Building Author Relationships Online

Was it just us, or did authors used to have an air of mystery about them? Maybe you saw them once at a book signing, but mostly they were just names on the covers of your favorite books. You felt a connection to them because of the words they wrote, but it didn't go far beyond that. Now things are different. With social media and the internet, authors, like everyone else, are searchable, followable, and accessible to everyone (not just those able to come to a signing). So what does that mean for readers?

I sent a tweet last winter that said my plan for the night was to curl up with some takeout food and a new book I had gotten. With Twitter, I usually expect my tweets to get lost in the chatter, but not long after, the author of said book tweeted me back to say it sounded like a perfect night. Did she have to do this? Not at all, and not every author does. But it certainly made me excited to read the book, and more willing to check out her other titles. And obviously, it made me want to talk more about her and her book to friends. And we can all agree that these things are important for an author. That's why it seems like more and more authors are taking the plunge and getting involved online.

Scarletta authors, and the authors of our imprints, get involved in different ways as well, and we do what we can to support whatever avenue they choose to take. Some of our authors run blogs and websites, which you can find by going to the authors section on the left side of this page, and some are on social networking sites*. We even feature our new authors on this blog so you can read about them before their books have even come out. (Have you read the interview we did we Betsy's Day at the Game author, Greg Bancroft? Or the guest blog written by The Mighty Quinn author, Robyn Parnell?)

We want readers to get to know our authors and be as excited as we are about their books. So we want to know, in this day and age of accessibility, how much to you like to connect with authors online? And what is your preferred outlet--reading a blog, chatting on Twitter, getting updates in your Facebook newsfeed, or maybe all of the above?

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Click here for Pendred Noyce's Facebook page for Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers and here for her Twitter profile

Click here for Anne Sawyer Aitch's Facebook fan page for Nalah and the Pink Tiger

Click here for Bob Macdonald's Twitter account

Click here for Pamela Cory's Facebook page

Let's Hear a Hip-hip-hooray for ALA!

We're so excited for ALA's annual conference in California this weekend--or at least we will be as soon as we finish the million and one things we need to do to prepare! This week is proving to be crazy as we finalize travel arrangements, make sure all our lovely books are shipped correctly, pack our posters and press releases, and try to figure out if there's time in the schedule to visit Disney. This last one seems doubtful with all the other cool stuff going on.
If you're also going to be in Anaheim for ALA, make sure you remember to visit us! We'll be part of the Publisher Group West booth (#2566) and we've got plenty of stuff going on make it worth your while.

The Role of Social Media in the Workplace

Sheyna Galyan of Yotzeret Publishing insists that "you have to approach social media as a tool, not a toy." That's the best way I've heard it described so far. I've worked at companies that are convinced Facebook is just a way to "pretend" to do work—so their solution is to block workers from accessing the site. And they followed suit when Twitter became popular! It made me want to pull my hair out! Yes, Facebook and Twitter hold thousands of distractions for workers, but that doesn't mean pretending they don't exist is the right way to go.

For authors AND publishers, social media sites are invaluable as free, easy ways to get word out about yourself. You can post events on Facebook, like book signings and radio interviews. You can share reviews, display your latest blog post, and interact with readers.

And with Twitter, it's even easier to connect with thousands of people who might never have known about you otherwise. All it takes are a few well-placed hashtags. You can keep it general, with #fiction, #booknews, and #litchat, or you can go after people who might be interested in specific aspects of your book, such as #fantasy, #legalthriller, #modernart, whatever seems relevant.

From a publisher's viewpoint, the thing we've had the hardest time convincing our authors on is the importance of blogs. Blogs can be a place where reader's learn more about an author's personal interests, or maybe the author takes them through the steps of how they're writing their next book. Maybe the blog is from the viewpoint of one of the main characters, or maybe it has nothing to do with the book and instead is a place where the author can share a love of photography or traveling. Whatever the content of a blog, it serves the purpose of keeping readers thinking about the author. Blogs are also a great place to ask for reader feedback.

You don't have to use every social media site you come across, start small. You're impact can still be great. Check out Scarletta authors that have jumped into the blogosphere. You can also find many of our authors on Facebook and Twitter!

The Inside Look by Lindsay G. Arthur, Jr.

A View from the Windowseat by Penny Noyce

The Pamela Cory Blog

The Leonard Borman Blog

What's the deal with Kindlegraph?

Evan Jacobs, the creator of Kindlegraph, is a big fan of book readings, but realized after he got his ebook reader that he had nothing for authors to sign. He could go hear a favorite author speak and have a great time, but he had nothing tangible to take away from the experience. So he created Kindlegraph: a program that lets authors send personalized inscriptions and signatures directly to the electronic reading devices of their fans. And the best part is this service is free.

