Unlike anything on the market, Read, Remember Recommend keeps readers coming back to bookstores to purchase recommended books, creates opportunities for add-on and return sales, and celebrates the readers’ love of books.

I am a:

• wife of nearly 28 years (June 26)
• mother to three children ages 24, 21, and 16
• daughter and part-time care giver of my 82 year old mother
• teacher at a small private school where I teach 7th grade, 8th grade, 9th grade English; British Literature; Creative Writing; and Computer Apps
• woman, who at the age of 50 has decided to finally try to live life for herself and discover that inner child.

Besides reading I also enjoy photography (a new found creative outlet), scrapbooking (I used to be a Creative Memories instructor for about 10 years), writing, and playing with my yellow labs: Ralf, Jude, and Bella.

I discovered book blogs in October of 2008 — I still don’t remember how I stumbled upon them, but Becky’s Book Reviews and J. Kaye’s book blogs were the two that I remember most. After spending two months totally enthralled with reading others’ blogs, I decided that I might like to write one as well, so my first post was in December, 2008.

3. Why did you start a book blog? I have always enjoyed writing and had toyed with the idea for starting a blog for a while. However my biggest concern was that I would not have enough material to keep the blog going. I LOVED the idea of having a blog with a focus – and since I love to read, a book blog seemed like a natural fit.

I am an introvert by nature (almost off the Myer’s Briggs charts) and so I like the solitary aspect of reading. I also like the fact that reading can help me escape my own worldly problems and enter a totally different realm. I also love reading because I love words — and I love learning how to become a better person by reading great writing.

This is really an impossible question for me to answer. Once I name one or two I will read someone else’s response and say, “oh yea — I like him/her too.” So rather than discuss favorite authors, I will pass this question — and move on to question 6.

I enjoy British literature – especially the Victorian Age (and those sensational novels are some of the best); I also like suspense novels and cozy mysteries. I like modern day literary fiction – that is literature that makes me think and is written in an eloquent way (as I mentioned before, I love analyzing how an author uses words), and I am starting to really enjoy travel memoirs, as I hope to do my fair share of traveling once I retire.

Well, I have more time now than I did a couple of years ago. I was a French and Political Science major in college – in fact, my last English course was taken my senior year of high school — so when I started this teaching gig (which, by the say I am not a certified teacher either – but that is the subject of another post) I felt like I had some major catch up to do. The first three years I taught these high school classes I was probably spending 60-80 hours a week reading, studying, writing lesson plans, and grading. Now that I have a comfort level with the subject – and most lesson plans need only minor tweaks — I do have more free time to do what I want — and I spent the vast majority of that time reading or blogging.

GREAT question!! Actually, I really loved to read when I was a child – say between the ages of 8 and 15. I distinctly remember saving up my allowance money and every three weeks or so we would go to the local department store and I would a Nancy Drew book for $1.24. When I entered high school I liked to read, but social activities took precedent. Also, I don’t think I had very good English teachers in high school but I distinctly remember class being so boring and confusing. They would talk about symbolism but never explain it — it was as though we were supposed to magically “get it”, and I didn’t (this is something that I try very hard to remedy in my own classes). When I graduated college I vowed I wouldn’t pick up another book for at least a year – and I kept to that vow. I had to read approximately 500 pages each week my entire senior year and I was exhausted. Then came kids….and well…..I found myself reading some self-help books, but rarely fiction. It was the combination of teaching British Literature – and reading book bloggers, that once again brought the joy of reading back into my life.

Another GREAT question — and sadly, out of three kids, one detests reading, one is not fond of it, and one does rather like it. I suppose batting .333 isn’t too bad, but I was hoping for 1.000 I read to all of my children from probably the time they were 3 months old — I kid you not. ALL of them loved to be read to – and if I had to do it all over again, I would not have stopped. I assumed that once they started reading on their own they would not want me to read to them — or that they were just lazy. Well, you know what they say about assuming —- I think if I had continued to read to them, they may enjoy books more.

Right now my biggest recommendation is The Help. I absolutely LOVED that book. Another great one is The Art of Racing in the Rain. I have three yellow labs and I am a sucker for any dog story. This one is marvelous. Of course all the books that I teach I have grown to love as well – and I highly recommend any of those, but the list is probably too long for this short interview.

DIY Authors Conference

I was excited to see a brand new conference dedicated to self publishing at Book Expo America “where aspiring writers will get critical information and solutions to help them get published or self published”.

