Wrestling The ABCs: 2008

DUE Dates!

Wow have there been a lot of due dates in our family this past month. We've had four new births in our family, which is so wonderful, and our book related due date is January 15, 2009. At least that is what our publisher has it listed as on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. So...unless we hear anything different at our meeting with them tomorrow, it should be on shelves and available wherever books are sold on January 15, 2009. That date works really well for us, as that is the beginning of the youth wrestling club season. Our illustrator, Robert Lence, has also contacted us regarding a few dates that he wants to set up with us for selling, signing, promoting the book. So, things are looking as well as can be expected when you are awaiting a due date.

Our graphic designer on our book project had so many neat cover and page layouts. This is most like the one (or similar) that will be the cover for the book (both the hard and soft copies). Things are moving along as scheduled, and if all goes as planned, Tom and I will be going on the road to a big college wrestling competition in Iowa (wrestling country!) mid January. Of course things don't always go as planned, but we've got our fingers crossed!

This is just one of the page layout samples that were presented to us at our meeting last week. We will be getting the dust jacket and the interior front and back spreads to look at next week. How exciting.

Our puppy beans is doing great. I'm getting a foster puppy tonight or tomorrow (just for a bit while it's "real" foster mom is on vacation).

Izzy and Logan got their report cards. Logan got all As and one B, Izzy got all As. I'm pleased!!

Font Conference

This is a super funny and clever video that one of my writing pals sent to me. It's about 2-3 minutes long, but so worth it! Here is the link:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1823766

We met with our publisher and editor yesterday to go over some of the cover and interior layouts that the graphic designer had put together. We loved almost every page presented, so ended up piecemealing it all together to get a great layout.

We also decided to postpone the release date from December 2008, to January 2009 in order to broaden and lengthen our window of opportunity for awards. I had never considered this, but our publisher and editor both feel strongly about it, and also believe in our book and feel we could actually win an award or two.

Our editor wants to see if Robert would be interested in doing more illustrating for their publishing house. So...I'll approach that issue with him soon.

We got a new puppy a few weeks ago, and he has been such a great addition to our family. He's only 9 weeks old now, but seems like he's been with us forever. He fits our family like a glove.

Well, unfortunately, our meeting today was cancelled (our publisher is very sick). I do hope Marian is up and at 'em soon.

O.K. So this is supposed to be book related. Well... I just have to say, book related topics will be on hold for the next couple of weeks, as starting tomorrow, I am fostering a mama cat and her three babies, as well as five 2-3 week old abandoned kittens who need to be bottle fed, AND two foster puppies whom we hope to get adopted out at the "Meet Your Best Friend at the Zoo" at the end of the month. Needless to say, we will be crazy for the next couple of weeks.

On a book related note, Tom and I do have a meeting on the 18th with the graphic layout designer to go over some ideas and font syles, etc.

We've added a new page on our main website, where kids can join our fanclub for free. That makes them a "Reading Referee" and they get a membership package which includes a sticker, tattoo, pencil, crayons, bookmark, reading log, coupon and certificate! It should be fun, and there are links for kids to send in artwork, book reviews, book recommendations, and more!

Tom got a hold of this really awesome picture of him and Robert Lence together with the team. I think our publisher may use this on the back of our book also. I know Robert really wanted it to be on the book, so it probably will. There are some other familiar faces in the photo too, like Tom Canty, Tim Fagan, Bernie Knoblich, Steve Fraser and Pat McKay. If you recognize anyone you know in this photo, please email us or comment below who it is, as we will list the names we know on the back of the book under the photo.

We're still waiting to hear from the graphic layout designer about some of our ideas for the book. Can't wait. I'll post again after we get in touch with her.

We are on top of the world! We had a meeting with our publisher and editor today. They had a few last minute revisions for us to make, but we are still on schedule. Robert has finished all the final illustrations and is working on the hardcover two page spreads for front and back of book. So far, things are still on schedule for a December release date. Our publisher also mentioned that she sold some copies of our book to some educators at an intervention conference they attended last week!