To date, Kindlegraph has partnered with over 2,800 authors and offers users inscriptions for over 12,000 books. And it's really user-friendly. Simply sign up (you can even sign in with your twitter account) and start requesting personalized inscriptions and signatures from your favorite authors. Authors will receive an email the day you send your request and in no time, your e-book will be one-of-kind with a note from the author.

Jacobs doesn't want the interaction between authors and readers to stop there. He's working to make it possible for authors to be able to send out sample chapters from upcoming books to fans who have signed up as part of a paid subscription service.

Two Scarletta authors have already jumped on the bandwagon because they love the idea of having another way to connect with their readers.

Pamela Cory, author of Hassie Calhoun: A Las Vegas Novel of Innocence, can be reached here.

Pendred Noyce, author of Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers and this summer's Ice Castle, can be reached here.

Spend your holidays in style with Pamela Cory & Hassie Calhoun

Book Details TITLE   Hassie Calhoun: A Las Vegas Novel of Innocence AUTHOR Pamela Cory ISBN  978-0-9824584-7-1 eISBN 978-0-9824584-8-8 SPECS 368 pages, $15.95 For More Info Pamela Cory Scarletta Press Twitter NOTE: proof of purchases will be verified through sales tracking prior to sending music links.

It's not too late to... Buy Hassie Calhoun: A Las Vegas Novel of Innocence this holiday season and receive a free musical download! Snuggle up during the 2011 holiday months with a perfect cocktail of passion, hope, devastation, and nostalgia in Pamela Cory's Hassie Calhoun. And this season, you can wind down while listening to the book's feature song, I Just Can't Figure It Out, performed by author & songwriter, Pamela Cory. PROMOTION DETAILS 1.  Buy Hassie Calhoun from an independent bookstore, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or any wholesaler during November or December.  2.  Find your code (where'd you hear about the promotion?): Scarletta Blog -  HCspB Scarletta Twitter -  HCspT Pamela Cory Twitter -  HCpcT Scarletta Facebook -  HCspF Pamela Cory Facebook -  HCpcF 3.  Email desiree@scarlettapress.com with the following information: subject line: Hassie Promo email body: promo code, date of purchase, price paid, name of store & city where purchased, and reply-to email address  4.  Receive your free music download link via email within one to two weeks. 5. Enjoy your holidays! With her innocence and identity on the line, the road to stardom puts young and talented Hassie in several compromising situations. Pamela Cory offers a deceptively sophisticated look into the life of an ambitious young woman during the era of the Rat Pack, whose very passions impede her dreams in a way that many women could secretly relate to. In this coming of age novel, "...the imagery is vivid. The lights are bright, the music is romantic, and the people are larger than life. To Hassie, Las Vegas is full of possibility, hope, prosperity, excitement, and to the reader the dangers of all of this loom on every page." (The Nevada Review)

Have a Hassie Calhoun Holiday

Book Details TITLE   Hassie Calhoun: A Las Vegas Novel of Innocence AUTHOR Pamela Cory ISBN  978-0-9824584-7-1 eISBN 978-0-9824584-8-8 SPECS 368 pages, $15.95 For More Info Pamela Cory Scarletta Press Twitter NOTE: proof of purchases will be verified through sales tracking prior to sending music links.

If you haven't heard yet: Buy Hassie Calhoun: A Las Vegas Novel of Innocence this holiday season and receive a free musical download! Snuggle up during the 2011 holiday months with a perfect cocktail of passion, hope, devastation, and nostalgia in Pamela Cory's Hassie Calhoun. And this season, you can wind down while listening to the book's feature song, I Just Can't Figure It Out, performed by author & songwriter, Pamela Cory. PROMOTION DETAILS 1.  Buy Hassie Calhoun from an independent bookstore, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or any wholesaler during November or December.  2.  Find your code (where'd you hear about the promotion?): Scarletta Blog -  HCspB Scarletta Twitter -  HCspT Pamela Cory Twitter -  HCpcT Scarletta Facebook -  HCspF Pamela Cory Facebook -  HCpcF 3.  Email desiree@scarlettapress.com with the following information: subject line: Hassie Promo email body: promo code, date of purchase, price paid, name of store & city where purchased, and reply-to email address  4.  Receive your free music download link via email within one to two weeks. 5. Enjoy your holidays! With her innocence and identity on the line, the road to stardom puts young and talented Hassie in several compromising situations. Pamela Cory offers a deceptively sophisticated look into the life of an ambitious young woman during the era of the Rat Pack, whose very passions impede her dreams in a way that many women could secretly relate to. In this coming of age novel, "...the imagery is vivid. The lights are bright, the music is romantic, and the people are larger than life. To Hassie, Las Vegas is full of possibility, hope, prosperity, excitement, and to the reader the dangers of all of this loom on every page." (The Nevada Review)

Inside Pamela Cory's Head

Hassie Calhoun author Pamela Cory recently completed an interview on WhoHub as a way to reach out to fans interested in getting to know the author behind the book.