With the publishing industry suffering the effects of a poor economy, new authors are finding it very difficult to become published by traditional means. As readers, this means we are missing out on the potential to read some amazing stuff – while the big publishers stick with the tried and true authors who have proven sales. While these new voices are being turned down in the old system, new ways are emerging to ensure that at least some of them can become published.

Some topics for the DIY Authors Conference sessions include:

• Three Ways to Self-Publish in Today’s Competitive Marketplace
• Advance Your Career with DIY Publishing
• Using Online Collaboration to Complete Your Book
• Do’s & Don’ts – Authors & DIY Services’ Deals
• Authors’ Online Resource: DIY Publicity, Promotion and Events
• Get Your Manuscript in Shape for DIY-publication

As a compliment to this new conference, I thought I would share my own DIY Author experience in the hopes of giving inspiration to anyone out there hoping to become published.

My personality is one that loves a challenge and to understand how things work. When considering publishing my first reading journal, I wanted to do everything myself – I didn’t really consider seeing if a publishing house would accept it (stay turned for that).

Steps to my self-publication:

Bibliopages: In order to sell books through normal retail channels, each book must have an ISBN number. In order to get my own numbers, I had to become a publisher. Bibliopages was created as my publishing name.

Creating: My career, before becoming a mom, was as a programmer. This lent itself perfectly for the amount of data I had gathered in the reading lists. I created an application to take all the data into a database and then return it back with the cross-referencing and error checking done. Since I didn’t own or know the software needed to create my journals in a print-ready format, I found a wonder editor locally who helped me create the journals in a Quark Express layout. Quark is layout program.

Printing: The format of the journal, with colored tabs, spiral binding and a pocket made the journals cost prohibitive to print domestically. I found a local print broker who helped me get 2,000 of the journals printed in China (I printed another 2,000 a year later). After the files of the journal were sent, I received a galley in 2 weeks and the shipment arrived in 60 days (on a boat!) and then after clearing customs were shipped to me and my garage in Utah.

Marketing: I started marketing the journals long before I received the actual copies. This was a struggle for me throughout my self-publishing experience because I was a newbie in the world of selling books and my background was not in publicity or marketing. The most beneficial thing I did in all of my marketing endeavors was to sign up for the Advance Access Program through the American Booksellers Association. An email is sent to over 1,000 independent booksellers across the country offering a review copy for their perusal. I received tons of requests and sent them all out – and my foot was in the door at over 50 indies!

Distribution: Some bookstores will not buy books directly from a publisher and prefer to receive their shipments from a distributor. There are several distributors for books, but Baker & Taylor and Ingram Book are the largest and most widely used. Ingram does not accept books for distribution from publishers with fewer than six titles, but Baker and Taylor has a program to work with very small publishers. I signed up for their partner program to sell my books. Signing up for the program also provided me with a spotlight in their quarterly catalog.

Shipping: Perhaps the hardest part of my experience was hauling the books to the post office to be shipped. The majority of my bookstore sales were for case packs – which were packaged in quantities of 20. In addition, I also sold individual, retail copies off my website as well less then case pack quantities to small bookstores. I created an account with Stamps.com and printed all the labels from home and then dropped them off each day at the post office.

Independent Publisher of the Year Award: The highlight of my years as a self-published author was receiving a bronze medal as an Independent Publisher of the Year in 2008. This award, along with my sales success help validate that I was on the right track.

I sent out a few pitch emails to agents and was picked up by the nicest agent anyone could hope for. She helped me to create a wonderful proposal to send to publishing houses and within a few weeks we had several offers. Sourcebooks, a smaller but very progressive publishing house, made me a great offer and I accepted in March of 2009. Both of my journals were on track to be on the Sourcebooks Spring 2010 list.

My editor at Sourcebooks allowed me complete autonomy with my journals but gave awesome advice when asked. We worked together to come up with some new features of the journal, revamped the lists and the journals went to print in November of 2009. I started working with the publicity department at that time to create my website and come up with a plan for pitching the journals to magazines, newspapers and blogs. My journals have now been carried by Costco, Barnes and Noble, Borders and countless independent bookstores.

My road to being published in the traditional sense has been a true Cinderella story. I absolutely love working with Sourcebooks, but don’t regret my years as a self-publisher. I learned more than I ever would have it I had been picked up by a publisher from the start and I believe that my success as a self-published author led to being picked up by a great publisher.