Today and tomorrow I'm going ti be at Reading Matters. It's a conference that happens every two years, organised by the Centre for Youth Literature at the State Library in Melbourne, held at RMIT's Storey Hall. I have been to all of them. It's a great opportunity to find out what's new, see writers I otherwise might never see or hear speak, mingle with fellow teacher-librarians - and, okay, promote my latest book!
I shall wear my Wolfborn T-shirt today and take along bookmarks for both Wolfborn and Crime Time. I'll wear the crime Time T-shirt tomorrow. And I'll be taking along some "Notable" stickers in case the bookseller actually does have copies of my book. One of the organisers told me last night that they had asked the booksellers to bring copies of books by about six writers coming to the con but not on the panels, so that's nice. I did email the lady from Reading's some time ago and hopefully, between us the CYL and I have persuaded them.
Time for breakfast and printing out the program! More tomorrow night, when I hope I have time to write a con report and maybe put up some pics.
I see that teacher-librarians have taken a bit of a pasting in the press recently. Reclaim the ... er ... shelves? Anyway, as a non-teacher librarian but an academic (tertiary education) one, I think school librarians rock and I hope you all have fun and behave badly! And hopefully sell some books :)
ReplyDeleteThanks, Sheep Rustler! It was good - con report coming up as soon as I can get it done. I met a lot of people, learned heaps and promoted my books, handing out bookmakrs. The book stall had ten copies of Wolfborn. At first I thought it wasn't selling, but no - they were refreshing the pile as it dropped each time. By the end of the con, I think they'd sold at least nine of the ten. Despite my Wolfborn T-shirt no one came to ask for their book to be signed, except a certain guy whom I meet at all the Booktalkers, who got a copy for his younger cousin,but it was a big crowd and all that matters is that they bought copies! Yay!
ReplyDeleteThey handed out free copies of Karen Healey's new book, which I'm enjoying so far. Oh, and I met Kirsty Eagar, author of Saltwater Vampires, who thought she knew me. She didn't, but I did tell her how much I enjoyed her novel and direct her to this blog for the review..