Archive for the 'Business' Category

the signings of the apocalypsies

Posted by ecmyers on 04/03/2012 in Business, Radio, Reading, Uncategorized, Writing and Young Adult.

Jim Freund and me on Hour of the Wolf

Last week, I returned to my old home base, New York City, for the annual NYC Teen Author Festival. I had to miss the first few days of panels and readings, but I got in late Wednesday night so Jim Freund could interview me and Eddie Schneider on his weekly radio program, Hour of the Wolf (Thursday mornings from 1:30 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. on WBAI 99.5 FM). As usual, the time passed far too quickly! I read two short selections from Fair Coin on the air and we discussed YA fiction and publishing. You can listen to a recording of the broadcast online for the next week.

Making coffee out of lemons: Mark Schulman (SCRAWL), Jess Rothenberg (THE CATASTROPHIC HISTORY OF YOU AND ME), Arlaina Tibensky (AND THEN THINGS FALL APART), Léna Roy (EDGES), and me at Beans and Vines

Roughly seven hours later, I staggered to a library in Manhattan where I was scheduled to read to a high school class with four other authors. Unfortunately, the chain locking the doors suggested they weren’t expecting us. As my friend Matt London recounted on his blog, we adjourned to a nearby coffee shop to hang out instead, which worked out really well because a) I needed a lot of coffee after only 3 hours of sleep, and b) they are all really fun people and I happen to like talking with other writers.

Autographed copies face out on a table at B&N Tribeca. (Thanks, Kara!)

My agent, Eddie, and I then toured many Barnes & Noble bookstores throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn, so I could sign their stock of Fair Coin. It was my first time seeing my book in stores in person, and it was as thrilling as you’d expect. It was even more exciting to see it prominently displayed face out in the new Teen Fantasy & Adventure sections and on several tables. It was also fun to meet and chat with several store employees who clearly love books, including Elizabeth, Donna, Ashley, Taina, Meredith, and Kara. (Hi!) Once I signed the books, the store staff slapped nifty “Autographed” stickers on them, the better to entice people to pick them up. If you’re looking to grab a signed copy of your own from Barnes & Noble, last week they had them at 82nd & Broadway, 86th & Lexington, 46th Street and 5th Ave, Tribeca, Court Street in Brooklyn, and Park Slope.

If you would like to support independent booksellers, and I always think that’s worth doing, you can also snag a signed copy from Books of Wonder on 18 W. 18th Street, the preeminent children’s bookstore in Manhattan. I was there on Sunday with around 65 other YA authors (including a bunch of Apocalypsies!) for the mega signing. It was great to see many friends show up to have their copies of Fair Coin signed, and meet some readers and book bloggers. The swag I made for the book seemed to be a big hit, too. It was definitely a wish come true to see my book in the store, since I’ve been going to readings and signings there for years. My only “problem” with Books of Wonder is I can’t leave without purchasing some books, and indeed I left with a bag of cherished autographed books by other Apocalypsies. (Many thanks to David Levithan for coordinating the signing and working so hard on the rest of the Author Festival, and to Peter Glassman and everyone at Books of Wonder who were so welcoming to a bunch of new authors.)

Getting to meet and hang out with other members of the Apocalypsies was a big highlight of the trip, and we even had a small gathering at one of my favorite restaurants, Chat n’ Chew, before the signing, with Zoraida Córdova (THE VICIOUS DEEP), Gina Damico (CROAK), K.M. Walton (CRACKED), Emily M. Danforth (THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST), Elisa Ludwig (PRETTY CROOKED), and Lizzie K. Foley (REMARKABLE), and assorted significant others. Apocalypsies were also well represented on various panels throughout Teen Author Week–already reading and talking about their books like pros.

Last weekend, I also joined many people (including some of my writing group, Altered Fluid), to usher in Alaya Dawn Johnson’s 30th birthday and her fourth novel, WICKED CITY, at a genuine NYC speakeasy, The Back Room. If you see Alaya tonight, be sure to congratulate her on both milestones; she and I will be reading and signing our new books at the Soho Gallery for Digital Art (138 Sullivan Street) at 7 p.m. I hope you can make it!

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help out an author (and his cat)

Posted by ecmyers on 03/23/2012 in Business, Novels, PSA, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Writing and Young Adult.

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who has done something, anything, to spread the word about me and my debut YA novel, Fair Coin, in the last few weeks. I’ve been overwhelmed by all of your generosity and support. Whether you’ve interviewed me on your site, purchased the book, told your friends and family about it, tweeted, Facebooked, blogged, or reviewed it… It all helps, and I’m so grateful. As much as I’ve been talking about myself here and on social media lately, it doesn’t come naturally. In fact, it makes me a bit uncomfortable, so it’s much easier when other people talk about me instead. And I hope I’ll be able to return this blog to its usual eclectic programming soon!

Some friends have kindly asked what else they can do, such as whether buying it from a particular place is better for me than another. The answer is: Yes, probably. But honestly, I’ve been working on Fair Coin for years and I’m just happy I can finally share my first novel with friends and strangers alike–after all, I wrote it to be read by more than just my family and critique group. As long as you aren’t downloading it illegally or stealing copies, I’m thrilled that you invested hours, days, or weeks to reading it. Hopefully you also enjoy it. I’m even happier if you get the book into the hands of actual teenagers; I hear kids like YA books even more than adults do.

I’ve been learning plenty about book promotion in the last year, and I have discovered some interesting and unexpected things that could influence a book’s sales and long-term success. I will share them with you in case you are inspired to help me become a bestselling young adult author, the better to give my doofy cat the life of luxury she deserves. No pressure. These suggestions can also benefit other authors and books you like, so please consider this a general public service announcement.

