We west coasters are still holding out hope you’ll be back one of these days!

ohm.

It’s been a while since I’ve visited your blog, and when I came across my name here I was startled! Ha, ha! Heather MacLean? Oh, that’s me!

Over the summer I had a chance to read some amazing books, so I thought I’d share:

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

After River by Donna Milner

I’m deep into thesis writing, but enjoy coming up for air at the end of the day (after a little yoga, gotta stretch!) to some good fiction. The G&M just released their “must reads” for fall, I have a long list I can’t wait to dive into. In the meantime, this is next on my list:

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.

I’ll let you know!

All my best from Kingston, and I’ll talk with you soon (the excitement of a new semester! yay!)

Heather

As Clare says, the Ontario gov’t gives money for marketing, but most other provinces don’t have that, especially NS. If we were publishing in Ontario, we would get almost 10 times the amount of support from the gov’t. Support for marketing and production, digital inititives and author advances are all areas that we could use help with. We do what what we can in this area by sending out e-newsletters, constantly updating our website, maintaining a facebook fan page, twitter etc, but the digital world is just adding more work to people who are already busy and not creating new jobs (in our area anyway).

Just a note on the interactive website: We did add a blog for authors to our site, but getting the authors to write on it was a bit like herding cats.

I didn’t know about the House of Anansi, either, so thanks for that heads up.

I think social media, if used correctly, doesn’t have to cost much except for the salary of the person doing it. What I found interesting about the Penguin USA site is that they must have spent a lot of time and money on it, and yet, it doesn’t take advantage of the community building opportunities that s.m. enables.

Hope all is well in ON!

Marketing grants through the Ontario government have helped us do exactly what you propose in the last couple of years. Although we haven’t created a position, a good chunk of my job is handling the social media aspect for the press. House of Anansi does a fabulous job in that area and has just created a full-time online media position. so the smaller houses may not have the cash they need, but the people there are really savvy as was evidenced at Book Camp Toronto, which I attended in June. Lots of people doing very innovative things on a shoestring. It would be nice to have some of the cash the larger presses have, though.

Clare