Guerilla Marketing

So, I was at the ALA Annual conference in Washington D.C. at the end of June and I was so excited to see all the friends and colleagues that I only get to visit with at conference that I often had to be reminded by said friends to umm, well, plug my book. I mean, I'm walking around dazed at all the cool authors, pimped-out publishing booths and cool electronic gizmos as much as anybody else. When standing in line with sweaty palms to get a book that I just loved signed by an author that I just worship, I'm supposed to remember to say, oh yeah, by the way, check out my book and website that bear the same name? Please, I'm going to lucky to be able to squeak out "Thank you!"

I keep forgetting that in this world of guerilla marketing, YouTube, and message t-shirts that I'm supposed to be getting everyone to LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT WHAT I WROTE! all the time.

I suppose that's not really a fair statement. After all, that is what conference is for--to make professional connections, to look at new products, to, in a word, schmooze.

I've just never been good at that sort of thing. But let's be clear--this very blog is a promotional tool for my book--to get the word out, to entice you, the librarians, the teacher, the reader, to want to read it. It's just a lot easier to do this out here, in cyberspace, than face to face! So, if all two readers of this blog out there DO decide to read my book, please let me know. And while you're thinking about it, as the last Harry Potter book looms large, why don't you take a look at the intro to my teen fantasy chapter: Graduating Hogwarts.

Chapter Ten: Graduating Hogwarts: Post-Harry Potter fantasy for Teens

Introduction

For the foreseeable future, most fantasy novels aimed at teens will fall into two categories: BHP (Before Harry Potter) or AHP (After Harry Potter). Ever since the boy wizard captured the imaginations of young readers all over the world, a deluge of hopeful pubescent voices have been pleading with YA librarians to fork over anything they have to see them through the dry spell to the next installment. Fortunately, this is not a difficult request to fulfill, as publishers, wild about Harry and the sheer amount of money his name has generated for the Scholastic empire, are responding by printing loads of Potter-esque fantasy, some of it better than others, but all of it in multiple volumes, series, or trilogies. This is wonderful for teens, but not so great for librarians. First of all, we’re the ones who have to wade through all these five to eight hundred page fantasy opuses to decide which ones are worthy of including in our collections and recommending to readers. Plus, by the time we get to the last book in a trilogy, we’ve completely forgotten the complicated plot of the first one. Lucky for you, dear reader, you own Reading Rants! The book! which contains the plot summaries for first volumes of several highly praised and very long fantasy multi-volume works, including Abarat, The Amulet of Samarkand, A Great and Terrible Beauty, and The Wee Free Men, among others. Now you will be able to quickly avail yourself of the pertinent plot points of Bartimaeus’s first adventures when quizzed by a discerning teen fantasy reader who wants to know how the dijini has evolved since his initial escapades. The following books are excellent recommendations for teens who have graduated Hogwarts and are looking for something similar or are wishing to dive further into the fantasy genre. Once they tear through these titles, you’re on your own. But don’t worry, if you wait long enough another sequel is bound to come along!