Monster Needs to Stay Awake for His Book Trailer!

As technology and media continue to change, so does our ability to utilize our creative outlets in fun and interesting ways. One of the coolest trends to jump out of the publishing industry over the last few years has been the book trailer. Feature films shouldn't have all the fun, right?

At first, the concept seemed like kind of a snooze to me. A trailer? For a book? Sounds pretty boring. I mean, books don't move, they don't dance, they don't sing--well, most books anyway. What could possibly be entertaining about a short preview for a book?

Well, as it turns out, there are a quite a few benefits to promoting books in this way. First, it's a different platform to garner support and exposure for your book. Not everyone in the world wants to sift through Amazon reviews or wade through pages and pages of new releases looking for the hottest picture books. It's far more enjoyable to get a hands on look at some art, some passages, and some reviews all contained within a two minute glance. Second, videos are far more dynamic than an image. You can garner so much more information with interactive text and artwork than with a cover photo. Even with the "look inside the book" feature on popular book vendor websites, there something much more deliberate about the specific art highlighted in book trailers.

The biggest reason to use a book trailer? It's FUN! You get music and movement, excitement and entertainment. The opportunity to captivate a new audience with your product is one any author and publishing press should look forward to. After all, that's sort of the name of the game, isn't it? Getting your book in to more hands?

We'd hardly complain!

So, of course, the point of this small discussion is that we have a new book trailer! Hooray! Take a look below and tell us what you think!

We promise: it's worth staying awake for.

Monster Needs a Trophy Case

Every mom will fall in love with this monster, or so the shiny new gold stickers from Mom's Choice said when they arrived in the mail! The Monster & Me™ publishing team couldn't be more excited for this very deserving book. We're betting the many Monster & Me™ books created by dynamic picture book duo Paul Czajak and Wendy Grieb will be grabbing tons of attention, and tons of awards at that. We'll get started on that DIY trophy case after the holidays! ;)

The lovely librarians and educators that attend ALA Midwinter in January will be able to see the adorable cover of Monster Needs a Costume proudly displayed with an award seal in the Publisher's Group West booth. You're a librarian and can't wait until then? No worries! Contact us at info@scarlettapress.com, tell us you're a librarian and want to get the book with an award seal on it, and we'll give you a special librarian discount.



So how can you help us celebrate? 

• Think about purchasing a copy direct from our website. We’ll even throw in a discount of $2 off the book! Just type in coupon code mcgold13 at checkout. Offer good through January 31. 
• Order before December 31st and you can use the 20% off holiday promotion code too! Check out all our books to give as fun gifts this holiday season!
• Display and sell the book in your store! (Trust us, it's a fantastic book for children, parents, teachers, librarians, and any picture book lover.) 
• Spread the word and show some love to our author & illustrator on Twitter: @PCzajak & @Boodlewink got a #MomsChoice!
• Read the book and love it? Tell us about it by writing a customer review on either Goodreads, Amazon, or BN.com! 
• Leave a congratulatory comment on Monster & Me™'s Facebook fan page, and like it too! 
• By liking, you'll be able to stay on top of when new books in the series come out, how to take part in awesomely monstrous contests, and of course where to go for upcoming events or book sales!

Check out our other Mom's Choice Gold winners: Lost in Lexicon, The Ice Castle, and Betsy's Day at the Game.

How Characters Are Created - From Idea to Full Illustration

Most children's book editors will tell you that when they read a manuscript for the first time, they are always thinking about the potential illustrations. Which lines will go in the spread? What action will be illustrated? How can the illustrations and the text work together? What will the characters look like? What style of illustrations do we want?

All of these questions, and more, run through our minds when we are working on a new picture book, but the last two are especially important early on. Many people might not realize that characters can go through many phases before they become what ultimately ends up in the book. And that is exactly what happened with one of our new picture books, Monster Needs a Costume by Paul Czajak, which will be the first in a new series called Monster + Me and is being published this fall by Scarletta Kids. It's an adorable rhyming story about a monster who keeps changing his mind about what to dress up as for Halloween. Ultimately he learns that a little creativity and boldness makes for the best costume of the night. Obviously, that fun and creativity needed to come across in the illustrations as well, and over the last month, we have been working with our wonderful illustrator, Wendy Grieb, to come up with the perfect look for Monster and the little boy who takes care of him.

We can't talk enough about how great of an illustrator Wendy is. Right away she had a ton of ideas for Monster, and sent us countless sketches. Here are a few of them:

We always knew from the text that Monster is big. He has an innocence about him, but he's definitely huge and has a significant presence in the room. So the one highlighted above seemed closest to what we were after: burly and big, but friendly. Working off of that description, we got to these (aren't they cute?):