All Summer in a Day: The Sweet (and SHORT) Journey of a Picture Book by Patti Richards

(This is part two of a three-part series. Read part one here.)

 

At the end of our first installment, I left you wondering, “Will the continued Covid shutdown mess with Patti’s release date? Will MRS. NOAH ever leave the dock? (see what I did there?), and does poor Margot ever get out of that closet?” Let’s find out!

 

Part 2

 

Story time at Baker Book House
in Grand Rapids

First raindrops fall.

 

For those of you who have been through the process of publishing a book, you know that just about anything can happen after the ink dries on a contract. Illustrators walk away, release dates change, marketing plans and budgets (if there are any) get reduced or eliminated. I knew this, and hoped none of it would be the case for my book.

 

First Week on Amazon!

But before we could get to release day, my editor left. Then the release date got pushed back, and we learned things weren’t improving for the publisher. But hey, I had a book coming out! I still believed that with a strong showing from MRS. NOAH and the publisher’s other fall releases, they would survive a little while longer. Their internal struggles also meant I was on my own when it came to planning release events. I’d helped so many others along the way get the word out about their books, I was not daunted. Head down. Swim on!

Then, on October 28, 2021, MRS. NOAH was born! She was the number 1 new release on Amazon for her category for several days, and she stayed in the top 100 in her category almost the entire time she was available. I was so excited!  

 

Diving In!

On the shelf
at Baker Book House in Grand Rapids

By the end of 2021, my fellow authors and I heard from the publisher. They were going to be doing a major restructuring of the company starting in 2022. When January rolled around, my publisher got sick with Covid. This, combined with their business woes, caused the marketing help promised in my contract to evaporate. What did that mean for MRS. NOAH? I needed to keep her strong start going.

 

So, I became a Canva expert and created engaging social media content to get the word out about my book. I researched contests, made a list of the ones I wanted to enter and how many books I’d need to make that happen. I ordered books from Amazon because I hadn’t received my author copies. I had done a blog tour the week the book released, so I put all of my energy into giveaways, holiday-themed Canva posts and the contests I mentioned above. I learned about organizations in the faith-based community and joined them. I bought more books and mailed out press kits to local and national bookstores. I blogged in places I’d never blogged before, and MRS. NOAH kept on sailing. I attended book-selling events that I never knew existed, and I got to do a couple of story times in places I wasn’t expecting. By the summer of 2022, MRS. NOAH was in several brick-and-mortar bookstores, and on her first birthday (which I celebrated on social media), I got to see MRS. NOAH on the shelf of our local public library. All of my efforts seemed to be paying off. But. . .

 

On the shelf at the 
Farmington Community Library

Cue Storm Clouds

 

During the summer of 2022, I received a letter from my publisher releasing the rights to my second book back to me. I no longer had a second book coming out. We still held out hope that with a plan to reduce the number of titles the publisher produced each year they would remain in business. But that was not to be. On December 31, 2022, one year and two months after MRS. NOAH’s release, my publisher was done.

 

But was this the end? What, if anything, was next for MRS. NOAH? Come back next month to find out!  

Patti Richards has spent more than 30 years writing stories and telling tales. Her first fiction picture book, MRS. NOAH (Little Lamb Books, October 2021) was a Selah Award Finalist, A Northern Dawn Book Award Winner for Best First Picture Book, a Purple Dragonfly Honorable Mention Winner, and a Royal Dragonfly Honorable Mention Winner. As a freelance writer, Patti has provided content for Capstone Publishing, Red Line Editorial, the Foundations Recovery Network, Uptv.com, The Lookout Magazine, Worship Leader Magazine, Songs4Worship.com, Metro Parent Publishing Group, and various other local, regional and national newspapers and magazines. In 2003, her article, “Timing is Everything When Treating Infertility,” (Metro Parent Magazine) won a Gold Medal Award for Special Section Within a Publication (Circulation of 55,000 or more), from Parenting Publications of America. Patti also offers professional picture book critiques. Visit her website, www.pattigail1.com to learn more!