went into this, we knew we couldn’t just run the text and drop in art, which is what’s done with most other books, even ones with art. This wasn’t an option with HAPPYFACE. The art didn’t just sit alongside the text; some pieces actually worked as pieces of dialogue or had to correspond to a specific line. There was spot art, comic strips, sidebars, doodles, and taped-in I.M. conversations and e-mails, and this meant that each page had to be designed and laid out separately. Steve took the helm in navigating us through these confusing waters, showing us how he wanted each page laid out, and our designer, Ben Mautner, would go through and make sure everything was in its right place.

The process of keeping track of every piece of art (I believe there are over 400 pieces) in a 320 page book is pretty difficult. I remember slamming my head down on the typeset pages while reviewing them, with joy and happiness of course.

Then off to the cover. We had discussed using interior art, or something that would let the reader know this was an illustrated novel, but everything felt too young or clunky. Finally, Ben shared this cover, and it was simply brilliant. The face looks hand-drawn, the yellow cover really popped, and unlike the typical circular face, it was a full bleed cover. He then had the idea of adding a paper texture to the background, to evoke the sense of a journal and of a sketchbook.

And then one night, he had a dreamed about a partial cover, a preprinted case, and an unrequited love with a vampire.

Well, actually, I don’t know how he came up with this, but I’d like to think it was really dramatic. Ben thought it would be neat to have a partial jacket with just the smile; the jacket would wrap around a preprinted case. When you remove the jacket, ta-da! Sad face underneath. It’s both surprising and a great way of playing up one of the central themes in the book. It’s also just cool. When he demonstrated this at our jacket meeting, people actually applauded. And Ben actually bowed.

Meanwhile, some incredible authors agreed to review HAPPYFACE and contribute blurbs—Scott Westerfeld, Adam Rex, Michael Buckley, and Hope Larson all said wonderful things (thank God). Their support for Steve’s YA debut was phenomenal. Shout-outs and fist bumps!

It’s still hard to believe that it’s actually a book. We were at Steve’s book launch party on Saturday at RJ Julia Booksellers, and it was amazing to see how two naïve but hopeful people could meet randomly at Comic-Con three years ago and have a book today.

 It’s a real live book! In real live stores! And it’s gotten starred reviews from PW and Kirkus! Real live reviews!

“Whimsical, thoughtful, boyishly sarcastic, off-the-cuff… achingly beautiful.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[An] engaging and absolutely heartfelt tale.”—Kirkus ( starred review)

So I feel like I have a lot to be happy about, from finding an immensely talented, easy going, and nicest-guy-on-Earth author, to having the best support system in the world named Alvina Ling. She encouraged me the entire way, gave me the best advice (“Stop whining”), and even schlepped up to Connecticut with me in the rain for the HAPPYFACE book launch. If that can’t put a grin on my face, I don’t know what can.

*****

Aww. Thanks, Connie! This book has been such an amazing journey, and I'm so thrilled it's being well-received. Seriously, you have to see this thing in person, it's a work of art.

And now, for a little bonus, here's a fun teaser trailer we filmed at an office Halloween party. Yes, that's Connie behind the mask, and yes, that's me singing (cringe). Enjoy!

What's With These Packaged Books?

From our guest blogger, SaraOC who works at a book packager:

"Packaged books" seem to stir up controversy whenever they are mentioned, especially fiction books. But as an editor and storyliner of packaged books, I can't help but try to show the sensible, steady and smart sides of the business. I came from a traditional editorial job into my current one, and absolutely brought prejudices about what kind of novels a book packager could make. Over the past two years, however, I have been constantly amazed at the talent and integrity of the people that I work with and the quality and variety (and fabulousness) of the books we publish.

As for how a book actually gets packaged, I can only say how my company does it. Book packaging is done differently by lots of different companies in the US and the UK, and I can't comment on how they do it. I should probably also say that all of this is my opinion and not necessarily that of my company.

How a Book Gets "Packaged" (more or less):

"The germ"
Sometimes the germ comes from the depths of one person's brain, and other times it comes out of a group brainstorm. We also have publishers approach us with germs of their own to develop. Germs can be anything from "something about dolphins" to a series title or even a fully fledged opening premise. Everyone at the company comes up with these ideas, and anyone can take it through the development process.

