Teaser Tuesday!

Welcome to the Teaser Tuesday edition of our latest books in review, enjoy!


"Wait," said Bit.  A crazy idea flashed in her mind, a way to help the children, and also to escape."


"Shane cleared his throat, "I'm assuming you have shared with us everything you have discovered?"  It sounded like a question, but Anne knew it to be a warning."

"He's too surly to hurt himself.  If he does, we'll feed him to the dogs."

Reviewer's Tip - Packing Your Book, Part 2

Yesterday, we showed you samples of some books that arrived in our office in less than perfect shape.  The US Post Office, UPS, FedEx, etc., can be pretty rough on one poor, lonely book in a plain paper envelope.  Today, we're offering some suggestions on protecting your valuable book and making sure it gets to the reviewer in great shape.  (Photos taken by Lynette Latzko and Ellen Feld)

Wrap the contents so they don't get wet or damaged.  Many people use plastic bags (such as 1 mil poly bags from ULine) too.  They are inexpensive and present a much nicer look than a plastic bag left over from the grocery store.

USe cardboard to keep books stiff. 

Packing your book in a bubble-wrap envelope usually works quite well...

But now always.  This bubble-wrapped book was starting to work its way out of this envelope when it arrived.  Typically, books that have some "sliding room" in the envelope are the ones that tend to destroy the envelopes.  If your book doesn't fit tightly in the envelope, consider folding over the top of the envelope to make the envelope smaller.

This is how Amazon sends us our "Vine" books for review.  We've never had a problem with these books.  They always arrive in perfect condition.  But this may not be a viable solution for the one book author.  So what should you do?

Here's what one author did to protect her book.  A perfect mailer.  Note the delivery confirmation sticker.  Another good idea.

Inside was a perfectly wrapped book.  Our reviewer was delighted to receive a book in pristine condition.

Finally, be sure to include a cover letter and other marketing materials.  This sample shows a professional presentation that gave the important facts of the book without overwhelming the reviewer with a lot of "fluff."

Reviewer's Tip - Packing Your Book, Part 1

Congratulations! Your book has been accepted for review by Joe's Review Site. Before shipping that review copy out, take a moment to prepare the book's package. It will make a big difference in how the book arrives at its destination. We thought we'd show you some of the good, the bad, and the gosh-darn ugly packages that have arrived at Feathered Quill. Hopefully this will give you an idea of how to pack your book. (Photos taken by Lynette Latzko and Ellen Feld)


First, we thought we'd show you samples of books that barely made it to our office:

Yes, the mailman decided to fold this book in half to fit it into a mailbox.  Cardboard works wonders to save your books from getting scrunched.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
Here's what happens when you use a plain, non-padded or bubble envelope to mail your book.  This one was trying to escape...
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
...and this book almost did escape.  Another day in transit and it might not have made it to our office.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
This large book was shipped in an even larger box.  It wasn't packed tightly and bounced around.  Shipped UPS, it arrived on a rainy day and was left outside in the rain by UPS.  Luckily, the book wasn't completely destroyed and we were able to salvage it.
 

Here's another view of that same box - the other side.  Ouch.  It's amazing that the book arrived at all.



Tomorrow we'll show you examples of books that were shipped the right way.  Stay tuned....
 

Author Interview with Kate Quinn

Today we're excited to talk with Kate Quinn, author of Mistress of Rome.


FQ: - Your debut novel reads so true and realistic - ancient Rome really comes alive in Mistress of Rome. What in your background/education helped you create such a realistic ancient world?

Thanks for the praise! I’ve always adored ancient Rome – my mother had an ancient history degree, so instead of the Three Bears and Little Red Riding Hood, I got Alexander and the Gordian Knot, and Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon. I saw Stanley Kubrick’sSpartacus when I was about eight and fell madly in love with Kirk Douglas; I just knew I had to write a book someday about a gladiator. It took a lot of research and reading to really feel my way into ancient Rome – not just the big events of history, but the atmosphere of daily life – but that was a pleasure rather than a chore.