Things are moving along quite smoothly these days. Our illustrator is done with all the illustrations. He's finalizing the front cover and back cover (inside and outside) illustrations. We meet with the graphic layout designer next week. Hopefully then we will know how much longer before it goes to press. Robert Lence is amazing. His illustrations are so darn cute! We love them all!

I know it has been absolutely AGES since my last post here, but that's what happens when you have a child that just graduated from college. You have parties to throw, college to prepare for, driving lessons, etc. So....anyway. Our head shots have been sent in to the publisher for the back of the book, the rest of the rough drawings have been sent to us by Robert (we have to pick the ones we like-yikes!, they're all so good!) Let's see...all of our book reviews and endorsements have been submitted for the book, and Robert is working like mad to get the cover art done for some posters that our publisher want to take to an upcoming book conference! So, that's about it for now. Next post will hopefully include a sneak preview of one of the final illustrations, or possibly even the new and final book cover!

Everything is off to the proofer. We are awaiting Robert's final illustrations, which if submitted by July 31, we will have a release date of December 1, for the book. Whoo, hoo! I can't wait. That will be perfect timing too. The clubs will just be getting started, and it will be enough time for Christmas orders too. We'l keep our fingers crossed that all will go well for Robert with illustrating. We've had to postpone our fall school visits. All the administrators were totally fine with the change of schedule. i also had to postpone my writing class at the Rec Center until the winter semester, as I'd like to have our book with us for that.

Well, here I am again, in my Vendor's Village booth at the Olympic Wrestling Trials in Vegas. It's about as boring as yesterday here, possibly even more so (although it's early yet). At any rate, yesterday was slow again, only sold about another 30 books. I really would be shocked if today was any better. But....our evenings (after the trials) have been fun. We went to the Bellagio for dinner last night with Robert and Emil (dinner was delicious-we ate at Noodles, an authentic Japanese restaurant) After dinner we went to Roberts room and he showed us all the book illustrations he has thus far. He's at R., so not much longer. He knows we want the book by Dec. in order to have it for Christmas, so that's good. Now I have to check with our publisher and see when they need everything by in order for the book to be printed and in stores by December!

One exciting thing here at Vendor's village yesterday was that Ashton Kutcher was here watching wrestling, and he came in to Vendor's village to watch some of the stuff in here, Tom talked to him for a few minutes. Apparently he's pals with Dan Gable, cause he was walking around and hanging out with Dan's wife. He took one of our book business cards! He also signed one of our books for Robert to give to a friend. Numbskulls Tom and I didn't even think to ask for an autograph-we just talked to him!!

Yesterday was not as productive as I had hoped (we only sold 20 books). Tom doesn't seem to mind though (I think he really just wanted to come to Vegas!). We sure had a lot of fun though yesterday. Robert and his friend Emil came in late in the afternoon, so when our day ended here, everyone got together for dinner. Steve Fraser joined in too!

Today is just getting started. The first session is in, and then there will be a break. The location of the vendor's village is really lousy. All of the vendors were complaining yesterday about getting practically no business. Hopefully today will be better. We got here kind of late yesterday too, so that doesn't help.

Our Activity Books were shipped here to our store yesterday. They look great! We are all packed and ready to hit Vegas! Let's hope our book is a big hit and we won't have to ship much back home. Our editor emailed me today and wants to meet when we get back to go over Robert's illustrations for the picture book. I just know Robert is coming up with some really awesome drawings. Can't wait to see him (and the pics) in Vegas!

Our “Wrestling The ABC’s” crayons have been delivered. Tom was surprised how much room 3,000 boxes of crayons took up. I told him just wait til the books come in!! Yikes..we'll need a new addition to our house. We’re getting pretty excited for our trip to Vegas, and, the activity book should be in late this week or early next! This is so much fun!!!

