My fans are enthusiastic, loving, adoring, and...often do a lot of slobbering.
They are also too poor to afford my books. They are children.
So what do you do when your market is controlled by a totally different market?
Other than dropping your book in a Cheerios box or hawking your wares between episodes of Dora the Explorer, how do you reach these wee buyers?
You find the people who cater to kids.
Last week, my long-delayed story book app, Dust Bunnies: Secret Agents, was suddenly DONE. Out. For sale.
I got the email at 7 a.m. and was awake in a flash, dashing to my computer to...do what exactly? Blog to babies? Tweet to tots?
Salvation came in a message from a baby store asking me to do a story time there. What a gorgeous place! What a stroke of luck. They'd found me by my blog and their timing was impeccable.
They had the kids. I had the story. So I thought: If I can do it once, I can do it again.
Some quick emails got amazing response. I'll be taking my story to an elementary school nearby for their early grades. I'm targeting local libraries now with their summer programs.
I've already brainstormed a take away for the kids--a Dust Bunny stick puppet they can color, one that will have the information about the app on it should parents act on their progeny's enthusiasm. It's a bit of extra work, cutting the shape and taping them to wooden sticks.
But that's what *my* children are for.
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Deanna Roy is the author of the iPad story book app Dust Bunnies: Secret Agents and middle grade book Jinnie Wishmaker. She is a member of SCBWI and a regular presenter on digital publishing.
