{"id":25297,"date":"2018-04-20T08:00:15","date_gmt":"2018-04-20T12:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=25297"},"modified":"2018-04-20T08:00:15","modified_gmt":"2018-04-20T12:00:15","slug":"meeting-the-authors-in-your-neighborhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=25297","title":{"rendered":"Meeting the Authors in Our Neighborhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A couple of weeks ago, Austin author Chris Barton emailed to see if we could use a fresh infusion of signed stock and to let us know that he had proofs of Ekua Holmes\u2019 gorgeous art for their upcoming Barbara Jordan picture book biography What Do You Do with a Voice Like That? <\/em>to show us. Of course we were thrilled! We love seeing what Chris is working on. We\u2019ve gotten to know Chris really well over the years, hosting him for release parties, educator panels, and even collaborating on a diverse book curation<\/a> program together.
\nHis email actually reminded me of the very first time I met \"\"<\/a>Chris. Years ago, he came up to me at an event for a fellow SCBWI author to see if I wanted to look at an f&g of his first book, The Day-Glo Brothers<\/em>, the story of the brothers who invented paint that glowed. I started thinking about different ways we have first connected with authors and how we might help make that interaction easier for local authors who are debuts or just new to town.
\n
\nToday, our kids events coordinator and I sat down with Samantha Clark and Lucia DiStefano, both debut authors with upcoming releases: A Boy, the Boat, and the Beast <\/em>from Simon & Schuster and Borrowed <\/em>from Elephant Rock Books. They wanted to just connect with us in advance of their book releases, give us a peek at some book swag, and talk about pre-order and party plans. We know Samantha because we\u2019ve worked with her for years in her role as SCBWI’s Regional Advisor, but we hadn\u2019t met Lucia yet and were so glad Samantha brought her along.
\nAs a community bookstore, I firmly believe that including the voices that make our city unique and vibrant makes our store better. While we can\u2019t afford to carry every book on every local author\u2019s deep backlist if sales wane, I\u2019m always\u00a0excited to celebrate their new projects. The fact of the matter is, though, that if I don\u2019t connect with authors personally, I may not remember they are local. That matters, not only in terms of my book orders, but also because I won\u2019t think to reach out to them if a great opportunity arises\u2014whether for a special event or a festival line-up or some educator outreach.
\n

\"\"<\/a>

Samantha Clark and Lucia DiStefano sharing some book swag.<\/p><\/div>
\nAt BookPeople, we say that Austin is\u00a0\u201cA\u00a0Community Bound by Books,\u201d and local authors are clearly allies in that pursuit. But Lucia mentioned today that as a new author she felt nervous about contacting us on her own out of fear of bothering us, and I get that. I know that, from the bookseller side of things, I have sometimes been unsure of (or even flat out misunderstood) authors\u2019 perspectives at times myself. That\u2019s probably inevitable because we\u2019re not in exactly the same business, but the rewards of building understanding and fostering long-term relationships are huge.
\nThe SCBWI has been an invaluable vehicle for facilitating those connections over the years. The Austin chapter of the SCBWI is huge and very active. We host their monthly meetings as well as release parties for many of their members, and I\u2019ve gotten to know a lot of them over the years. But we\u2019ve never built in a good\u00a0opportunity for new SCBWI authors to connect with us without having to navigate the anxiety of cold emailing someone they don\u2019t know. Samantha and I brainstormed out some ideas today, and this July we\u2019re going to test out a new bookseller intro and q&a for Austin\u2019s SCBWI author class of 2018. If it works well, we’ll make it an annual thing. We\u2019ll obviously emphasize that this is a great opportunity for new authors to tell us about their books, but authors new and old can come and ask us anything at all\u2014general questions about bookselling, best practices for working with us on book launches, ideas for how to help promote their books between releases, or anything on their minds about working with a bookstore like ours. I hope it\u2019s the start of some beautiful friendships.
\n 
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Working with the SCBWI to build strong relationships with local writers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}