Best Books for Babies! (or at least for mine)

So, things are finally starting to calm down and I'll be able to start blogging again soon! Yay! I've missed connecting with all of you.

While I get things in order, I thought I'd share this guest post I did for the "What to Expect When You are Expecting" website, ( yes, it a website for the book all expecting moms know!).  I wrote about Rain Dragon's five favorite baby books!  After all the baby book testing we've done, I thought I should share!

Recent painting

... of this sketch.

S&S TITLES NOT SHELVED AT B&N

I wrote this on my other blog but I thought I'd post it here too. It's something that I think is important to discuss:

Sorry for the silence. I've been traveling quite a bit. But back to business. I've seen some great books that I'd like to share but first I want to briefly talk about the situation with B&N and S&S. This really bothers me. B&N is asking that S&S pay more money to display its titles and it wants a higher discount for S&S books. S&S doesn't want to give in to BN's demands... so... BN has limited its stock on S&S titles in its stores. This, to me, seems like a monopoly. BN doesn't have any competitors any more (not brick and motor stores anyway) and now has decided to make these demands because it can get away with it. Why not? Borders isn't around any more to say, hey: we'll take your books for the standard deal.

I read an article that pitied BN, saying that Amazon was a big competitor so now BN needs to get its money in other ways. I have a different perspective and this is coming from experience. Trust me. BN is making TOO MANY MISTAKES and this is its own fault. Because BN is making these mistakes, publishers shouldn't be punished.

1) Amazon has a far superior search engine. Books are easy to look up. You can misspell things and still find what you're looking for. Go to BN and try to look up something when you get the title slight wrong or you misspell the author's name wrong. Ooops! Nothing comes up. This has been like this for years! BN has had PLENTY of time to hire the right people to fix this. They haven't. Mistake number one.

2) Trying to compete with the likes of Apple. Apple has been around for a good long time and makes amazing products. It's unclear to me as to why BN thought it could come along and produce a product in a few years and think it could compete with that. Loss of market share there.

3) BN has no competitors and sells books yet it instead has decided to focus on toys, soap, dumb gift items, and so on. The one thing BN has that Amazon and other online retailers do not have is BOOKSELLERS. People who are there to recommend great new titles and HANDSELL. But instead of advertising that key element... instead of making sure that the good and knowledgable stick around, they treat the employees like inconsequential elements: people who are there to stock shelves and pick books up off the floor. BN could be a force to recon with if they got the right employees and advertised as such. Heck, they even HAVE some but don't care to use them properly. Example: having a trained opera singer working with the literature books even though she asked to be put with the music. Having a school teacher working with travel books. Huh? The stores aren't run right. It's sad. It could be game over faster than it has to be.

I'm siding with S&S on this one. Sorry BN.

The flip side of getting published

   





A few months ago, I got a ms. of mine back from its publisher -- NOT Little, Brown. The publisher had:

• rewritten most of the book

• added two pages of text that contradicted the main message

• completely changed the ending

• changed the title

-- and all without asking the author, me.  By the time I saw the edits, the book was in pages, with all the art in place. This wasn't a work-for-hire project; it was a contracted book.


I wrote a couple of emails to the publisher, requesting changes as politely and firmly as I could; the first was ignored. They replied to the second saying they had, in an editor's words "gone as far as we can" (which wasn't very far: they changed a few words). At that point, I let it go.

EVERY author, I think, has high hopes for every book -- but sometimes, you have to just move on. Thanks partly to the wise advice of friends,  I did. I put it out of my mind and went back to the novel I'm now rewriting.

Luckily, my agent will be the one submitting this, not me.

a little busy

You might have noticed that I haven't posted  at this blog lately.  Well, not only is my school visit schedule in full swing (I promise posts about my trips to MS and MD), I've sold the apartment(as long as nothing falls through, knock on wood)! The real estate market has definitely bounced back, it was a little crazy how quickly and how much interest there was. I'm happy the apartment has sold  but I wasn't prepared for it to go quite so fast...and now the schedule is even crazier!  I promise to return once things calm down a bit...

"That was rather a stupid thing to do, wasn't it?"

I am in Scotland, and thought that this year, the logistics -- even my heavy luggage would be easier because I would know how to do things. I had the port of Oban all planned:

-go straight from the train to the luggage lockers (they still have those here)
-walk to hotel
- fun etc.
-next morning take only and early ferry to island

I put my luggage in the locker, closed the door, paid- - and THEN noticed a sign saying that the train station didn't open until 10.45 a.m. on Sunday, two hours after my ferry's departure. I asked at the ticket window about workarounds, refunds -- none. So I decided to take everything to the hotel with me, in a taxi.

I scratched off the black strip on the  locker ticket which, I assumed, would reveal the code that  opened the locker. It didn't. So I went back to the window. The man behind it was outraged.

"If you had read the instructions which are posted in large letters....[much longer than I am putting it] you would have seen that you don't scratch off the bar as though you're holding a national lottery ticket. You open the ticket -- the code is on the blue side underneath. [Note: Nowhere on the ticket does it say this, only on the sign on the wall, towards the end of many steps].....But you just scratched it off and destroyed the code.

That was rather a  stupid thing to do, wasn't it?"

I always react badly to this kind of thing, wherever I am; but in the UK, it instantly makes me revert to being an 8 year old -- though at my boarding school, the phrase was usually more like:

"That wasn't very sensible, was it?"

I felt my face grow hot, knew I was blushing, muttered something-- and STILL he kept lecturing me! He eventually got someone to open the locker (he said he couldn't possibly do it himself as he had to sell tickets --not that anyone was waiting to buy any).

Finally I got into the taxi, flustered - and told the driver all about it. He was friends with someone on my island destination, instantly took my side, apologized for his countryman, and said various soothing things. I said my country men were often rude, too, and apologized for them. Americans are rude, often; I just don't expect the British to be -- and usually, they aren't. I guess it's good for me to realize that they aren't perfect: I (like many who love English and Scottish novels?) do tend to idealize things here. So often, being here IS like living in a favorite novel; though come to think of it, they always include characters like Lady Catherine and Mrs.Ferrars and Mr.Elton.

Success

Yesterday I was feeling down, having just received the news that one of my books (one that I love) is going out of print. It is somewhat inevitable these days; if you publish long enough it will happen to you at some point.

But no matter how much you expect it or how many times you've been through it, it never ceases to feel like a punch in the stomach. Then I came across this chart by Demetri Martin:



And it made me feel a bit better. You never know what great things lay around the corner or how they will lead to the next place you go. Onward we march.

(Some inspiring stories here, via A CUP OF JO)