FQ: I understand you wrote Mistress of Rome while a freshman in college. That's amazing. What inspired you to attempt such an undertaking during such a busy & stressful time in a young adult's life?

It seemed symbolic, starting a new book as I was starting a new life. And it gave me a means of escape – I might be three thousand miles from home and know absolutely no one in this brand new city, but I could escape into ancient Rome. I didn’t have a computer, so I used to hole myself up in the university computer lab. It was fairly surreal – vast, cheerless, subterranean, filled with neon lighting and a lot of desperate undergraduates writing papers. You wouldn’t have been too surprised to find Frankenstein on a table down there, waiting to be electrified into life. But I kept plugging away, mostly working all day weekends since classes kept me busy through the week, and somehow at the end of the first semester I had a book.

FQ: Thea is a survivor of Masada. How important is that fact to her character?

It’s the bedrock of her character, in both good and bad ways. On the negative side, she grows up with a whopping case of survivor’s guilt for living on while her family died, and this translates into a bad habit of cutting herself whenever life gets her down. But on the positive side, she acquires a certain mental toughness from dealing with all that guilt and pain. Without that gritty streak, she would never have been able to withstand the bad things life later at her later, like losing the man she loved, and becoming the mistress of a psychopathic Emperor whose idea of a good time was sticking flies on pens. Thea’s background definitely screwed her up, but she is at least functionally screwed up – and absolutely determined to survive.

FQ: Lepida is the sort of character you love to hate. Was it fun to write her parts?

Yes, she was lots of fun. I ended up being quite proud of her – I was certain there was no bigger bitch in all history. We can all instinctively loathe Lepida, because everybody remembers those sugar-sweet backstabbing Mean Girls from our high school years. Lepida is a Mean Girl squared; not one single redeeming quality. I suppose I have a bit of all my fictional characters in me somewhere, but I hope there isn’t anything of Lepida in me except maybe her dress sense (she does have great clothes!) Still, my husband says it makes him nervous that I had it in me to create her.


FQ: Gladiatorial games are quite violent and you don't sugarcoat the fights. Was it a tough decision to write realistic fight scenes rather than censored versions? As a woman writing about a man's game (primarily) was it tough to write the fights?

Fight scenes are always easy for me – I’m afraid I adore violent historical fiction. I read a lot of CS Forester and Bernard Cornwell growing up, so I’m always happy when I have a hero with a sword in hand. What was difficult about writing the Colosseum scenes was the violence against animals. At least the gladiators had a fifty-fifty chance of getting out alive; the poor animals were just rounded up in the arena and slaughtered. I may love a good battle scene in a book but I can’t bear seeing animals get killed, so I skipped over that part of things in Mistress of Rome as much as possible.


FQ: Why did you decide to write about Titus Flavius Domitianus rather than a better-known emperor?

I picked him because he was obscure. There are so many books already about Julius Caesar and Augustus and the better-known Emperors; I didn’t feel I could bring anything new to the table. When I first started plotting out Mistress of Rome I knew I needed an evil Emperor, and my mother and her ancient history degree supplied the names of the biggest baddies. But most of them – Nero, Caligula, Commodus – had already been written about countless times, or featured in movies. I landed on Domitian because he was interesting, and because I had him all to myself. There aren’t too many mentions of Domitian out there in historical fiction, which I like because readers won’t have any preconceptions going in.

FQ: Arius is a brutal, heartless gladiator, or is he? We see his love for Thea . . . what about his cute little three-legged dog? Were gladiators really allowed to have pets and also, was the pup a chance to show that Arius really was a gentle soul forced into fighting?