She opens up about her first reading experiences and how she began writing: "As a very young reader, I loved the Nancy Drew series. I also wrote my own stories to add to the series - of course, no one else saw these stories but this was my earliest writing."

She also talks about what is necessary to make a character believable: "Verisimilitude is the key to all believability. My characters actually live in my psyche and have their own identity, character flaws and personality quirks. I was once advised to assign a living being (i.e. actor/actress) to each character to enable him/her to be "real." I love it when I can not identify anyone who actually fits my mind's description. That also helps me work harder to bring that character alive for the reader."

To learn more about this great author, you can check out the rest of the interview here.

HOLIDAY PROMOTION: "HASSIE CALHOUN"

Book Details TITLE   Hassie Calhoun: A Las Vegas Novel of Innocence AUTHOR Pamela Cory ISBN  978-0-9824584-7-1 eISBN 978-0-9824584-8-8 SPECS 368 pages, $15.95 For More Info Pamela Cory Scarletta Press Twitter NOTE: proof of purchases will be verified through sales tracking prior to sending music links.

Buy Hassie Calhoun: A Las Vegas Novel of Innocence this holiday season and receive a free musical download! Snuggle up during the 2011 holiday months with a perfect cocktail of passion, hope, devastation, and nostalgia in Pamela Cory's Hassie Calhoun. And this season, you can wind down while listening to the book's feature song, I Just Can't Figure It Out, performed by author & songwriter, Pamela Cory. PROMOTION DETAILS 1.  Buy Hassie Calhoun from an independent bookstore, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or any wholesaler during November or December.  2.  Find your code (where'd you hear about the promotion?): Scarletta Blog -  HCspB Scarletta Twitter -  HCspT Pamela Cory Twitter -  HCpcT Scarletta Facebook -  HCspF Pamela Cory Facebook -  HCpcF 3.  Email desiree@scarlettapress.com with the following information: subject line: Hassie Promo email body: promo code, date of purchase, price paid, name of store & city where purchased, and reply-to email address  4.  Receive your free music download link via email within one to two weeks. 5. Enjoy your holidays! With her innocence and identity on the line, the road to stardom puts young and talented Hassie in several compromising situations. Pamela Cory offers a deceptively sophisticated look into the life of an ambitious young woman during the era of the Rat Pack, whose very passions impede her dreams in a way that many women could secretly relate to. In this coming of age novel, "...the imagery is vivid. The lights are bright, the music is romantic, and the people are larger than life. To Hassie, Las Vegas is full of possibility, hope, prosperity, excitement, and to the reader the dangers of all of this loom on every page." (The Nevada Review)

The Write Stuff

Love book giveaways? So do we! Which is why we enjoy Brittany Roshelle's blog The Write Stuff. Not only does she post book reviews and author interviews, she often has giveaways for books, ebooks, merch surrounding books, you name it! Her upcoming post will be an interview with HASSIE CALHOUN author, Pamela Cory. And you'll have a chance to win a copy of Pamela's book!
You can look for this interview on Halloween (Monday, October 31), and you'll be sure to get at least one treat for the day!

"Hassie Calhoun is the perfect protagonist"

Have you checked out the Nevada Review lately? Well you should. And not just because they wrote a lovely review about Hassie Calhoun (though we're quite excited about that!), but because through our relationship with them, we've come to find that they write incredibly thorough and thoughtful reviews. Here's what they had to say about Hassie Calhoun:

"Author Pamela Cory delivers the perfect cocktail of hope and devastation in her latest novel, Hassie Calhoun: A Las Vegas Novel of Innocence. With one hand, Cory offers her readers untarnished hopes of the young and uninitiated, and with the other she delivers the inescapable realities of the real world and the people who live there."