WOW! Tom and I just found out that included in our Vendor's Village fee is a full color 1/2 page ad in the official program for the Olympic Wrestling Trials. I can't even believe it. And their fee is already extremely reasonable and includes tickets to the event for two people for all three days. They also put us on their website and the e-newsletter update that they send out to all their members and other folks. We've been getting hundreds of visitors to our site every day, from everywhere! So...now we have to design an ad. We have until the 30th of this month, so we're good.

I have four school visits booked for early next school year. That should be fun. I can't wait. My writing class at the rec. center will be starting in the fall too.

We haven't received our activity books yet, but the anticipated release date is June 6, 2008. You can order the activity books on our Wrestling The ABCs website, or on our Davids Gold Medal Sports store website. Our store website is the best place to order, as you can place bulk orders for discounted prices, as well as receiving the shipping and handling costs at checkout.

We just got in from Pittsburgh (family related-not book stuff), and we decided to take a little breather from book stuff, at least until time to head out to Vegas). We already have enough venues in mind (some scheduled, some not), to take up the rest of the summer, and then we have school visits that we will do from September-November (Tom's too busy with his business after that to take time for school visits).

Our Ilustrator Robert Lence, is going to Vendor's Village with us, so I'm pretty excited about that. He's bringing some of the book illustrations with him for a sneak preview!

So from this point on, we shouldn't really be too busy. We are grateful that this activity book and our picture book will sell themselves. We just have to be in the right place at the right time. I know several writers, and it seems they have to spend so much time promoting themselves and their book. And I know (since they are all published through houses, not self published like us), I know that they really get very little regarding royalties, and even less for my friends who are agented.

That is something we won't have to deal with. We do of course have to recoup our publishing costs (about 900 picture books sold will do it, and about 800 activity), but after that, we are in the clear, and each book sold is 100% our profit. If we sell all 3,000 of our activity books, we will make a $10,000 profit! Haven't done the math on our picture book yet. But it will be a higher profit margin.

So...buy our books!

Tom and I worked a bit on the 1,2,3 Wrestle! book. Basically, we just talked about it some more. He wants to continue with it, but doesn't want to get it published until the Wrestling the ABCs has been out for about a year.

We just got home from Battle Creek. We’d been there since Friday afternoon, so I am whooped! We did get some book orders for our book though in addition to all of the great business we got for Davids Gold Medal Sports! The Activity book Volume One proof will be arriving tomorrow. Assuming all is good, we can get the Activity Books printed and delivered here in plenty of time for VEGAS!!!!

Also a partial shipment of some of our promo stuff arrived as well. It all looks great and can’t wait to get the rest later this week.

WOW!, so much has happened since last post. First of all, and most exciting of all too, is we received our book forward from Dan Gable. It is so awesome. It was well worth the wait. We also have received two more book reviews. One from Joe McFarland, the head wrestling coach at the University of Michigan, and the other from Bryan Van Kley, the publisher of W.I.N. magazine. So that's pretty good. Not sure if I really want to hold off publishing any longer waiting on more to come in. We'll probably start putting them all together to give to our editor so she can send everything off to the proofer. Then, it's just back to waiting on Robert's illustrations.

Tom and I are going to a state wrestling tournament this weekend in Battle Creek, so hopefully I will make some sales this weekend. Our activity book turned out soooo great. Tom really put a lot of work into it. Here it was my idea, and Tom pretty much created the entire thing. It is great. When we start running low on those we'll created Volume Two. We have 3,000 copies of Volume One. Depending on how long it takes to sell out of those, will determine when we start working on the next one!

We have a lot more promo stuff coming in the mail soon too. Pencils, crayons, hats, t-shirts, water bottles, posters, brochures, flyers, business cards, magnets, pins.......tons of stuff!

Well, although our "Wrestling The ABCs" isn't out yet, and we haven't even typed a rough draft of our "Wrestling, One, Two. Three," I have cleaned up and fine tuned the first manuscript of my "I Wanna Be A..." series. I have several in the works, and plan to market it as a series. A friend of ours who helped with our Wrestling The ABCs book has had several books published, and his latest publisher is interested in my "I Wanna Be A...." series, as she is starting a new line of books...picture books for kids! Lucky me.. so I need to get going on that while we await the publication of our other stuff!!

