8 Met someone who definitely wants to come to Herb’s Café for my reading Sat. April 20th. So much so, in fact, he took the 8×10 poster with him. Oops!
7 Two tweens bought Three Spaces. Poetry lives on in the younger generations!
6 Several children listened to me read for 15 minutes and I never saw them squirming or playing with the housewares stuff once!
5 Someone came up to me to ask if I worked there!, and when I said I was a visiting poet she said “Oh, wow, I love poetry!” (you don’t hear that too often)
4 Several dear friends, neighbours, and a dear old friend from my Harrowsmith magazine days (I hadn’t seen her in years!) visited and hung out with me a long time as I signed books etc.
3 One of my readers bought me a latte!
2 My daughter wore a very similar lace top, purple vest, and black leggings, because
she “Wanted to be just like” me.
and the #1 Moment…
Chapters put out decorations on the table and a beautiful pillow and wicker
chair for me. My 7-year-old daughter took one look and said,
“Hey, last year you just got the empty desk. Maybe you’re a little bit more
important than last year!” (Me: ha! But I certainly was comfortable!)
Thanks to the League of Canadian Poets and Chapters Pointe Claire for your wonderful support, and to everyone who came out for making the launch of Three Spaces such a success!
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My daughter Kayla and I realized a dream a little over a year ago by publishing our book of illustrated children’s poems, The Groovy Granny. You’ve shown such great support by buying autographed copies (something that just tickled Kayla!) and inviting us to your schools.
Guess what? It’s now a Groovy ebook for just $2.99 on Kindle, iBooks, Kobo, Nook Books and more!
If you don’t have an ereader, that’s okay, most of these have a FREE app that lets you read right on your computer desktop or laptop!
Here’s the link to the blog post I wrote when copies of The Groovy Granny arrived. It explains how The Groovy Granny came to be, and will also give you links to buy copies of The Groovy Granny in paperback or hardcover if you’re interested. (We also sign and ship copies on request).
Thanks for reading and reviewing The Groovy Granny!
If you’d told me a decade ago if I’d have my own publishing company, I’d have never believed it.
If you’d told me I’d have my poetry collection in a bookstore in an online music store run by the guy who started Apple computers, I’d have wondered what you were drinking. Then, I’d ask you to pour me some, too.
I’ve only had iced tea today, so I know I’m really seeing what I’m seeing: my book ‘Leap,’ has been launched in the ibookstore of itunes–so you can read it on your ipad, ipod, iphone, and more! Take a look:
I used to balk at the thought of reading poetry on any digital device, but you readers have told me time and time again how my words have affected you in big and small ways (thanks so much for telling me, by the way, and for sharing my poems with others, on both special and sombre occasions.) So, I’ve come to the conclusion that if the poetry comes to you in a hardcover, paperback, on an ipad, an ipod, an iphone, your Mac, PC, Blackberry, Sony reader, or the very latest ‘it’ tablet (which according to my engineering hubby is the Asus Eee Pad transformer) as long as the message gets to you, it doesn’t matter how you’re receiving it.
So, go ahead. Take the ‘Leap’ into reading poetry as an epub, and when you do, please LIKE it on FB, and give me a star rating and a short review – those really help spread the word.
If you’re not sure about jumping into this sea of ebooks yet, perhaps trying mine first would be a good way to dip your toes in the water. You can download a free Adobe Digital Editions ereader for your Mac or PC right here Leap the epub for Mac, PC, and ereaders on Lulu.com When you download the epbub -a very easy process – you can read it on that, as well as on a variety of devices like the Blackberry, Sony reader, and other cool tablets.
Poetry isn’t going away – not by a long shot. It’s changing with the times, boldly accommodating itself to new technologies—and coming out cooler than ever. What’s not to LIKE! about that?
Leaping into the itunes ibookstore, June 9, 2011
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“The opening poem, ‘Gadget Snow Pants,’ is pure genius.”
“I can’t wait to read it to my grandkids and tell them that a special little girl drew all of these amazing pictures. They are going to LOVE it!
“Priceless!”
“Echoes of Seuss, but the humor is all Heather Grace Stewart.”
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts on ‘The Groovy Granny,’ on Twitter, my Facebook page, and in the comments section at the link above.
Sales in the first three weeks went so well I decided to add the ISBN at the back (this is an important code to make cataloguing the book easier), and added some reader reviews to the new dust jacket. All three books are available here: http://www.blurb.com/user/store/HeatherGS Please share this link with others –grandparents, teachers and parents –who might be interested in “The Groovy Granny.”
Signed copies are also available via Paypal, just email me at writer@hgrace.com to make arrangements.
Thanks for reading and sharing!
Heather & Kayla
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I’m a previously published non-fiction author, so why self-publish The Groovy Granny? Why, when there’s so little money in it, and such a small audience? Here’s why.
by Heather Grace Stewart
Update: You can now preview and buy The Groovy Granny, first published in 2011, on Amazon! The young illustrator went on to illustrate the chapter dividers for my 2020 novel, Lauren from Last Night.