Arius is less brutal than brutalized. Allowed to grow up normally, he’d have probably been quite a cookie: I can see him as a construction worker coming home tired and happy to an adored wife and kids, and the only sign of his fighting side would be his absolute ruthlessness on the field during weekly football games with his buddies. But he didn’t grow up normal; he had so much misery and abuse that by the time he appears in Mistress of Rome he has nothing left but rage against the world – and a tiny, tiny soft spot that hasn’t quite been killed off. I gave him a dog because I felt I had to do something nice for him, having just torn him away from the love of his life. And I knew, even if he didn’t, that he would someday get Thea back, so I thought that in the intervening years he should have something to love so he didn’t get out of practice. Star gladiators had all kinds of privileges as long as they kept delivering victories in the arena, so the possibility of him keeping a pet was quite reasonable.
Feathered Quill,, thanks for having me!

To learn more about Mistress of Rome, please read our review at: Feathered Quill Book Reviews.

The iPad Meets the Children's Book

Apps for kids' stories start to proliferate for Apple's newest product

By Karen Springen -- reprinted with permission of Publishers Weekly

An interior image from Calloway's 'Miss Spider' app.On launch day last Saturday, Apple sold more than 300,000 iPads—and users downloaded more than one million apps and more than 250,000 ebooks from the iBookstore. Parents immediately started snapping up picture book apps from Apple's online store. In fact, children's stories held six of the top 10 paid iPad book-app sales spots as of press time. Typical prices for children's book apps range anywhere from $2.99 for The Cat in the Hat to $9.99 for Miss Spider's Tea Party.

So far the big winners seem to be household names. The current bestselling kid-lit iPad apps are The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss's ABC, Toy Story 2 Read-Along, How to Train Your Dragon, Miss Spider's Tea Party, and The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg. The top 10 freebie book apps also included kid titles: Toy Story Read-Along, Twilight, the Graphic Novel, Lite, Volume 1, and ABC Dinosaurs-iPad Edition. And in the iBookstore, as opposed to the app store, the top five paid children and teens' books were Eclipse, The Lightning Thief, Twilight, Breaking Dawn, and The Berenstain Bears Go to Sunday School.

Early Adopters and Careful Observers

Publishers and app makers are taking widely different approaches to the burgeoning app market, with some instantly jumping on the iPad bandwagon and others waiting to see how many moms and dads let their kids read stories on a $499 device. Some developers are tweaking existing apps, say for the iPhone or iPod Touch, while others are starting from scratch.

A screenshot from one of Disney's 'Toy Story' apps.On iPad launch day, Disney introduced its $8.99 Toy Story 2 app, and within the next eight weeks plans to add The Princess and the Frog, Beauty and the Beast,Winnie-the-Pooh, and, in June, a 3D app for Toy Story 3. Apps will boost print book sales rather than cannibalize them, said Jeanne Mosure, senior v-p and group publisher of Disney Publishing Worldwide. "It just makes children more excited about the prospect of reading more and buying more books." By the end of this year, Disney plans to sell apps for about two dozen of its 600 stories available through its Disney Digital Books initiative. Bob Iger, Disney's CEO, greenlighted Disney Publishing's iPad efforts when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad back on January 27.

Random House publishes the print versions of Dr. Seuss's titles, but app maker Oceanhouse Media licensed the iPad and iPhone rights to the entire collection from Dr. Seuss Enterprises. So far it has launched three apps (The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss's ABC, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas). Within the next few weeks, it will also introduce The Lorax as two separate apps (a book and a game).

Oceanhouse sells games separately because its president, Michel Kripalani, thinks that's what Theodor Geisel would have wanted. "Ted Geisel was all about teaching kids how to read. Every feature we put into this book has to support reading and teaching kids how to read." To wit, Oceanhouse's apps let kids touch an object, such as a hat, and see the word for it float forward. And as the narrator reads, the app highlights the corresponding text. As the number of iPad apps grows, Kripalani believes name recognition will become increasingly important in order to stand out (there are 170,000 apps for the more established iPhone, he noted). Oceanhouse plans to add more bells and whistles to its first three Seuss apps, which run on both the iPhone and the iPad.