Continue reading ‘help out an author (and his cat)’

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release the kraken book!

Posted by ecmyers on 03/06/2012 in Business, Novels, PSA, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Writing and Young Adult.

It’s here! It’s here! Happy birthday, Fair Coin! Now you’re on your own. Don’t disappoint me.

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counting down to publication day

Posted by ecmyers on 03/01/2012 in Books, Business, Novels, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Writing and Young Adult.

Pardon the radio silence around here lately. The quirks of publishing schedules often means that while you’re promoting your first book, you’re also working under a deadline on the second one. Lots of great things have been going on with Fair Coin in the last few weeks, but I had to shift gears and focus on revising Quantum Coin. (More on that later.) Fittingly, I turned in the manuscript to my editor on Leap Day–on schedule–and now I can start catching up on everything I’ve had to shove aside in the meantime. So much to do.

The biggest news is that even though the print and electronic publication date for Fair Coin is March 6th (less than a week!), some lucky folks have already received their pre-orders and you can even find it in some Barnes & Nobles stores right now. Thank you to everyone who has already picked it up and said kind words about it or sent me pictures of themselves with my book. This is already such an incredible experience for me, the best of my writing career so far. Reviews are starting to roll in, and so far I couldn’t be happier with the response. I’ll share some of those reviews and interviews here in the next few days and weeks, but if you’re curious, please drop in on the book’s Facebook page for the latest updates, and take a moment to like it: http://www.facebook.com/flipthecoin

To make publication day even more of an event, I’m hosting another giveaway on Goodreads as a kind of countdown to March 6. The prize for two randomly selected winners is a signed hardcover of Fair Coin. Click on over and enter. Tell your friends and enemies!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Fair Coin by E.C. Myers

Fair Coin

by E.C. Myers

Giveaway ends March 06, 2012.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

And in case you’ve missed it, here’s the book trailer what I made for Fair Coin. I had a lot of fun putting it together, and it came out almost exactly the way I had imagined. (Even if it took more work than I’d imagined.) I’m not sure how effective book trailers are, even though I have a little side business editing them, but I think they work best when they tease the book without showing readers too much. What do you think of this one or book trailers in general? Do they influence your decision to check out a book at all?

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book jackets, milestones, and millstones

Posted by ecmyers on 01/12/2012 in Books, Business, Novels, Writing and Young Adult.

I guess I haven’t seen many authors blog about their book jackets, but this feels like another milestone to publication that I’d like to share—plus I’m just so pleased that Fair Coin is more than a pretty face and my first novel won’t be naked out in the world. (If you buy the book and strip it down to the bare hardcover in the privacy of your own home, that’s your business.) Let’s consider this a bonus cover reveal:

The beautiful cover art is of course still by the amazing Sam Weber, the fabulous jacket design is by Jacqueline Cooke, and the author photo is courtesy of Monika Webb. (OK, it’s a little weird to have my picture on a book, but at least it isn’t on the back cover!) The copy is probably too small to make out on the back and flaps, but you can read it all here.

I suppose the next big milestone for me is holding the final book, when I will likely find out if this book jacket is waterproof. That’s what it’s for, right?

Another recent milestone was the ARC (Advanced Reading Copy). I know some people have received galleys and review copies already; I’ve seen pictures of them online and they look real pretty and distinctly, wonderfully book-like. Some people are even reading the actual words on the pages inside those covers right now, which doesn’t make me nervous in the slightest.

These are some of the many steps that foreshadow a book appearing on store shelves. There are lots of others, all the way back to the beginning. After the writing, there’s the revising. And the revising and the revising and the revising. Then there’s the agent querying process, and going on submission, and oh yeah, some more revising. There’s also a lot of waiting. And waiting and waiting and waiting…

But in the months leading up to publication, in many cases following years of writing and waiting and worrying–things finally start to happen, weirdly all at once: each moment a small but tangible proof that your book is real, a cherished marker of progress toward realizing a dream. You get to see cover sketches, cover art, cover copy. Last month, one of the big milestones I was looking forward to came around: copyedits.

Yeah, I was actually happy to receive them. How foolish! But I still remember watching my writer friends toil over their copyedited pages and wanting to be at that stage of publication too. I was a little disappointed that the copyedits were electronic with tracked changes; though I’m happy to save a tree, I felt deprived of the ritual of working through a stack of paper with a pencil, approving changes and stetting as authors have done for years. One thing hadn’t changed though: the requisite short turnaround time. As I dropped everything else to read through the exhaustive notes, I was struck by two thoughts:

1) How can there still be mistakes in this manuscript?! I and several others had read and edited the book many times, and yet my attentive copy editor, Gabrielle Harbowy, discovered some embarrassing continuity errors and a host of other minor problems.  I am extremely grateful for all her excellent catches, which have helped make the book as good as it can possibly be.

2) This is the last time I will read this before it’s published. This was kind of a relief, to be honest. I love my book, but as I just mentioned, I’ve read it so many times. It’s time for someone else to have a chance at it, eh? If a novel is like your child, eventually you want it out of the house, off to college or wherever, seeking its destiny without you.

I soon discovered that I was completely wrong about #2, because there was one more milestone ahead: page proofs. Proofreader Julia DeGraf was our last line of defense, making sure that Fair Coin really is as perfect as these things ever get. Don’t underestimate the value of a good copy editor and proofreader! Because the author, editor, and agent have probably read the book repeatedly in various incarnations, we’re no longer able to see all the tiny little flaws as well as a trained, fresh set of eyes can.

This time, I’m pretty sure, I won’t have to read this particular novel ever again if I don’t want to, except for snippets here and there at readings and stuff. And I think that, too, is a milestone worth celebrating.

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