Celebrate Reading, Book Trailers and More

SLJ’s Trailie Award Finalists are Announced: The Best Book Trailer Award

The voting is open. On my sister site, BookTrailerManual.com, I’ve posted the videos for you to watch. Be sure to vote for your favorite. Awards will be announced on October 22.

1. Celebrate Reading

   Holly Cupala is celebrating! She says, “In honor of YALSA’s Teen Read Week and National Book Month in October, I invited a bunch of my favorite bloggers to tell me what they’d like to see on the YA shelf. “

   My contribution will be up on Tuesday, October 4. Read the series and comment to be entered in her contest for great prizes.

2. 5 Myths about Book Selling

   True or false:

   • Newspaper reviews sell books.
   • Bookshops are only interested in best sellers.
   • The buyers in the big chains know a great deal about retail but not so much about books.
   • Publishers can bribe their way to the front of store
   • Book Promotions, such as Buy 3 for the Price of 2, are too powerful. (This is a promotion technique used at Waterstone, a UK bookstore.)

   Read the answers here.

3. Literary Agents Open the Door to Self-Published Writers IF . . .

   What makes the difference? Why would this self-published author be of interest and NOT this one?

4. Agency Pricing for Ebooks

   Where in the supply chain is the value? Does the author had the value for the reader and everyone else just gets in the way? I’m still trying to sort out ebooks and how selling them works best.

5. Malcom Gladwell’s Story Process

   Some have criticized this non-fiction author of popularizing and simplifying information too much. Still, I like Blink! and his other books. Read about his story process here.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

The School Library Journal has just established a new award for book trailers! Wahoo!

The Trailie Award

Voters must select the best video in six categories:

• publisher/author created for elementary readers (PreK-6)
• publisher/author created for secondary readers (7-12 grade)
• student created for elementary readers (PreK-6 grade)
• student created for secondary readers (7-12 grade)
• adult (anyone over 18) created for elementary readers (PreK-6 grade)
• adult created for secondary readers (7-12 grade)

A committee of librarians will choose four nominations in each category, and the winners will be announced at the School Library Journal Leadership Summit on the Future of Reading on October 22, 2010 in Chicago, IL.

Anyone is eligible to nominate a video, but it must be produced between January 1, 2006 to July 1, 2010. Just send an email to SLJbooktrailers@gmail.com. Include the name of the video, the video’s creator(s), the author, the title of the book in the video, the URL to view the video, and no more than 200 words describing how it draws in potential readers.

Look for more info later on how to vote on your favorites.

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Visit The Book Trailer Manual site for more information on how to create trailers. Sign up for our newsletter now and receive a free special report, 43 Sites to Upload Trailers.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

I hail from Arkansas and until now, we’ve been known for the Clinton Presidential Library, the US’s only diamond mine (Crater of Diamonds State Park), and the headquarters of Wal-Mart. But this year we’ll be known for the Arkansas Teen Book Award, established by Arkansas Librarians. (Facebook page.) The reading list was announced in December, 2009 and this year’s winners will be announced in December, 2010.

Two days ago, we looked at opening lines from 100 top novels and categorized them to learn how to open a novel. Yesterday, we looked at the opening lines from the teen novels on the 7-9th grade, 2010 Arkansas Teen Book Award reading list and challenged you to identify the novels. Today’s opening lines are from the 10-12th grade reading list for the Arkansas Teen Book Award.

Identify These Teen Novels from Their Opening Lines, #2

OK, TRY to identify these without any help. They are all 2008 copyright books. Need help? See the tip below.
(Actually, many of these are graphic novels and there’s at least one non-fiction on the list.)

• I look at my fingers again, the ones that trembled and shook just a few days ago at Mr. Bender’s kitchen table.
• Willow Creek Camping Ground, Willow Creek, Montana.
  Daddy?
• Yarlung Tsangpo Canyon, Himalayas – 1938.
  See anything?
• You have never been so hungry; you have never been so cold.
• As with the banking industry, the Russian political system and the romantic liaisons on the Gossip Girl, all is not as it seems in the world of food and drink.
• Time 6:13:10 four minutes earlier…
  Readings look good, Annie.
• No doubt with all those grapes, Aristotle, the world’s first naturalist, passed gas.
• We live in a world where medical miracles and high-tech marvels are almost commonplace.
• In these dungeons the darkness was complete, but Katsa had a map in her mind.
• Needle doesn’t know which way to point.
• twenty-two years later -
  I’m dreaming of the boy in the tree and at the exact moment I’m about to hear the answer that I’ve been waiting for, the flashlights yank me out of what could have been one of those perfect moments of clarity people talk about for the rest of their lives.
• The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say.
• I’m a senior at Cesar Chavez High in San Francisco’s sunny Mission district, and that makes me one of the most surveilled people in the world.
• Henry and I dug the whole seven feet deep.
• The strikers cheered as the tractor dragged the ancient Chrysler Newport in front of the main gate.
• just cause you can’t see, don’t mean aint nothing there. (See comments: Thanks to the author for adding the comment with the opening line!)
• “So I was reading this Vonnegut novel,” I said to Samantha.
• I was born in the United States of America.
• The Cosmic hurricane rips through uncharted space at one
  million miles per hour, gas plumes extending for a thousand light-years
  in any direction.
• Venomous by Christopher Krovatin

