Monthly Archives: April 2013

Free Ebook To Celebrate Book Birthday!

Today is the official Book Birthday for “Why Kimba Saved The World”!!!! It is also the real 6th birthday for Kimba and Hiro, who we found in a box at only a day or so old and hand raised. To celebrate, I’m offering up free copies of the ebook to help spread the word about this new series: the Cats in the Mirror. “Kimba” is only book one, but “Vacation Hiro” is well underway and expected to be out in March of 2014.

You can download a free ebook copy today at this Goodreads.com link! If it’s not working for you, just email me at [email protected], and I’ll send you the file directly.

Happy Birthday, Hiro and Kimba!! Now it’s time for a game of string!

Kimba and Hiro playing their favorite baby game.

Kimba and Hiro playing their favorite baby game.

 

 

Babies!!

Babies!!

Author Interview With Meg

I was thrilled to do the following author interview with the Book Marketing Buzz Blog web site. Here’s the text of the interview with a link to the blog at the end.
Interview With Author Meg Welch Dendler
1.      What type of books do you write? Picture books, middle grade readers, and so far one more YA style book is in the works. “Why Kimba Saved The World” is my first published book, but there are two others on the way for 2014.
2.      What is your newest book about? “Why Kimba Saved The World” is about a pampered house cat who wishes she could be wilder and have more freedom, until she suddenly learns that she is really part of an alien race and has a whole huge destiny and big adventures expected of her. It’s exciting at first, but she has some life-changing choices to make about what is important and where her loyalties lie.
3.      What inspired you to write it? The main character is based on one of the cats in our house, Kimba. I had grown up with the idea that cats might just be aliens — my mom read lots of science fiction — so it wasn’t much of a stretch to wonder if that was true of Kimba too. That led me to wondering what would happen if the young Kimba of my imagination was put in that situation of finding out how big her life really could be. Later books in the series will focus on the different characters and how they deal with their own challenges in coming to terms with their alien heritage.
4.      What is the writing process like for you?  My head is all full of good ideas, and I usually have the story totally complete there, but it is very hard for me to put down a first draft. That’s not terribly uncommon, but it is very frustrating. Once I get most of the story on paper, I do better with the elaborating and editing process. That part is fun, but the first draft is like house cleaning — I know I have to do it and I’ll regret it if I don’t, but I come up with lots of ways to avoid it. Setting a release date for the sequel has kept me on task this time round. My office is in a room without windows in our basement, which can be kind of depressing when the weather is nice, but Kimba hangs out with me, and I have a huge collection of Disney mini-plush toys that watch and encourage me too.
5.      What did you do before you became an author?  I have been writing since I was a little girl, and I did freelance work for many years as an adult. I worked for over 10 years as a certified teacher and moved around over almost all of the grades when opportunities came up. Teaching was great fun, and I’m still in touch with many of my students, but writing is where my heart lies.
6.      How does it feel to be a published author? Magnificent. For many years it seemed out of reach because I just didn’t have the right connections or the time and money to go to lots of conferences and meet people. I’m so grateful that through the freelance work I have done over the years I did know the right people to serve as book guides and help walk me through the nitty-gritty of taking a manuscript and making it look professional and just as wonderful as every other big publishing house book on the shelves. Knowing that I have the control to keep doing that over and over without having to send out dozens of letter selling myself is amazing.
7.      Any advice for struggling writers? Write, and then write some more. If you have a book in your head, go for it! But also be sure to get input from people around you that you respect. Join a critique group. Go to conferences. Sometimes I get the best idea on how to tweak a story or “bling” it up some just by listening to others talk about their work. And pay an editor if you are self-publishing. Pay someone to help you make the best cover you can. You MUST have a good cover! If it doesn’t look professional in the end, it won’t matter how good your story is. Make it great!
8.      Where do you see book publishing heading?  Ebooks and self-publishing are clearly the future of book publishing. How to navigate through the influx of books that will hit the market that way is the tricky part. I’m grateful to be in on it during the first few years of the boom so that I can establish myself as a quality writer and stand out from the coming pack. There may be a ton of not so great books that manage to see publication in that way, but it is also a fantastic way for unknown writers to make their mark. I hope I can be in that second group for a long time to come.
To learn more about Meg and her book, “Why Kimba Saved The World” (Serenity Mountain Publishing), check out www.megdendler.com.

See the full article and other information at: Book Marketing Buzz Blog     

The Book Reviews Game

Now that “Why Kimba Saved The World” is settling into the business of getting noticed and sold, I am forced to enter into a whole new world of self-promotion. Normally, whatever publishing house bought your book would take care of all of this nonsense. It would tell you where to show up for a book signing or event and make all the calls and connections for you. Self-published authors have to pay for this service or do it themselves. Paying for promotional work is very pricey (and rightly so, it’s nasty, time-consuming work). Promoting and selling a self-published book can feel like one big game, and it sort of is. Knowing how to play is the key. Thank goodness I have a degree in Public Relations.

