Grange Day

George Cates and his sister Effie had a milking herd in East Vassalboro, Maine for many years. He was very active in the local Grange. Grange is a movement from the mid 1800s to promote animal and food husbandry and to promote the concerns of farmers. There are Grange Halls throughout rural America

Grange Day is usually in April, but in Maine there is often snow on the ground, so ours is on July 4th. Killing two birds and all that.

George would save the cream from a week’s milking for Grange Day. He would fire-up his “One Lunger,” (his make and break engine), add rock salt and make ice cream. We called this an ice cream social.

When I was told I would need to learn about social media to help market my books, I thought I understood. There are ice cream socials, bean suppers and spaghetti dinners. Social media, easy. Not quite.

So, I learned that building a social media following included telling people what you had for breakfast, include a picture of your cat and then mention that you need to sell some books.

Well what I have for breakfast depends entirely on Helen and her view of me and the world that morning. No one would want a photo of my one-eyed three-legged cat, Smirnov. He would draw blood before you could press the shutter. Yes, I would like to sell some books, but I can probably sell a few in July on Grange Day.

Editing

Twenty-twenty hindsight might be overrated. My publisher accepted the first book The Adventures of Eva and Buckskin Charlie, titled Eva’s Secret Name. They then suggested that I do some clean-up with their editor.

It reminded me of my grandmother making sausage.

My editor took my book (think table scraps) and gleefully pushed it through her meat grinder (called the Chicago Style Manual) and made sausage. Everything she did was right and what she suggested made the book better. It was my ego that suffered.

Helen, my love and my girlfriend, found an ally in this process. There were skirmishes between The Chicago and the Strunk and White Manuals of Style way above my pay grade. Hindsight, we just finished editing Book 2, Eva’s New Older Brother and I am told that I did not learn a thing from the previous editing experience. I’m not going to let them edit this blog. Can you tell?

Book 2, Eva’s New Older Brother, should be out this summer.

My First Children’s Book Fair

I had some spare time, so I stopped in an antique mall in Nashville. I rarely find anything in these malls to buy and hope to make a profit. This was a large, abandoned big-box store building with a small basement.

I still do not know how to market my books, so I went to a children’s book fair in Charlotte, NC. Eva’s Secret Name is written for kids about 9 to 14 years, loosely called mid-grade. The fair had picture book authors for little kids. These authors made demonstrations of how to draw silly characters and string together a story. The six mid-grade authors had their works displayed on tables for sale with a check-out register. But no mid-grade authors showed up in person. And I learned why.

There were lots of activities for the kids: face painting, craft projects, dance demonstrations, and screaming matches. But no mid-grade authors present.

Why? How do they sell their books? I got an answer. I found a mid-grade author traveling incognito. “How do you launch a new book?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “My publisher has experts that do that for me.”

The big-six publishing houses do their marketing for them! They have distribution contracts with (the few remaining) independent bookstores, libraries and big-box bookstores, all done by professionals working social media. My job, I think, is to help my publisher,  Best Publishing Co. make it to the Big Seven.