There are some things in life you don’t need to question. The times I haven’t hesitated in my life because my gut was telling me ‘yay!’ not ‘nay!’ —like marrying the man I love, deciding where to live and build a home, and deciding to start my own business in 1999—have all been fantastic successes, and have led to even more joy in my life.
Sometimes, you just know. After our daughter kept drawing illustration after illustration for my poems—of her own free will, because the poems inspired her to draw—I just knew that self-publishing this children’s book was the right path to take. It had already been a very, very long path with this project, but in early 2011, I felt a bend in the road that I knew was an important one to take.
The Groovy Granny is a project over 10-years in the making. I began writing the poems on my weekends in 1998 and 1999 while working as an editor at a children’s magazine, Wild! The children I met through my work and my young nieces inspired me with the silly things they said and did. But I was a busy associate editor at four sister-magazines at the time, so I only had time to send out the manuscript a couple times.
Surprisingly, it didn’t take long for that manuscript to get noticed. Bubble Mud and Other Poems was published as an ebook by Electric E-Book Publishing in 2000, and illustrated by an Australian graphic designer. I always call it a book ahead of its time. ‘What’s an ebook?” almost everyone asked. Most of my readers bought the PDF on a CD-rom, just so they’d have something tangible to show the kids before popping it in the CDrom drive. Remember, there were no e-readers at the time!
The book was nominated for an International E Book Award (EPPIE) but failed to get any other attention¬ from the media or critics – partly because the small Canadian company went under. But I did receive numerous emails from children readers, telling me how much they’d loved reading my poems. ‘The Groovy Granny’ was the poem most readers mentioned as being a favourite. I grinned, and mentally filed that away.
After the birth of our daughter in 2005, I felt inspired to rework some of the poems—and to write many, many more. Then began the long task of searching through Writers Market and Poet’s Market and Children’s Writer’s Market for the right publisher.
I’ve spent the last five years looking for a publisher. The book has gone through many revisions, and there have been both cuts and additions. There are several more poems in the original manuscript, like ‘Lunch with a Llama,’ that I didn’t publish in The Groovy Granny, because I soon discovered a kids’ book that long would have been too expensive to illustrate and print in colour. I’ve sent it out to agents here and in the U.S. and publishers both big and small, in Canada, the U.S., and the UK.
As a traditionally-published kids’ book author (I had two non-fiction books about our PM’s published with Jackfruit Press in 2006 and 2008), I thought I’d have a slightly higher chance at finding a traditional publisher. Most of the time, at least, I got personalized letters back, with handwriting, and everything! Many, in their rejection letters, wrote me that it was a ‘high quality’ manuscript and they ‘wished they didn’t have to turn it away,’ but this book ‘did not suit their list at this time.’ A few said they’d held onto it longer than usual in hopes of being able to publish it, but in the end, couldn’t afford to print a full-colour book of poems.
I soon realized lesson 101 in business: it all comes down to money. I reached one agent on the phone after she’d carefully looked over my work, and said she was only looking to represent illustrators at that time, but “wished she could represent me,” adding, “It’s so good, you can sell this book to publishers yourself!”
That’s when I finally stopped questioning the quality of my work—so I’m grateful for that stage of my journey. I decided to forget about the agent for a while, and started looking for a richer publisher. However, when I did that, it proved even harder to get anyone’s attention.
For example, Scholastic took a year with my letter to them. A year. To answer just a query letter. I did call to follow up, but never got any phone calls back. When they finally wrote back, they said ‘we have returned your material to you.’ One problem: I hadn’t sent them material. I had only sent them a query asking if I could.
I threw darts at that letter.
I’m kidding. I circled parts and pinned it up on my wall beside my desk to remind me I’m often dealing with ridiculousness, and I can’t take life—or rejections—too seriously. Life’s too short for that.
When my daughter came to me with her first drawing for the book (it was a girl hanging from a clothesline by her feet, and it cracked me up) I decided I wanted to be in control of this project. I wanted to choose the cover, to set the royalties (much higher for me without a traditional publisher), and above all, I wanted Kayla to be the illustrator (something that likely wouldn’t happen with a big traditional publisher—at least that’s what the CEO’s of a couple publishing firms told me).
So, now I have my own publishing company, Graceful Publications. with a publisher prefix number and my own block of ISBN numbers waiting to be placed on The Groovy Granny, and perhaps even my next poetry collection for adults (2012).
Making and selling books won’t pay off our mortgage—but I’m not doing it for that reason. I’ll continue to sell my magazine articles and poems to textbook companies, and to read my poems at schools and libraries for a living. But I’m fascinated by both online and print publishing and social media, and constantly think about how social media and new technologies are affecting how we read and share books. I like being a part of this rapidly changing field. There’s always something new to learn, and to me, that’s exciting.
Heather Grace Stewart 