Sydney Writers' Festival - Children's Festival of Moving Stories, November 2015

Sydney Writers' Festival - Children's Festival of Moving Stories

2015 was another busy year for Your Bookshop with regular monthly events at various venues. We finished off the year with a flurry of events with The Sydney Writers' Festival. Between the 16th to 27th of November, Your Bookshop team travelled to various libraries and venues throughout Western Sydney. From Penrith to Parramatta, and Blacktown to Bankstown, we were the bookseller to over 14 events.

During the two week festival school kids participated in workshops held by some of Australia's most popular authors and illustrators. Below are some of the highlights of the festival's events

Brother and sister writing team Alison and Nicholas Lochel

#Zarkora's author Nicholas Lochel with primary school kids

Tristan Bancks, Sally Rippin, Robert Hoge & Gus Gordon at Penrith School Day

Popular children's and teen author, Tristan Bancks was the MC at a special School Day Event at Penrith. A hugely popular day, students from participating schools enjoyed sessions with writers and illustrators, and had the opportunity to ask the storytellers questions about their craft.

Robert Hoge

Jacqueline Harvey enjoying work-shopping writing ideas with Primary school kids

kids lining up to get their copies of Alice Miranda books signed

Melissa Keil, Clare Atkins, Claire Zorn and Catherine Jinks

Melissa Keil and Clare Atkins with young fans

Catherine Jinks talking to High School Kids on using music as inspiration for creating characters.

Alison Tate talking to Primary School Kids about her kids series #Mapmaker 

Alison Tate, David Legge, Jacqueline Harvey & Nicholas Lochel

At a special evening event, popular children's author, Mem Fox teamed up with her long time friend and illustrator, Judy Horacek to celebrate the ten year anniversary of Where Is The Green Sheep and the launch of their latest collaberation, This And That. 

Sally Rippin talking about her bestselling Billie B Brown series

Tristan Bancks and the MY LIFE illustrator, Gus Gordon

Store Display at #Yourbookshop

From us at Your Bookshop, We'd like to thank the hard work of everyone involved in organising and running the events. We especially like to thank the talented authors, without whom there'd be no festival.

At Your Bookshop we're committed to giving back to our community by organising and sourcing authors for library, school and in-store events. 2015 was jam-packed with over 60 events. We hope to continue into 2016 with even more events. If interested in organising an event with us, please contact us via info@yourbookshop.net.au

Happy Reading!

Banafsheh Serov

My 3 Tips on Running Your Own Book Publicity Campaign - Emma Noble

This month my guest blogger is Emma Noble, the director of Noble Words Communications and Book Publicity. She has nearly 20 years of experience in promoting writers of fiction and non-fiction in the UK and Australia. I first met Emma when she did the publicity for my first book, Under a Starless Sky. Emma’s previous clients have included Michael Palin, Indira Nadoo, and most recently, AFL star Chris Judd.

In this month’s blog, Emma shares with us her trade secrets on generating publicity for a new book (though reading Emma’s tips, they can easily be applied to any new product).

Emma Noble

Putting together a basic book publicity campaign is quite straightforward. Book publicity is essentially  the exchange of quality content in return for access to an audience, in which you supply the content and a media organisation brings the market. Keep this concept in mind throughout your campaign and it will help keep you focused on pitching ideas that are both strong and relevant. My book, The DIY Book PR Guide, outlines a slightly more involved, seven-step ‘HAPPIER’ principle of book publicity but here are my top three tips for running your own campaign and earning your book some valuable coverage.

Tip 1: Know your onions

Make sure you are able to explain your book clearly and succinctly. Work up a 30-second ‘elevator pitch’ that describes and sells your book and its unique features in the most appealing way. You will use this description endlessly throughout the campaign so it’s worth taking the time to get it right. You will also use this as the basis for your (one-page) press release, a copy of which accompanies every book you send out to journalists. Speaking of journalists…

Tip 2: Put together a killer hitlist

Your media hitlist will include journalists in print (papers and magazines), broadcast (TV and radio), and online outlets of two types: those specialising in your area of interest and those too big to overlook. For example, if your book is about craft beer brewing, you would include Beer & Brewer magazine alongside the Seven Network’s Sunrise TV show and Fairfax Media’s Good Weekend magazine, and anyone else who might be interested in covering your book, perhaps under the broader topic of the rise in popularity of traditional hobbies.   You can create your own list or buy a pre-existing one from a media monitoring agency, depending on your personal time and budget constraints. Although, in terms of making sure the information is up-to-date and getting a feel for the media you’re pitching to, I believe nothing beats a list you create yourself. Once you have the media outlet, it’s usually easy enough to find a contact name online or by reading the newspaper or magazine or watching the TV show’s credits, for example. Immersing yourself in the media you’re pitching to will help you refine and perfect the tone of your pitches and is really a basic courtesy to the journalists you’re approaching.

