Lots of catch-up junk to discuss. Sorry.

Blogger of the Tour

Bloggers eligible for the Blogger of the Tour Award for the Darkwood Tour were as follows:

1. Never Jam Today
2. Becky’s Book Reviews
3. Through a Child’s Eyes
4. My Own Little Corner of the World

Please vote in the poll at the top of the left sidebar.

New Bloggers

Susan at The Book Chook  lives and blogs in Australia. I’ve enjoyed her blog for a long time and very glad to be able to talk her into joining us.

And Sophie from Mrs. Magoo Reads is a go-getting teen blogger. Make sure to check her out on TV.  I’m really excited about her joining with us.

And I never gave Julie from My Own Little Corner of the World a formal introduction. She jumped in on the tour last time with Darkwood and I’m very happy to welcome her aboard.

Upcoming Tour

I’m really excited to announce that we get to do an Andrew Peterson book for August. We’re doing North or Be Eaten, the second book in the Wingfeather Saga.  I can’t wait. The publicist will only give us 23 books, but she will ship internationally so go check out the books and if you want to in on the tour be ready to answer the invitation that will go out next week.

It is with some sorrow that I say goodbye to the Darkwood tour. I am still not back in form since the death of my father two weeks ago and I feel like I didn’t get the full benefit of the tour. I wanted to interview the author. I believe she’s a professor. I think I read that she teaches creative writing at Stanford. (Am I imagining that? I went looking for that info and I couldn’t find it again.) I would have liked to have asked her why she made some of the decisions she made and I would have liked to have discussed some of her delicious characters with her. But the best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry.

So I have to let this one go, feeling a bit unfinished. I hope Ms. Breen will give us a chance to tour future books.

Several posts came in, yesterday:

• I put a review at All About Children’s Books
• Becky posted her review at Becky’s Book Reviews
• April talked about fairytales at Cafe of Dreams
• Noel and Robbie converse about the book at Never Jam Today
• Some safety tips from Through a Child’s Eyes

Technorati is still down–they are having major issues, obviously.

And this was a sleepy summer tour. We had just nine blogs posting, but we still came in with 24 posts. These posts included 7 reviews:

1. Never Jam Today
2. A Patchwork of Books
3. Cafe of Dreams
4. Hyperbole
5. My Utopia
6. Through a Child’s Eyes
7. All About Children’s Books

3 interviews:

1. Becky’s Book Reviews
2. Dolce Bellezza
3. My Utopia

and 1 fun discussion:

1. Never Jam Today

Thanks to all you bloggers for your thoughts on this fun and fast-paced story. And thanks especially to M.E. Breen and Bloomsbury for allowing us to look at and discuss Darkwood!

Day Two of the Darkwood Tour. I enjoyed the interviews, and appreciated reading some posts from some new bloggers.

Today we had:

• A review at A Patchwork of Books
• I put a few quotes on All About Children’s Books
• Becky has an author interview up at Becky’s Book Reviews
• April’s review is up at Cafe of Dreams
• An interview at Dolce Bellezza
• Christy has a short review up at Hyperbole
• Noel looks at a couple of favorite characters at Never Jam Today
• Maggie weighs in with her first interview and review (and does a lovely job of both!) on My Utopia
• A review and suggested activities at Through a Child’s Eyes
• And Julie posted a review over at My Own Little Corner of the World

Well, we’re out of the gate with our tour for Darkwood, a fantasy written by M.E.Breen.

I loved several of the characters in this book and the descriptions of the world, so I’ve been anxious to see what everyone else thought.

Becky starts us off with some warning signs that our uncles may not be as loving and kind as we might like them to be. I loved this post!

Noel was pleasantly surprised that she enjoyed Darkwood so much. I’m glad, because I liked much about this book, also.

And SJ Kessel gives us a short introduction to the author. Molly Breen graduated from Yale, where my niece, who also would like to be an author, is now going. Cool beans!

And friend of the tour, Julie, has posted an intro to the book.

I’ll be adding more post as they go up, so check back tomorrow.

HOUSEKEEPING:

I messed up the link to Noel’s Never Jam Today blog. If you change the www. to http:// the link will work. Thanks!

I also noticed in the comments, that Julie bought this book and wanted to get in on this tour. I’ve been busy with family so I didn’t get back to her. But if any of you get a chance go by and see her and if you have time please add her link to the list of participating bloggers. She can be found at http://molcotw.blogspot.com/ . Thanks! I’ll be introducing two new blogs I’m excited about next week, too. Mrs Magoo Reads is written by a talented teen blogger and The Book Chook is the home of our first Australian blogger. 

We start Monday on a tour for Darkwood by M.E. Breen!

The Amazon link we will use is: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1599902591 You are welcome to use your own Amazon link as well, but please do use this specific link at least once in every post. This is how we get Technorati ratings.