For our Activity Book that is. Title: Wrestling The ABC's Activity Book-Volume One!

The activity book is ready to submit to our publisher and should be ready in about 5-6 weeks. Hopefully it will or else we won't have it to take to Vegas with us and that'd be a huge bummer! One of our friends is married to a German wrestler, they live in Germany, and she teaches English to German elementary students, so Tom thinks maybe she'll want some copies of the book to read to the kids in English.

Also, my sisters have both been talking up our book at their elementary and junior high schools, and they want us to do some author visits at the start of next school year. Cool!

This is the cover of one of the books my ROAR Writers wrote two years ago. I'm expecting more good stuff from my Recreation Writing Class this fall!

Spoke with the recreation director yesterday at the Hazel Park Recreation Center, and they are setting me up with a class this fall (September sign up). I'll be teaching a writing class for kids 4th grade and up. We'll be writing and illustrating books on their favorite subject in my perfected ABC style! I'm pretty excited about that. Since I started subbing full time, I miss my ROAR writers a ton, so this will help fill that void.

Tom wants to start writing the next book, “1,2,3, Wrestle!” I’d rather not, but he’s already working on it. We also have the activity book almost ready to go to print. Haven’t talked to Robert for over a week (don’t want to bother him...we’re rushing him as it is!). Hope all is going good with his illustrations.

Marian plans to take some of our book promo stuff to their table at the Ann Arbor Book Festival. The book won’t be done yet, so personally, I’d rather not go. She can take our stuff and do her marketing magic. Hey, it’s what she does!!

So, at this point, we are just coasting a bit, waiting for illustrations. Tom doesn’t want to do any more promoting until the book comes out. Fine with me! Things have been pretty relaxing and low key here for us. We have secured almost all of our excerpts from our wrestling heroes. Now we are waiting for our review blurbs to come in. We got one already from a Lee Roy Smith, who is the executive director of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. One down, let’s hope we get a few more. Marian said three would be good to get, so we’ll aim for that.

Well, Tom and I have made our reservations for Vegas. Yup, we will be official vendors at the Vendor’s Village during the three day Wrestling Olympic Trials (June 13-15). Thousands of spectators, lots of shoppers, people there with money to burn...we should do really good at this event. Tom thinks we’ll sell several hundred copies. I think more. Heck, we’ve already sold almost a hundred copies on our website, and the book isn’t even out yet.

This brings up another topic that we’ve been debating about. How much do we want to promote our book. Tom feels that the book is going to pretty much sell itself (at the right venues of course), and that all the promotion in the world isn’t going to sell it at small random events (library visits for example). I’m thinking he’s probably right. I had planned on contacting at least our local library, but now, don’t think I will.

I do still plan on doing school visits (at least in Hazel Park). Those will be a guaranteed $300 per visit. The visit is free, but we require an advance order of at least 25 copies, so depending on what the teachers/students preorder, hard or soft, it will be at least a $300 visit. And close, so no travel expenses.

I’m not real keen on the idea of book store visits either. Those aren’t worth the time or effort most the time for a niche market book like ours. I say, tournaments, wrestling venues of any sort, a few school visits here and there, and that’s about it. It’s fun selling the book, but it’s not that big of a deal for us, just a fun project that is almost done, and where it goes, it goes.
Please see our order form in right margin

The AAU Folkstyle World Championships are going on down at Cobo this weekend. Frankie took a bunch of my book promo stuff and is working on sales for the book this weekend while she’s down there.

We met with our editor on Thursday morning. Things are falling into place nicely, but still not sure of the publication date yet. She said the publisher did really well with sales at the MRA last weekend. She’s putting together some educator packs for our book. Those are big selling points at the MRA, and there’s another MRA conference coming up later in the summer that we’ll be able to attend.