Sometimes I develop my own germs, and sometimes I develop other people's. We have an amazing creative director who has series ideas as easily as he breathes, and I love working up his germs. Usually, the germ gets written up into a one-page document for the next stage.

New project brainstorming
This is my favorite part of my job. We have a cozy conference room with a floor-to-ceiling library of all our books to keep us company as we discuss directions for the project to go, in general terms or plotting out the first storyline. There's a company policy that no meeting can last longer than an hour (hooray!), but occasionally we do get swept up in an idea and go on longer. What comes out of these meetings might look nothing like the original concept – which can be good but it can be frustrating. But it is such fun when someone blurts out something like, "What if he only has one arm?" and poof! A new character is born. (After further brainstorming, we realized that particular villainous character was only pretending to have one arm.)

All of our projects are built by the team, and we don't accept any outside submissions at all. The company keeps copyright on all the books and concepts because the ideas come from us.

Building a proposal
After one or several brainstorms for the new project, if the idea feels good and "looks like it's a go-er," the idea is developed into a proper proposal with the title of the series, the age range, a character list, a complete synopsis of the first book and short ideas for the continuation of the series. Our storylines are anywhere from 25% - 50% or more of the intended length of the book. The proposal will go through many drafts and edits until everyone involved on the series is happy that it's ready. This can take anywhere from a month or two to (ok I'll admit it) a year (and counting)!

Finding a writer
Once the proposal is ready, we start looking for a writer. We don't actually write the book in house, though occasionally an editor will audition for a series alongside other writers. We have a database to search through of writers who have contacted us. We look for writers who have interests that match the series we've developed and we also contact agents. Once we've got a list of writers to approach, we ask for a two or three chapter sample, to be based on the detailed storyline and brief we provide. For a new project we usually ask 5 – 8 writers for a sample. We don't pay a fee to writers for their samples, but we do give detailed editorial feedback which one sampler dubbed "a mini-writing workshop". We pay an advance and royalty to the writers once they are chosen. We work with unpublished writers looking to break into the industry as well as successful, established authors.

Finding a writer is my second favorite part of my job. It's truly amazing how each set of chapters are completely different and yet all based on the same storyline. Everyone has a unique approach and it's so exciting to read the samples and find the perfect voice for our new series. Once we've chosen the writer, we'll normally ask for one revision on the chapters and then edit it in house to complete the proposal.

Pitching the project
Once ready, the sample chapters along with the proposal document are pitched to various publishers by our fantastic managing director in the US and UK, in the hopes that we'll sell it. Not all of our series sell, but I'm proud to say that most do. Once we get a contract with a publisher, we contract the writer. Depending on how quickly publishers want to launch the series, we might sign up one writer for the whole series, or two or more in order to deliver on time. It's our job to make sure the voice of the series remains consistent.

Writing the manuscript
Usually, we ask the writer to take our synopsis and break it into a chapter breakdown. Then it's the typical first draft, feedback and second draft. Often, we only need two drafts, but sometimes with brand new series, we'll need a third draft (or more!). Then, we do an in house edit and send it off to the publisher for their comments/changes. Our aim is to deliver a ready-to-publish manuscript to the publisher. We don't have anything to do with the covers or the illustrations, though sometimes we're asked for a brief for the illustrators (hair color, clothing, etc.) It's so interesting to see how different art departments at different publishers handle the design. A confession: I do miss working with illustrators and artwork as I could in my old job, but it does make sense for us to be focused entirely on the text.

To be continued…
Our contracts with publishers are usually for more than one book, so that means that work on the different books in a series will overlap. We'll be writing up the synopsis for book 2 while book 1 is being written. Or we'll be reviewing proofs for book 3 while we're reading through the second draft of book 5. Of course, every editor is working on a number of projects (I'm currently working on 6 sold projects and 3 in development) so there's always something going on.

At the end of the process, we have high quality, exciting books that we hope make their way into the hands of young readers. So far, it seems, they do.

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Our guest blogger, SaraOC says, "I left my dream job in kids' publishing in New York City to follow my heart to London. Luckily, I landed the boy and another dream job. I'm currently reading Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life by the fabulous Wendy Mass and, in my spare time, I'm learning to carve a totem pole from a block of mahogany."