The book cover is here: http://paraklesis.com/reviews/darkwood.jpg

M.E. Breen’s web site is here: http://www.mebreen.com/

Her picture: http://paraklesis.com/reviews/breen.jpg

Here’s a book blurb:

Darkness falls so quickly in Howland its people have no word for evening. One minute the sky is light, the next minute it is black—an impenetrable, suffocating black, unlit by moon or stars. Then good people bar their doors, for fearsome kinderstalk leave the forest to prowl among the houses, looking for children to steal. Yet when Annie Trewitt overhears her uncle making terrible plans for her, she flees to the only place she’s sure he will not follow: the forest. Annie never expects to survive the night, but soon she finds neither the kinderstalk nor the people of Howland are what they first appear. Her journey will take her from the depths of the forest to the glittering halls of the palace—and ever closer to an evil darker and more vast than the night itself.

And here’s a short bio:

M.E. Breen grew up with dogs, cats, newts, turtles, rabbits and rats in the woolly hills of Berkeley, California. She now lives by the ocean in San Francisco.

And, finally, the list of participating bloggers. Please link to participants at least once during the tour.

For a paragraph listing like this:

A Patchwork of Books, All About Children’s Books, Becky’s Book Reviews, Cafe of Dreams, Dolce Bellezza, Hyperbole, KidzBookBuzz.com, Never Jam Today, My Utopia, Through a Child’s Eyes, Through the Looking Glass Reviews

Use this code:

<a href="http://www.apatchworkofbooks.blogspot.com/">A Patchwork of Books</a>, <a href="http://abbylibrarian.blogspot.com">Abby the Librarian</a>, <a href="http://paraklesis.com/childrens_publishing_news/">All About Children’s Books</a>, <a href="http://blbooks.blogspot.com/">Becky’s Book Reviews</a>, <a href="http://cafeofdreams.blogspot.com/">Cafe of Dreams</a>, <a href="http://www.dolcebellezza.wordpress.com/">Dolce Bellezza</a>, <a href="http://www.horslv93.blogspot.com/">Hyperbole</a>, <a href="http://kidzbookbuzz.com/">KidzBookBuzz.com</a>, <a href="http://noeldevries.blogspot.com">Never Jam Today</a>, <a href="http://myutopia36.blogspot.com/">My Utopia</a>, <a href="http://sjkessel.blogspot.com/">Through a Child’s Eyes</a>, <a href="http://lookingglassreview.blogspot.com/">Through the Looking Glass Reviews</a>

For a list like this:

A Patchwork of Books
Abby the Librarian
All About Children’s Books
Becky’s Book Reviews
Cafe of Dreams
Dolce Bellezza
Hyperbole
KidzBookBuzz.com
Never Jam Today
My Utopia
Through a Child’s Eyes
Through the Looking Glass Reviews

Use this code:

<a href="http://www.apatchworkofbooks.blogspot.com/">A Patchwork of Books</a><br /> <a href="http://abbylibrarian.blogspot.com">Abby the Librarian</a><br /> <a href="http://paraklesis.com/childrens_publishing_news/">All About Children’s Books</a><br /> <a href="http://blbooks.blogspot.com/">Becky’s Book Reviews</a><br /> <a href="http://cafeofdreams.blogspot.com/">Cafe of Dreams</a><br /> <a href="http://www.dolcebellezza.wordpress.com/">Dolce Bellezza</a><br /> <a href="http://www.horslv93.blogspot.com/">Hyperbole</a><br /> <a href="http://kidzbookbuzz.com/">KidzBookBuzz.com</a><br /> <a href="http://noeldevries.blogspot.com">Never Jam Today</a><br /> <a href="http://myutopia36.blogspot.com/">My Utopia</a><br /> <a href="http://sjkessel.blogspot.com/">Through a Child’s Eyes</a><br /> <a href="http://lookingglassreview.blogspot.com/">Through the Looking Glass Reviews</a>

Here’s a great post that gives a clear, quick definition of a blog tour.

The only part of the equation that I think might change in the future is this part:

Are bloggers paid to participate in the blog tour?

No — paying anyone to cover any books would be unethical.  (Paying for ads is a perfectly ethical practice, of course, but with PR, coverage — good or bad — should come free).   To clarify — since this can get confusing – with blog tours (or with radio or TV tours), publishing houses aren’t paying bloggers (or radio or TV hosts) to cover a book; we’re paying someone to schedule the tour:

I do agree that it is unethical for publishers to pay bloggers to review their books. I do, however, know that reviewers for School Library Journal and PW and The Horn Book are paid. They don’t write their reviews for free. These magazines charge for advertising, but they do not charge for reviews. The magazines hire and pay their reviewers,  so the publishers don’t directly pay for reviews.

