A POEM | About Keeping Together Mom and Baby

Presentation of pandas by
 the China Books exhibit.

June 1, 2018–At BookExpo in New York's Javits Center.

I've been spending three days with the people who write...
And the people who print books, quite a sight.
There are some who have books in their store just to buy,
And others who lend them, it's easy as pie.
To market, to market, to buy a fat hen, 
BookExpo's the place for the work of the pen.

Panda tag. Not
Paddington Bear.

So that's where I've been, seeing what is for sale,
Whether books or the services that help on this trail.
Just today I went by to the ChinaBooks Booth,
Not seeing it, I thought, would've been très uncouth.
I'm glad that I went... It's my lucky day,
As the calendar shows, in the Chinese way.
I was picked to receive a cute furry panda

Tagged, like Paddington Bear,
but in Chinese... Is it a visa?

A little baby I named Peter... ánd a...
Mom enfolding him – something so rare,
People all envied my lovely pair.
The bears had a tag I was unable to  read.
I'm hoping you'll translate with all due speed.
Paddington Bear had a tag too, such a dear,
Peter and Mom had one stuck in her ear.
Peter's name I knew from the panda of yore [1953].
Tell me his Mom's name – what are friends for?
My new China friends took plenty of pix.
And cameras rolled, with dozens of clicks.

Television and still cams
hum and click.

How cute is that? 
If to the right people these pix wend,
Maybe to New York a real panda they'll send.
So many people gave the pandas their eyes,
Tracee at Schiffer Kids loved my new prize.
A fully grown panda weighs as much as I,
And neither of us slinks around on the sly.
But I confess to a problem that grew as I went,
Soon all my baggage made me walk with back bent.

With Tracee Groff at Schiffer Kids.

I carried these two pandas, lovely they are,
But with backpack and PEN bag, the distances grew far.
My backpack was full of big books to review.
The logistics were hard. What to do?  Who knew?
The only way forward at first it appeared, 
Was to divide up the pair, something I feared.
That way I could fit panda in what I had,
But breaking up a family would be awfully sad.
  Then I remembered,  there are booths in the Hall,

Crisis! My backpack was already full.
What to do??

Where problems they laugh at – they solve them all.
Why not stop by and beg them, and give them a test?
It's worth asking these experts, so I guessed.
No sooner did I decide to look out for some aid,
Than I passed by Publiship, which ships for the trade.
First, they gave me a bag with their name on the side,
A huge help, as both pandas fit snugly inside.

Panda pair bagged, zip-tied and
pandy-backed on my backpack.

Then they gave me as well a ziptie to tack
The bag with the pandas to the pack on my back!!!

Peter and his Mom settle in to
their New York City home. Welcome!

Thank you, Publiship, the experts who know How to ship books and stuff with a long way to go.
They're based in New Jersey, and have served 30 years,
And they are the ones who got us all home with no fears!

Check out this helpful company who gave this story a happy ending–publiship.com. They've shipped 200 million books in the last year, to 109 ports, in 48 countries. Thanks to Carrick Wilkie for his logistical aid. This paean to them was unsolicited.

Related posts: Day 2 of BookExpo

This blog is supported by BoissevainBooks.com, which publishes a book about another bear, Little Old Bear, by award-winning (Newbery honor roll) author-illustrator Hilda van Stockum. 

SELF-PUBLISHING | Amazon, BookBaby, IngramSpark

Sample Comparison of Services, from
Daily Cos. Ingram is more geared to
bookstores (accepts returns).

I am having to compare self-publishing options and this may be of use to other authors going through the same process. It is not easy to sort out what is the best way to go. Each step costs money. Good service has to be paid for. But there are ways to get better value for money. Here's a 2015 post that compares costs for a $14.99 book. 

Amazon/CreateSpace

Amazon is the way to sell ebooks, and it now owns CreateSpace, which is a good way to sell print on demand (POD) books but they have two problems. First, their discounting practices annoy bookstores and going with them makes it hard to get into bookstores. Ingram Spark is better. Second, they have given up a lot of their editorial and design assistance. They have become just a platform for distribution.

