Props for Mr. Sanderson!

[Kensei]

Hi, all.
New to the forum.

My wife and I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Sanderson when he did a book reading and signing in Las Vegas--again, on behalf of my city please accept my apologies for such a dismal turnout... .
We are both employees of the Library District--she has her MLIS and I do not--and we really enjoyed the preview of Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians.
I mention this because my wife just attended the ALA--American Library Association--Conference in Washington, DC; and Scholastic was hyping the heck out of Alcatraz.
The publisher seems to be putting a great deal of effort into tagging the book as the "next Harry Potter".
While that is good--exposure--and bad--high expectations--it is nice to see when a publisher really gets behind its author.
I know that I am certainly looking forward to reading my ARC when it arrives from Scholastic.

Thanks!

[EUOL]

Welcome, Kensei

I felt bad about the turnout at that signing.  However, I went back to Vegas this May, and was surprised to see that the store had sold through every single copy of my book we'd left behind signed.  So...wow.  It didn't seem like it went well, but the books had long legs.

We'll be in Vegas again this fall.  I remember talking with your wife about maybe coming by and doing a reading for the library.  I'm still up for this, as long as we can work it around the signing I'll be doing in town.

[Kensei]

Yeah.
The low turnout really reflected poorly on my hometown...

Every chance I got, though, I touted the heck out of Elantris and Mistborn.

Do you know when you will be returning to my fair city?
Is your signing in conjunction with the release of Alcatraz around October 1st?
Do you know where it will be?

I spoke with my wife; and she, in turn, spoke with the District's coordinator.
They would very much like to have you come down and speak at one--or more--of the branches, schedule permitting.

I will send you a PM with her contact information; but myself or my wife can act as liasons, if you would like.
I look forward to seeing you at either location you visit.

[stacer]

I looked for it at ALA, but forgot to ask about it, and didn't see any promotion there. But the conference was really, really hectic for me (see the TWG Radio interview for the start of it, though that doesn't reflect the hecticness of later days in the conference). But we had some really, really good reception for Hallowmere, as well (the RH signing alone was 240 books, and 3 other signings were good too). I'll have to post pictures on my blog. In the mean time, if you haven't seen my posts from ALA, note the 2nd to last post.

[Parker]

Yeah, I also didn't see any sign of Alcatraz at ALA the couple of times I went by the booth.  I'd hoped to have seen more.  Maybe they had some ARCs and gave them out, then moved on to different books.  What promotion did you see, Kensei?

[Kensei]

I am not as important as my wife--she went to the conference...
She said that they were advertising it at the Scholastic booth with a large banner of the cover--it was hung along with their other forthcoming titles.
She was able to secure a promotional teaser with the first chapter and persuade the rep into sending us--I mean, her  --an ARC in the next week or so.

I think that there were a couple of things working in her favor, though:
- Our District is unfortunately known as "huge over-spenders" [$]
- She works for Collection Development and is directly responsible for purchasing all youth materials [$$]

I am just happy that they were making an attempt to promote the book.
I hope that writing both J/YA and adult titles will give Brandon a huge boost.
I know that he mentioned that he was concerned that the cover looked "too much like Harry Potter", but the small visual similarity may be enough to draw in those young readers looking for something after Book 7.