So if a group of bloggers banded together to create an online reviewing “magazine” they would expect to get paid and it wouldn’t be unethical for them to get paid. In that case, they would have to work like the print magazines. The blog review company would make money off the ads they ran and then the company would pay the reviewers they hired. The publishing company would not pay reviewers directly, and they would have to accept that some of their books would receive no reviews and others would receive less than stellar recommendations.

So while I think that most book bloggers will never get paid for their reviews, I do think that a few quality Internet sites will rise up and sell advertising and pay their reviewers.

The thing that makes the Internet so exciting and so unpredictable is that everyone can afford to publish here. What will set apart the bloggers that make money from the rest, will be quality of content and traffic. If you have an eye for setting up an attractive site that is easy to navigate and filled with great content, you are likely to rise to the top. You will build up a community of readers. We have some blogs on our tour that are in the top one percent of blogs (of all blogs in all genres)  in regards to traffic. Publishers are going to start looking at those numbers, I think. and start picking and choosing which blogs they send their advance reading copies to and which blogs they want to advertise with.

Not that we have to make money off our blogs. Blogs are fun and don’t have to make money. But for those who want to make money, I think more opportunities are going to open up.

It’s apparent to me that an awful lot of people are on summer vacation already.

We had a somewhat subdued tour and definitely subdued voting for Blogger of the Tour.

Still, April from Cafe of Dreams came out with the prize, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer gal. Congratulations, April! Check you’re email box in a few minutes.

In other news, my dad died a couple of days ago. So it’s family time for me for the next week. We are so grateful that he had no pain and he went very quickly and comfortably. It was an exceptionally easy transition from this life to the next.

I’ll be back to post the specifics for the Darkwood tour next week. I hope you all have some thoughts on the book you want to share with us.

Thanks to all the lovely people who have emailed to tell me that the blog tour’s URL made an appearance in the SCBWI Bulletin this month. That is hugely exciting.

The tech news column in the May/June issue ran an article by Mark London Williams, titled The Road Digitally Travelled. It was about marketing books online, and it quoted our old pal Alan Gratz. Williams also noted that Alan had taken our tour, once upon a time. So we got our URL listed in the magazine right out there in front of God and tens of thousands of children’s writers worldwide. (Well, OK it’s 22,000, but tens of thousands sounds a little more grand, don’t you think?)

Anyway, I’m thrilled to have the kidzBookBuzz.com URL go out to those 20,000+ children’s writers.  Thank you, Mr. Gratz, for allowing us to ride your coattails into that wonderful magazine.

And may I take a minute to sing SCBWI’s praises? If you are a children’s writer or illustrator and you are not a member of SCBWI, you are crazy. It is such a wonderful community of writers and they offer up a wealth of information and opportunities. And it’s inexpensive. It is, without equivocation, the best writers’ organization around (I’ve belonged to several). It gives you oodles of help for a paltry yearly membership fee. And if you aren’t a children’s writer or illustrator, but you are interested in children’s books, it would be a great for you to join SCBWI, too. Journalists, bloggers, and librarians can join as associate members. It’s a great way to keep up with the children’s publishing world.

****
Editor’s note:
I originally posted that I never received my copy of the Bulletin this month. I’ve edited that bit out, because after I blogged about it the SCBWI folks wrote to tell me they were sending me another copy to replace the one that got lost in the mail. Are they not the best?

Annie, from Reading is My Superpower, is not eligible for the Blogger of the Tour Award this time, so here are the eligible bloggers. It was a small tour this time and I kind of like this because it gives new folks a chance to win the prize.

Please visit the blogs and vote in the poll at the top of the left-hand sidebar.

1. Cafe of Dreams: one, two, three
2. Through a Child’s Eyes: one, two, three
3. Through the Looking Glass Reviews: one, two, three

It’s over. I hate to say it, but it’s time to bid a fond farewell Meg and Calen, the kids from The Dragon of Trelian. I hope the Ms. Knudsen is cracking on the sequel so we can meet up with these friends again soon.

Here’s our wrap-up for the tour. We had thirteen blogs participate (sympathies and prayers go to Carrie from Reading to Know, who just lost her father and sat this tour out).

Over the three-day tour we had 26 posts which included:

13 reviews:

• Becky’s Book Review
• Abby the Librarian
• Cafe of Dreams
• Dolce Bellezza
• Homeschool Book Buzz
• Small World Reads
• 160 Acre Woods
• Through a Child’s Eyes
• Through the Looking Glass Reviews
• Novel Teen
• Reading is My Superpower
• A Christian Worldview of Fiction
• All About Children’s Books

3 interviews:

• Becky’s Book Reviews
• Reading is My Superpower
• Cafe of Dreams

and 1 review of Library Lion:

• Through a Child’s Eyes

Come back tomorrow for a change to vote on the Blogger of the Tour Award!