BookBaby: Good for eBooks

I had a good experience dealing with BookBaby and getting estimates of costs for putting out a book. The information came quickly and seemed reasonable, and were delivered professionally.

A review of BookBaby from the ebook publishing perspective in 2014 reported that the new management under President Steven Spatz is making positive changes but the reviewer recommends Smashwords and Draft2Digital over BookBaby as primary distributor, mainly because of the charges that BookBaby imposed for changes to the text that is filed.

The Independent Publishing Magazine in 2014 said that BookBaby is competitive on ebooks but not on printing books. I came to that impression myself by comparing quotes. One reason BookBaby can get away with noncompetitive printing charges is that it masks the charges by giving “royalty” estimates.

As of 2017 there were a lot of complaints about BookBaby. However, the overall recommendation by the Independent Authors Association is favorable.

TrustPilot has some more recent reviews and BookBaby is responding to the negative ones. Someone seems to be taking charge. The overall rating is 8.8 out of 10. That’s pretty good.

In sum, BookBaby seems to excel at book design and preparation, and distributing ebooks. On the printing side, the 2014 negative review on noncompetitive pricing seems still to be applicable.

Ingram Spark

Ingram Spark is great for POD books. They are getting more involved in assisting with the details of editing and design, providing guides and a list of certified providers, but they are not as good as BookBaby. They are significantly better than BookBaby and Amazon/CreateSpace as distributors.

All of these assessments are subject to change. I am in this marketplace and am working with these providers.

Hiring Someone to Help

Rather than try to figure out which distributor is best, one approach is to just hire a designer to help you through the process. Then you are stuck with the question where to find a good book designer. Not as easy as it sounds. There are people out there who claim to be book designers who are not qualified. Best to talk to someone who has been through the process and use someone who is recommended. Caveat emptor. Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment.

Summary

For someone knowledgable about publishing but nervous about making a mistake (the more you know, the more nervous you should be), the solution is either to use Ingram Spark for their guides and certified providers or to rely on BookBaby. Once the book is ready, BookBaby is an expensive route to go for POD, but is fine for ebooks. For someone new to the game, the best idea is to hire someone who has been through the drill. Goose Tracks has a strategy for releasing a book in steps, and structures his publishing program that he uses the services of all three of the main outlets for print-on-demand publishing.

LAURA INGALLS WILDER | Her Home in Mansfield, Missouri

Yesterday, going through books after the challenging immersion last week in #BookExpo2018,  I was dipping into "Dear Laura," a collection of letters to Laura Ingalls Wilder from her young fans.

That prompted me to send a letter to the woman in charge of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum in Mansfield, Missouri, Jean Coday.

I watched an interview with her on YouTube, about the Wilder Home and Museum, and was pleased that the Wilder books and home and the memory of the author are being kept alive so energetically. You can watch the interview here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl3CWzZACYQ

My mother, Hilda van Stockum Marlin (Newbery Honoree in 1935), was – like Wilder – a Viking Press author and we used to get each "Little House" book from May Massee, the editor, as it came out. 

My sister Olga Marlin was a special fan and she kept up a correspondence with Wilder. I asked Jean Coday whether any of that correspondence survives in the Mansfield home and museum. 

"Dear Laura" was published in 1996 by HarperCollins. 

If fan letters from Olga are not in Mansfield, they could be in the Herbert Hoover Library in West Branch, Iowa. Perhaps there is also another location for storage of these letters.

My sister Olga this year has just had published her second book, released by Scepter, which is located in New York, New York and Princeton, New Jersey. The book is called "Our Lives in His Hands: An Ordinary Couple's Path to Holiness," with a Foreword by Mary Ann Glendon.

Boissevain Books published a second edition of her first book, "To Africa with a Dream," which was initially published by Scepter.