School Visits coming soon!!

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.

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Olympic Trials!!


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.

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Back From Battle Creek



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.

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Activity Book-Volume One (Wrestling The ABCs)


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!
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A Children's Picture Book for Wrestling Fans of All Ages

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A New Book in the Works!


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!!
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A Children's Picture Book for Wrestling Fans of All Ages
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Cover Art...and our ISBN numbers!!!


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!



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A Children's Picture Book for Wrestling Fans of All Ages
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The ABCs of Recreational Writing!


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.

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click here "Wrestling The ABCs"
A Children's Picture Book for Wrestling Fans of All Ages
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One, Two, Three...Wrestle!


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.
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click here "Wrestling The ABCs"
A Children's Picture Book for Wrestling Fans of All Ages
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Vegas Vendor's Village


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.
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click here "Wrestling The ABCs"
A Children's Picture Book for Wrestling Fans of All Ages
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ABCs set 3

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More Venues


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!).

Please see our order form in right margin

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click here "Wrestling The ABCs"
A Children's Picture Book for Wrestling Fans of All Ages
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Viva..Las Vegas!!


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.

Please see our order form in right margin

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click here "Wrestling The ABCs"
A Children's Picture Book for Wrestling Fans of All Ages
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Double Good News!!!



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!

Please see our order form in right margin

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click here "Wrestling The ABCs"
A Children's Picture Book for Wrestling Fans of All Ages
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Yipee!! Book Orders Are Rollin' In!!!


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?

Please see our order form in right margin

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click here "Wrestling The ABCs"
A Children's Picture Book for Wrestling Fans of All Ages
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Promo Packs


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

Please see our order form in right margin

Visit our Book Store
click here "Wrestling The ABCs"
A Children's Picture Book for Wrestling Fans of All Ages
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Is it ABC's, or ABCs?


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.

Please see our order form in right margin

Visit our Book Store
click here "Wrestling The ABCs"
A Children's Picture Book for Wrestling Fans of All Ages
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