Tip 3: Get creative with your angles

Angles are the story ideas arising from your book or personal background that you will pitch to media. There is little point in pitching an idea you know the outlet has run a story on before, or in offering them something their audience wouldn’t be interested in, or is unconnected to your book. Keep your eye on the news for opportunities to tie your book into current affairs. When an opportunity pops up keep your angles:

• Original perspective on a popular topic
• Relevant to the audience
• Clearly linked to your story or to the book.

Once you have your list of angles, simply match them to the outlets you’ve identified as potential targets (or add more outlets as the ideas suggest them). Now you have your press release, a list of great stories to pitch and an idea of where you’d like to see them appear. It’s time to get started. Happy pitching!

Emma Noble is the director of Noble Words Communications and Book Publicity. She has nearly 20 years of experience in promoting writers of fiction and non-fiction in the UK and in Australia. The DIY Book PR Guide: The HAPPIER Guide to Do-It-Yourself Book Publicity in Seven Easy Steps is her first book.

Your Bookshop News

Your Bookshop has expanded it's range in time for the Festive Season with gift ideas to spoil the whole family! Luxurious soaps to pamper, the craved after Beanie Boo’s, The Russell Glassware Collection and magical decorations for your tree.  PLUS OF COURSE BOOKS, BOOKS & MORE BOOKS.  Explore Your Bookshops current BEST SELLERS!
Make Me Lee Child $24.99  The Girl In The Spiders Web David Lagercrantz $24.99 A Mothers Story Rosie Batty $32.99        Percy Jackson and the Greek Heroes Rick Riordan$22.99  The Fate Of Ten Pittacus Lore$22.99 The 65 Storey Treehouse Andy Griffiths $12.99      Bloodline Conn Iggulden$32.99   Murder House James Patterson$24.99 The Taming Of The Queen Philippa Gregory $24.99
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My 3 Tips On Running A Successful Book Group - Annie McCann

My 3 Tips On Running A Successful Book Group By Annie McCann From Read3r’z Re-Vu

written on OCTOBER 5TH, 2015 under MY 3 TIPS.

Greetings readers,

This month our guest blogger on ‘My 3 Tips’ is Annie McCann, the founder and co-ordinator of  Read3r’z Re-Vu.  Established in 2008, Read3r’z Re-Vu is a a network of passionate book enthusiasts with over 200 online members and approximately 15 participants who meet once a month in Sydney. The group's philosophy is rather than analysing a prescribed text, they choose their own title based on a set theme each month. 

With great respect for printed book, members actively promotes and advocates their love of literature with various events throughout the calendar year. Examples of such events include ‘bookstore crawls’,  the Annual Athletics Carnival BBQ  at Parramatta Park,  Supanova Pop Culture, Book Expo Australia, and other literary events held by Australian Publishers.

I first met Annie in 2013, when she invited me to talk to Read3r’z Re-Vu about my then upcoming book, The Russian Tapestry.  During the session, the members asked me questions about the inspirations behind my books, the writing process and my journey from aspiring author to being published.Whenever possible, Annie invites Aussie authors to meet members at their monthly sessions. Past guests included Kate Forsyth, Greg Barron, Will Kostakis, Wanda Wiltshire, Sarah Ayoub, Gabrielle Tozer, Juliet M. Sampson, David M. Henleyand Kylie Fornasier. 

I was very impressed by the group's enthusiasm and love for the written language. Their discussions were lively and I enjoyed hearing each person's take on the theme. So when it came to choosing tips on running a successful book group, I asked Annie to share with us her 3 Tips.

1. Know your members

Take the time to get to know the members of your group. Understand their favourite genres, authors, even location. That way you’re able to enhance the quality of book club meetings and tailoring themes to what the group likes.

2. Dare to be different

In organising my network of readers, I didn’t want to be another cannon in the assembly line. One of the traits that make Read3r’z Re-Vu unique is our sessions. We allocate a theme per session rather than a prescribed text. A theme enables consistency, however, also allows members to choose any title for review that relates to the theme, encouraging wide reading.

3. Have fun with it

Don’t just schedule book club meetings, get together and organise different events to keep things interesting like movie nights, picnics even attending author signings and festivals.

If interested to learn more about Re-Vu Newz, join their quarterly newsletter with summaries of upcoming events and activities. For details, visit

www.litlovers.com

or find them on Facebook

Thank you for stopping by ‘My 3 Tips’.  I hope you’ve enjoyed Annie’s tips.

If you wish to be part of ‘My 3 Tips’ or have a topic you’d like us to cover, please contact me via BanafshehSerov@gmail.com

This blog will also appear on Your Bookshop’s blog.

Till then,

Happy Reading

This post originally appeared on Banafsheh Serov's website. 

YB's Nicholas at Sydney's Comic-Con

Our staff have always been fans of Pop Culture. There's great excitement whenever Supanova and Comic-Con is in town, with several staff requests to get the weekend off.

One of our Rhodes staff, Nicholas spent Saturday morning (September 19th) at the AIE's (Academy of Interactive Entertainment) stand where he's currently a second year student. After a fun morning green-screening participants, he spent the rest of the afternoon exploring other exhibitions at Comic-Con,

The following is a visual diary of his day and the new friends he met along the way...