"In the back of the book, author Pamela Cory provides a list of questions for readers to ponder. The first on the list begins by asking, 'How badly do you want to slap Hassie?' Although this question may seem too dismissive for a character who ultimately lives a relatively complex and successful life chasing her dream of stardom, it does in fact get to the heart of Cory’s development of Hassie’s character. Like Vegas offering the duality of hopes and exploitation, Hassie’s character offers a frustrating duality of innocence and stubborn arrogance that leads to so many of her painful choices. Perhaps more important to the question, though, is that Cory develops this excellent character and story so well that the reader will indeed want to slap Hassie."

You can find the rest of the review at the Nevada Review's website. And look for it in print in the spring issue of the Nevada Review as well!

The 2011 National Indie Excellence Awards Announced!

ISBN 978-0-9824584-7-1

Scarletta Press is excited to announce the selection of Pamela Cory’s Hassie Calhoun: A Las Vegas Novel of Innocence as a finalist in the the 2011 National Indie Excellence Awards®!

Ellen Reid, President & CEO, announced the winners and finalists of the awards on May 15, 2011. In it’s fifth year running, the National Indie Excellence Awards are full of tough competition. The full list of Winners and Finalists can be found here. “Excellence is not easy to achieve and the book industry needs it more than ever…the NIEA salutes authors and publishers who make excellence a priority” says Reid (--http://www.indieexcellence.com/mediaroom.htm).

Hassie Calhoun: A Las Vegas Novel of Innocence has been selected as an Award-Winning Finalist in the New Fiction category of the awards. A novel that paints the Rat Pack era in a new light, this literary fiction introduces Hassie Calhoun, a lovely and talented singer trying to make it as an entertainer in 1960s Vegas. With her innocence and identity on the line, the road to stardom puts Hassie in several compromising situations. Her passions impede her dreams in a way that many women could secretly relate to.

NOTE: Pamela Cory will be appearing at BEA 2011 with Scarletta Press, booth 4633-A, and will tour the first half of June. See Pamela Cory's website for tour information by viewing the events page!

The 2011 International Book Awards Announced!

ISBN 978-0-9824584-7-1

ISBN 978-0-9830219-2-6

Scarletta Press is excited to announce the selection of Pamela Cory's Hassie Calhoun: A Las Vegas Novel of Innocence and Pendred (Penny) Noyce's Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers as finalists in the the 2011 International Book Awards (IBAs) hosted by JPX Media Group.

JPX Media Group announced the winners and finalists of the 2011 IBAs on May 11, 2011. Over 300 winners and finalists were announced in over 140 categories covering print and audio books. Awards were presented for titles published in 2009, 2010 and 2011. The full list of Winners and Finalists can be found here. "Jeffrey Keen, President and CEO of JPX Media Group, said this year’s contest yielded a large number of entries from authors and publishers around the world, which were then narrowed down to the final results." (—JPX Media Group)

Looking forward to Book Expo America

Now that it's early May, I can safely say that Scarletta employees are rushing around like chickens with their heads cut off just to make sure everything is perfect for BEA. We're setting up meetings, organizing signings and book orders, booking hotel stays, and printing so many sales/marketing materials that we might just drown in the piles of shiny press releases and bookmarks. But through all that, there are some details we'd like to share in this little blog post:

BEA 2011: May 24-26 at the Jacob K. Javitz Center in New York City

Scarletta Press Booth: #4633-A

In-booth Autographings: THURSDAY MAY 26
               Pamela Cory - Hassie Calhoun - 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM
               Leonard Borman - Our Jewish Robot Future - 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM

In honor of heading to BEA, dear Leonard has even made a little video inviting you to visit him:



Leonard Borman will be at BEA 2011 from Scarletta Press on Vimeo.

Hassie hits the news...

According to a Publisher's Weekly review, "Nostalgia takes it on the chin in Cory's over-dramatic but atmospherically pleasing debut, the beginning of a projected trilogy about Hassie Calhoun, a 17-year-old Texas rose who arrives in 1960s Las Vegas with a big dream of becoming the next Peggy Lee..."

Well we're pretty excited about this nice, short but sweet, review and you should be too! You should also be excited to read the novel when it hits shelves this June 1 because "Cory's alternately gritty and sudsy depiction of early '60s Sin City transports the reader back to a time when the Rat Pack ethos ruled..." You're gonna love it!

Read the rest of the review here.

This Just In: HASSIE CALHOUN

Hey readers! Who's excited about e-books? WE ARE! That's why we're offering the advanced reader's copy of Hassie Calhoun: A Las Vegas Novel of Innocence by Pamela Cory in a free electronic format.

If you're a reviewer, and are interested in a sexy, fiery novel that paints a portrait of an era, then contact me for more info.

Desiree Bussiere
Publicity Director
Scarletta Press
desiree@scarlettapress.com