DAVID FULK GUEST POST AND RAISING RUFUS GIVEAWAY

Happy Monday Everyone! Hope you're having a great summer.

I have a few winners to announce.

The winner of the I Just Couldn't Put It Down Giveaway Hop is Soudha Parsan who picked the Amazon Giftcard!

The winner of THE LEVELLER is Eileen!

The winner of WITCH HUNTER is Book Attict!

Congrats! E-mail me your address so I can have your book sent to you. Please e-mail me by the end of Wednesday or I'll have to pick another winner.

Today I'm excited to have debut author David Fulk here to share about his MG adventure Raising Rufus that I bet will appeal to lots of kids.

Here's a blurb from Goodreads:

Readers of The Enormous Egg will dive right into this adventurous story about what happens when an average eleven-year-old boy becomes the parent of a giant T-rex!

In the unremarkable town of Menominee Springs, Wisconsin, lives a twelve-year-old explorer named Martin, who one day stumbles across something remarkable.

It’s an egg. But not just any egg—a dinosaur egg. And a week later, Martin becomes the proud parent of . . . a Tyrannosaurus rex!

As the summer unfolds, Martin finds it harder and harder to keep Rufus hidden from rest of the world.

And then it gets ugly.

Can Martin save Rufus from his parents, his neighbors, and most importantly, the owner of the town carnival? With the help of his best friend, Audrey, and his science teacher, Mr. Ekhart, Martin must uncover his inner hero and find Rufus a home, even if it means losing the one thing he’s come to really care about.


Now here's David!

The Many Mysteries of Middle-Grade Marketing

You sold your first middle-grade novel! Congratulations—you’re “in the club.” How can you resist imagining what comes next—publisher-paid book tour, signings with long lines of adoring fans, NYT bestseller list, awards up the yingyang, lucrative speaking gigs, best tables at chichi restaurants, hobnobbing with J.K. and Neil and Kate.

It’s fun to fantasize, of course, but in the back of your head you know the reality: That’s not going to be your trajectory. A gazillion books just like yours come out every year, and even though your publisher is doing all they can behind the scenes, more than ever it’s up to you, the author, to find ways to make your “baby” stand out. So, congratulations again: You’re a book marketer!

Volumes have been written on how to sell your children’s book. Bookstore events. Social media. SCBWI. School visits. Library events. Book trailer. Mass mailings. Giveaways. Blog tours. Book fairs and festivals. ALA, BEA, AWP, NCTE (OMG!). I can’t even begin to list all the possibilities here (though Alison DeCamp comes pretty darn close with her excellent earlier LR post).

All well, all good. But here’s the problem: There’s only one of you. Unless you’re married to a

professional publicist, don’t believe in sleep or having a personal life, or have the multitasking capabilities of a supercomputer—and don’t get me started on the perils of having the dreaded Day Job—odds are you’re going to have to pick and choose your marketing strategies. But which ones work best?

If only there were some master database somewhere that could tell you exactly which of your efforts led to exactly how many book sales, the answer might be a whole lot clearer. Even resources like WorldCat (library sales) and Bookscan (retail sales) don’t give you much in the way of cause-and-effect. For example, I did a mass postcard mailing to public libraries in Massachusetts, where I live, and Wisconsin, where my book is set, and there seemed to be slightly more library sales of my book in those regions than in some (but not all) others. So, was the time and expense I put into the mailing worth it? Hard to say.

I also did a big mailing to natural history museum and dinosaur park gift shops, in keeping with the dinosaur theme of Raising Rufus. Sounds like a pretty good idea on paper, but how would I know the result without visiting, or at least calling, all those shops? Sorry, not doing that. Besides the added time suck, it just seems so . . . well, unseemly.

I did an informal canvass of my fellow Fearless Fifteener middle-grade authors to find out what they were doing to market their books and what they felt was working. One said it was helpful to be well reviewed by book bloggers. One said to make sure your book is submitted to as many awards and list committees as possible, because even if you don’t win, you get read by some important people. One stressed the importance of networking with booksellers, teachers, and librarians. One said it’s good to try to get on panels at conferences. And another mentioned school visits, book festivals, SCBWI events, postcard mailings, and friends and family. Great ideas all, but in almost every case they qualified their responses with something along the lines of “Then again, it’s hard to know for sure how much of a sales boost I really got from that.”

Which seems to bring us back to Question Zero: Who’s got the time for all that? Just tell us what works!
 
A writer friend with several MG books under her belt told me that she has done next to nothing in the way of marketing, and her books do just fine—while some other writers she knows are tireless marketers, but have struggled to move their books. And another multi-book friend says that your best bet is to have a high-buzz book—which is generally decided by the publishing potentates before your book even comes out. But if that’s not you, well, you’re pretty much on your own, and good luck.

So does that mean the whole thing is really out of our hands? Wow, maybe. It’s an oddly comforting thought, in a way, since if that’s the case there’s no need to feel guilty or frustrated that we aren’t doing more to push our book. But it’s a scary one too, unless you’re impervious to existential angst (and what writer can make that claim?).


In trying to make sense of it all, I’ve found that all roads lead to the same conclusion. Though I’m far from the first to say it, and it’s a piece of conventional wisdom that borders on cliché, the truth of it seems to me to be unavoidable: The best thing you can do to sell your book is to write another one. And after that, another one. And write the best books you possibly can, because you’re likely to find that your later books help sell your earlier ones, and vice-versa, in one big virtuous circle. Congratulations: You didn’t just write a book; you have a career. You are—yes, I’m going to use the dreaded word—a brand.
 
Not surprisingly, I couldn’t find anyone who disagrees with that one. So I believe I’ll just go with it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go take my own advice.
You can find David at: 

Web: www.davidfulk.com

Twitter: @davidfulkwrites

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/davefulkthewriter

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/361905.David_Fulk

David generously offered a copy of RAISING RUFUS for a giveaway.  To enter, you need to do is be a follower (just click the follow button if you’re not a follower) and leave a comment through August 8th. I'll announce the winner on August 10th. If your e-mail is not on your Google Profile, you must leave it in the comments to enter either contest.
If you mention this contest on Twitter, Facebook, or your blog, mention this in the comments and I'll give you an extra entry. This is for U.S. and Canada.

Marvelous Middle Grade Monday was started by Shannon Messenger. Find all the participating Middle Grade Monday bloggers on her blog.

Here's what's coming up:

On Friday I'm participating in the Beach Reads in August Giveaway Hop. I'll have lots of great books to choose from.

Then I'm off until September 2nd when I have a guest post by debut author Ronald Smith and a giveaway of his MG Southern Gothic HOODO. I just didn't see any great books to spotlight in August and it tends to be a quiet month. I will be stopping by your blogs though. I just won't be posting.

Hope to see you on Friday!