Tip No. 1: The Reading List (pdf) can be found here. These are the opening lines for the Level 2, Grades 10-12 list. I didn’t scramble up the list, it just goes down the line.
Tip No. 2: The links will take you to the Amazon page for each book.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

I hail from Arkansas and until now, we’ve been known for the Clinton Presidential Library, the US’s only diamond mine (Crater of Diamonds State Park), and the headquarters of Wal-Mart. But this year we’ll be known for the Arkansas Teen Book Award, established by Arkansas Librarians. (Facebook page.) The reading list was announced in December, 2009 and this year’s winners will be announced in December, 2010.

Yesterday, we looked at opening lines from 100 top novels and categorized them to learn how to open a novel. Here, I’m taking the opening lines from the teen novels on the 2010 Arkansas Teen Book Award reading list and challenging you to identify the novel.

Identify These Teen Novels from Their Opening Lines, #1

OK, TRY to identify these without any help. They are all 2008 copyright books. Need help? See the tip below.

• Conner Broekhart was a remarkable boy, a fact that became evident very early in his idyllic childhood.
• The day I broke up with my boyfriend Evan was the day he wrote the song.
• We can hear someone screaming as soon as we get off the elevator.
• They’d stolen a march on the day.
• The best time to talk to ghosts is just before the sun comes up.
• When my father died, I thought the world would come to an end.
• December 14, 2007
  To: Headmaster Richmond and the Board of Directors, Alabaster Preparatory Academy
• Ten minutes after the last class of the day, Lucy got a text message from her best friend Sarah Hebert, “Need u,” it said.
• Pugg Brothers. . .Please report to the principal’s office.
• . . . Gino Michelini on KLS-FM, 92.3 on your FM dial!
• Decatur, Alabama
  August 12, 1993
  Kevin Gardner was not home, even though it was way past his eleven-o’clock curfew.
• Long ago and far away in the land of ice and snow, there came a time when it seemed that winter would never end.
• Some people call me a child-witch,
  but I’m just a girl who likes to watch
  the hands of women
  as they gather wild herbs and flowers
  to heal the sick.
• There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.
• When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.
• “You won’t believe this, but it’s true. I wrote a story called ‘The Savage,’ about a savage kid that lived under the ruined chapel in Burgess Woods, and the kid came to life in the real world.”
• Mark Twain was born fully grown, with a cigar clamped between his teeth.
• Henry Smith’s father told him that if you build your house far enough away from Trouble, then Trouble will never find you.
• Maybe Mommers and I shouldn’t have been surprised; Dwight had told us it was a trailer even before we’d packed our bags.
• Imagine for a moment that it is early Saturday morning in the United States.

Interestingly, the list includes several graphic novels, but not as many as the grade 10-12 list (opening lines coming tomorrow), which is about a third graphic novels. Arkansas is currently having a big push in schools about encouraging kids to eat right and control their weight. So, both lists include books about eating.

Tip : The Reading List (pdf) can be found here. These are the opening lines for the Level 1, Grades 7-9 list. I didn’t scramble up the list, it just goes down the line. Tomorrow, we’ll do the same thing for the 10-12 grade list.
Tip No. 2: The links will take you to the Amazon page for each book.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Timeline: two decades ago.
There are legendary stories told about how word spread throughout the US about the winners of the Caldecott, Newbery and other awards announced at the American Library Association Midwinter Conference. Stories of people standing in the room, scribbling down the winners list, then rushing to a bank of phones to send word to those back home, to the press, to librarians throughout the country.

Technology has Changed the Way We Learn the Award Winners!

This year, the ALA has live webcasts, Twitters, Facebook and much more.

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Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win