Back in the late 80’s when I completed that degree, the game was very different. It was more about working for big corporations and writing press releases to help promote or cover up something. By the time I was in my last year, I knew I didn’t really want to do that for a living. It was just a core group of classes that I really enjoyed. Lots of English, Journalism, Creative Writing, and Technical Writing. I never worked a day as a publicist (I went back to school to earn a teaching degree), and I never thought I would. Until now.

Most afternoons when I sit down at my computer to face the challenge of how to get my book noticed and appreciated, I hear Queen singing “Play The Game” in my head. It is a very elaborate game, so I’m grateful for the generous spirits along the way who share their advice freely. I have links to them in my blog roll already, but I should give a shout out to Katie Davis and Joanna Penn. Both of them offer lots of products and seminars and blogcasts you can purchase for in-depth information, but they are also free with the freebies. If you are in the same boat as me and need to know how to play this book promotion game on your own for as little cost as possible, start with these two women. They will give you enough fodder to stay busy for many months. I have never met either of them and have no vested interest in whether or not you purchase their products. I just highly recommend them.

My current game is to get book reviews. This is VITAL if you want to play the amazon.com rank and algorithm game. No one knows exactly how it all works, and they seem to be changing the game from month to month so you must stay up to date on what they like and don’t like, but the big #1 whammy to get better rankings is reviews. They don’t even have to be fantastic reviews. It seems to be very much about quantity and who those reviews are from. My first target was the top 1,000 ranked reviewers at amazon.com. Yes, it was a lengthy process, but I made sure that anyone I was in contact with was willing to review children’s books. In the end, out of 1,000 I made contact with 28 of them. Three responded and agreed to be sent a copy and do a review. I’m not sure if that is a great percentage or not. It does not feel like a home run, but it’s something.

Now on the agenda is getting in touch with bloggers who do book reviews. Again, I’ve taken a big list from a web site, narrowed it down to potentials, and now I am going through one site at a time. Sometimes it is immediately clear that the site would be a bad fit. Books on vampires or romance novels (or worse) filling the pages are a good hint. Out of the first 30, I’ve send requests to 7. One has responded enthusiastically and already has the epub file to review. Many times you just submit an author interview format which may or may not be posted. We shall see where that all leads. It’s not an amazon review, but it’s web traffic and may lead to more later.

It’s a game. It is not for the timid or the part-timer. Self-publishing allows for wonderful opportunities for so many people to get their books out into the world. Getting them into people’s hands is a different matter altogether. So I get up every day, write my 1,000 words on “Vacation Hiro,” and then I spend a few hours playing the game of finding an audience for my first soul book baby in a vast sea of children’s books. But this game is just the opposite of “War Games” — if you don’t play, you can’t win. So onward I go.

And here’s a fun Kimba picture because everyone loves cute cat pictures.

Kimba Napping With Mickey Mouse

Kimba Napping With Mickey Mouse

 

If you are just getting started with a children’s book promotion, I highly recommend “How To Promote Your Children’s Book,” by Katie Davis. I have not even made it through all of The Creative Penn’s free blogs and audios, but I’m sure her stuff is great too.

Writing (or Procrastinating?) the Sequel

For the month of April, all other writing work is being set aside so I can give my full attention to Book 2 in the Cats in the Mirror series, “Vacation Hiro.” This time Hiro takes the lead and gets mixed up with the alien cats in the mirror. Those rascals have found just the right way to play on her emotions and sway her to their side of things — at least for a while.

I must admit, for me personally as a writer, the first draft is the most painful and wrenching process. I have read over and over that many authors feel this way. Once I get that first draft done and start elaborating and adding on and editing, I am in heaven, but putting it all down for the first time is laborious. It doesn’t matter how detailed my notes are. I can know exactly where I want the next chapter to go, but I still have to set a timer when I sit down at the computer to make sure I stay on task for a set amount of time and get it done. An expert at this type of stalling might even say that taking the time to write this blog post is a perfect example of doing something else very important-seeming instead of writing another chapter. I am generally not a procrastinator,  except about the laundry, but I can get very busy doing all kinds of work other than the next chapter with very little problem at all.

But I promise to be diligent. My husband, Scott, will keep me on track. This is his baby’s book, after all. And I have a stack of notes for Book 3 that can only be tackled once I know exactly where Book 2 will end up. So I push onward. My hope is that next spring when I hit the festivals and art fairs in town I will have both Kimba and Hiro’s books to sell. That is the joy of self-publishing. Once you have the text ready to go, the rest of the process can be completed in a couple of months. No one can put that text together but me, so I’ll get back to it. You’ll never guess who is waiting in the mirror for Hiro in the next chapter. So excited!!

But wait. Is that the dryer I hear buzzing…?

Hiro is dreaming of a book about her on the computer.

Hiro is dreaming of a book about her on the computer.