Also I'll be setting up some book promo and order forms at the USGWA National Championships next weekend. It's the hugest girl's wrestling meet around, and it's a two day event (lots of moms, and moms buy books!).

I'm so excited about Marian plugging our book at the 2008 Michigan Reading Association Conference this weekend. I wish I could be there! Unfortunately, I have to work at our final Underdog Tournament (State Finals). But that's O.K., because I will probably be able to sell more books to these wrestlers than Marian would at the conference. I really think these tournament are going to be where we sell the most.

Speaking of selling our book. Tom and I are going to Las Vegas in June for the Olympic trials, and all the big players will be there, so hopefully our book will be done and we can sell it there!

Also, Tom said Asics will make all our posters. They always make them up for Tom for free for events and such, so we'll have them do all the posters we need for school visits, etc.

Well, today couldn’t have started off on a better note. I got an email from our publisher, Marian, and our book is going to be represented at not one, but TWO big events this spring. The first one is at Cobo Hall, at the end of this month, the MRA. I’ve attended this event several times, and it is awesome. So many new books on display, sneak previews (like for our book), pre-orders, freebies, etc. So Robert is working on something right now for Marian to display posters and such at the event. Yippee!!

The second event is the Ann Arbor Book Festival, which I have also attended in the past. In fact, that is where I met Cynthia Furlong Reynolds, who wrote grandma’s life story!
Again, for this event we will only be able to take pre-orders and give out fliers for school visits, bookmarks, etc. but it will be good advertising and a good way to get the word out.

On another good note, two coaches, one from the UP, one out of state, emailed me yesterday with team orders, both for 25 copies of the book. We are doing so well, especially considering the book isn’t even out yet!

What a looooong weekend! We left early Friday morning for Battle Creek for the high school team finals which took place all day Friday and Saturday. Sunday was a youth MYWAY wrestling State Finals tournament so we stayed for that as well.

We got a lot of orders for our Wrestling The ABCs over the course of the wrestling weekend. And when we got home last night, I was pleasantly suprised when I checked my e-mails and discovered that I had received even more preorders while we were gone! How exciting is that?

A lot has happened since last post! Robert has sent us two more sets of cover art sketches-I love them all!!

We met with our publisher again this past Thursday, and all is in order to go to the proofer. We’ve set up a conference call with Robert for our meeting on March 4th.

Tom and I are submitting our bios. and dedication page this week. Tom and I are brainstorming what we envision the illustrations to be like for each page and have to have that ready for our conference call meeting with Robert.

I’ve been busy putting together more promo stuff. I made some fun little kits that include a bumper sticker, stickers, tattoos and book marks. For now I’m giving them away at tourneys but will probably sell them for $2.00 eventually.

Lots of clubs and blogs have linked up to our book site-Awesome!!! You can see them on our friends/links page http:www.wrestlingtheabcs.com

We met with our editor again yesterday. We are so lucky to be able to meet in person with our editors instead of doing everything via email and telephone. It feels so much more personal. Like we're not just a piece of paper or a computer screen to them. At any rate, the meeting went well. We had a few questions regarding some specific grammar issues that she is taking up with the chief editor, but other than that, it is good. We are meeting again next week to discuss a few things, and after that we should be ready to have Robert get going on more illustrations.

I talked to our publisher today. I was curious as to exactly when our book would get assigned its ISBN number. Unfortunately its not going to happen until we are a little closer to going to press. I just feel like having that magic number somehow makes us more official. I love Marian. Her reply was, “Don’t worry, you are official.”

Spent an hour or two today getting our book site link added to about 30 youth wrestling clubs (some in-state, some out of state). Nobody said, “No”, so hey, tomorrow I’ll hit 30 more!

Tom and a I met with our editor on Tuesday, and it was a breeze. She didn't want to change anything with our prose, just a few grammatical errors, and all should be in order for a final meeting on February 5th. Robert is working on an animation for us to use for our website, as well as revised cover art. Until then we will use the preliminary artwork he sent in December.

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