Some companies, such as Scholastic, plan to offer iPad apps—but not for week one. "Kids are very comfortable with portable media and devices," said Deborah Forte, president of Scholastic Media. "Eventually this will be a platform that will have a very robust selection of content on it, and we should be there." Still, Forte—who noted that Scholastic has offered multimedia for a quarter century—is not rushing. "We're sort of trying to filter out all the noise and be really consumer-centric," she said. "I'm not quite sure that our demographic will be the biggest users in terms of the launch of the iPad." Will many parents buy iPads for their kids-or share their own? "We do think it's going to take a little bit of time to determine how relevant this platform is going to be for kids," Forte said.

The Power of Free

The app from the International Children's Digital Library gives readers access to more than 4,000 titles from around the world.As with the iPhone and iPod Touch, paid iPad apps aren't the only game in town-there's free material for kid-lit lovers, too. The app for the eight-year-old International Children's Digital Library, housed at the University of Maryland and largely funded by the National Science Foundation, lets iPad users read (but not download) more than 4,000 books from around the world. More than half are either written in English or have been translated into English.

Kids can also read International Children's Digital Library stories on regular computers, but the iPad is more like a real book, said Allison Druin, director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland. "The way children read books is sitting on their bed, sitting with their parents. Laptops are good, but an iPad is going to be even more freeing," she said. "The more that our technologies afford the feeling of what was once only able to be given to us through paper, the more we don't notice what the technology is, and we just care about the content."

The University of Maryland creators took their existing Web site and adapted it for the iPad. When kids rotate their device vertically to "portrait" mode, they see one page of a book. When they turn it horizontally to "landscape" mode, they see two pages. "We encourage kids to read how they're comfortable," said Ben Bederson, associate professor of computer science at the University of Maryland. "iPad is really the first time the International Children's Digital Library can be used with children in their parents' laps." As a result of the iPad's portability and convenience, he said, he projects that kids will spend more time with stories.

The University of Maryland is also enhancing its Story Kit app for the iPad, which lets kids create and share their own stories. Bederson's only critique: the frame around the edge of the screen (why not get rid of it and use the space for bigger children's picture book art?) and its pound-and-a-half weight (vs. the Kindle at 10 ounces).

Turning iPhone Apps Into iPad Apps (and Vice Versa)

Scholastic currently offers six apps.Many apps sold on the iPad app store are the same as the apps sold for the iPhone and iPod Touch. With the iPad, though, young readers no longer need to pan in and out to see a whole page. "Everything is basically the same, only the viewing is bigger," said Todd Parr, author of more than 20 titles available as apps for Apple devices, most recently The EARTH Book. "[But] the technology is there to experiment in so many different ways to deliver not just a book," he said.

The iPad gives readers more freedom. "You want people to be able to read it and interact with it on whatever their device of choice is," said Anthony Goff, publisher and director of Hachette Audio and Digital Media, which used ScrollMotion to create Parr's apps. "[But] the bigger and closer to book form and size the digital book is, the nicer it's going to look."

Some publishers have adapted or will adapt their iPhone apps for the iPad. Scholastic plans to enhance for the iPad its six existing iPhone and iPod Touch apps, which include I Spy Spooky Mansion, The 39 Clues Madrigal Maze, and Clifford's BE BIG with Words. "We have always prided ourselves on developing compelling media based on our books for every platform," said Scholastic's Forte. "This is just another platform to be present on."

TOON Books offers iPhone and iPad apps for Art Spiegelman's Jack and the Box and Jeff Smith'sLittle Mouse Gets Ready, designed by TOON Books plans to have its entire list available as iPad and iPhone apps by year's end.iStoryTime, and plans to release the 10 more based on the rest of its list by the end of the year. "We have a duty to make sure our books are offered to kids in every format possible," said Françoise Mouly, editorial director for TOON Books and art director for The New Yorker. Last year the now two-year-old company released its books online, so the iPad is a natural next step, she said. She doesn't want to overdo it, though, with too many glitzy options. "There's a slippery slope, where people start having sound effects and animation," she said. "Then it's a passive experience for the child."

Callaway Arts & Entertainment decided to begin with the book-size device. "The iPad is the full, rich banquet," said Nicholas Callaway, chairman of Callaway Arts & Entertainment, which nine months ago started working with Apple on an app for David Kirk's $9.99 Miss Spider's Tea Party. "It's like the difference between a small TV and IMAX. We decided to launch with the iPad to show [Miss Spider] in its full glory." (In a couple of weeks, Callaway will start selling a separate iPhone app for $6.99.)

The Miss Spider app lets kids do everything from play matching games to color pages filled with black-and-white images. Kids simply touch brushes on the screen. "You can paint so much better on an 8x10 screen than you can on the iPhone-size screen," said Callaway. Soon Callaway plans to let kids save their paintings in iPhoto and send them to their grandmothers—or to Kirk.

Callaway is also working on an app for The English Roses, its tween girls' series with Madonna. And in the fourth quarter of 2010, Callaway is debuting Dreamers, a new series by David Kirk, as an iPad app rather than as a print book. As it is doing with Miss Spider, Callaway plans to release about oneDreamers title per month. At some point, the apps—like movie DVDs—will include "bonus features" that would go "way beyond the back-jacket flaps," according to Callaway. "Being able to do video footage of our authors and creators is the kind of thing we are envisioning for our apps."

Unlike e-readers, which typically reproduce a traditional book experience on an electronic screen, these apps can offer animation, music, and many interactive features. "It's a whole different content creation mechanism," said Callaway.

Big players like ScrollMotion are creating new apps, but as was true with the iPhone, smaller players can—and will—jump in, too. Though it's not always easy. For example, because the iPad lacks a built-in camera, some apps require separate computer use to work. The creators of the A Story Before Bed storytelling service need to get grandparents to download the app—and then record video of themselves reading books for their grandkids on a regular computer. Only then can the grandkids use the app to see Grandma reading stories via their iPad.

In the end, the large number of designers bringing more stories to more people may be good news for the publishing industry. After all, as Apple has shown, Americans seem to have an insatiate app-etite.

Friday Finds

Welcome to FQ's latest edition of Friday Finds! Here's what we have in store for you this week:

Book Sales Fall

Book Sales Fell 1.8% in 2009, to $23.8 Billion, AAP Says


Jim Milliot -- Reprinted with permission of Publishers Weekly

Book sales fell 1.8% in 2009 to $23.9 billion, according to estimates released this morning by the Association of American Publishers. Figures are based on reports from 86 publishers who participate in the AAP's statistics program and Bureau of the Census data. The decline in 2009 follows a 2.6% drop in 2008. Trade sales were nearly flat in the year, slipping 0.1%, to $8.1 billion as adult hardcover sales rose 6.9% and children's paperback sales increased 2.2%. Sales of trade paperback declined 5.2% and children's hardcover sales fell 5.0%. The star of the year, of course, was the e-book category that AAP estimates grew 176.6%, to $313.2 million.

In other categories, mass market paperback revenue fell 4.0%, to $1.0 billion, and book club and mail order sales dropped 2.0%. Sales in the religious book category are estimated to have declined 9.0%, to $658.7 million. Sales of spokenword audio were reported down 12.9% (The Audio Publishers Association will issue its own statistics in late May).

Sales in higher education rose 12.9% to $4.3 billion, but sales in the elhi segment declined 13.8%, to $5.2 billion. Professional book sales fell 2.9%, to $3.3 billion.

The AAP estimates that total book sales grew at a compound growth rate of 1.1% in the 2002 through 2009 period.