And the winners are...

Congrats to the winners of my 50 Clean Tween Reads giveaway! a Rafflecopter giveaway

50 Clean Tween Reads (plus win an ereader)

I may be in my thirties but I still love a good Young Adult book. Now that I have children, however, I realize that there are many books that claim to be YA that I would never, ever, ever let my child read. It gets even harder when you have children who are in that in between age. They are not quite old enough to handle teenage topics, but they are well past Minnie’s Princess Tea Party books. (Although I still love princess themed tea parties.) And not everyone has time to read every single book before their child does. So I got together with a few other authors and decided to compile a list of 50 Clean Tween Reads. I hope this helps other parents in their search to provide wholesome but not simplistic entertainment for their children.

1. Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan (PG)


2. The Priscilla the Great series by Sybil Nelson Rated PG


 3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid By Jeff Kinney (G)


 4. The Troubled Tweens: Jinnie Wishmaker By DD Roy (G)


 5. The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy by Nikki Loftin (G)


 6.The Eyes of Pharoah by Chris Eboch (G)


7. Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls series by Meg Cabot (G)


8. My Sparkling Misfortune by Laura Lond Rated G


9. Dark Marco Volume One by Sybil Nelson (PG)


10.Dork Diaries by Rachel Renee Russell (G)


11. Super Zombie Juice Mega Bomb by MJ Ware (G)


12. The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkein (PG)

13. The Mortal Enemy List by Tess Oliver (PG)


14. Enter Ten Tales for Tweens by Various (PG)
An added bonus to buying this books is that all the proceeds go to charity.

15. Wonder by R.J. Palacio (PG)


16. Big Nate by Lincoln Pierce (G)


17.The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (G)


18.Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper (PG)


19. One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia (G)


20. Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer by John Grisham (PG)


21. Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer (PG)


22. Hoot by Carl Hiaasen (G)

23. Fablehaven by Brandon Mull (PG)


24. The Teashop Girls by Laura Schaeffer (PG)


25.Timekeepers: Civil Disturbance by J.Y. Harris (PG+)


26. Redwall series by Brian Jacques (PG)


27. Emily Windsnap and the Monster from the Deep by Liz Kessler (G)

28. Warriors by Erin Hunter (PG)


29. Theodosia by RL Lafever (G)

30. The Castle Sisters by Jason Krumbine (PG)


31. Broken Shell by Dalya Moon (PG)


32. Emotionally Charged by Selina French (PG)


33. Floodland by Marcus Sedgwick (PG)

34. Gasparilla's Treasure by Scott Clement (PG)

35. Matt Archer: Monster Hunter by Kendra C Highley (PG)


36. The Dragonfly Pool by Eva Ibbotson (G)


37. The Odd Job Squad by Karl Fields (PG)

38. Savvy by Ingrid Law (PG)


39. Guardian Cats and the Lost Books of Alexandria by Rahma Krambo (PG)

40. War Horse by Michael Morpurgo (PG)


41. Howl of the Wolf by Diane Rapp (PG)


42. The White Giraffe by Lauren St John (G)


43. Nashoga by Rebecca Weinstein (G)


44. Goosebumps by RL Stine (PG)


45. Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones (PG)


46. The Stone Bearers by R.E. Washington


47. It’s a Catastrophe by Sibel Hodge (G)


48. Alcatraz by Brandon Sanderson (PG)


49. The Sister's Club by Megan McDonald (G)


50. Nancy Drew


This is by no means an exhaustive list. There are thousands of great books out there for tweens. Sometimes it’s just hard to know where to start. So, consider this list a launching point. Enjoy! Now as a special treat, just for reading this blog post I'm going to give you a chance to win a Kobo reader and a $25 gift card. Just fill out the rafflecopter form below! a Rafflecopter giveaway

Question from Readers: Createspace

Occasionally I'll get questions from readers about the basics of self-publishing. I thought I'd start posting some of those here. That way there will be a searchable archive. Here is one from Nadia in the UK.

Firstly, I've heard rumours that the quality of the books is not all that it could be. The website itself describes its books as "library quality". As I've seen library books quite literally falling apart at the seams, that wasn't very reassuring. What is your experience?

I've seen different levels of library quality. When I think library, I think hardback book with the think sewn binding. Honestly, you don't see that very often anymore. Mostly, you just see the paperbacks with glued binding. That is what Createspace does. The quality is fine, but if you're looking for really nice, you might want to go with Lulu or Lightening Source. I haven't used them, but I here that they are really good. I would compare Createspace quality to that of the type of books you would pick up at the airport.

I was also under the impression that you had to pay to publish your books with Create Space but the website claims there are no set-up fees and the only paid services seem to be marketing, editing etc

Publishing with Createspace is completely free. You can list your book at Amazon.com and at the Createspace estore. However, if you want expanded distribution, you have to pay $25. Expanded distribution gets your books listed at libraries and other bookstores. For example, all the books that I have in expanded distribution can be bought at Barnes and Noble. I think it's worth the $25. Beware that to be listed in library catalogs, you have to use a Createspace ISBN. This is fine, but Createspace will be listed as the publisher. If you want to list your own publisher, you have to pay $10. Most people just make up a name for their publisher and pay the $10 so their book doesn't seem self published. I do both. I really want my Priscilla the Great books in libraries so I use the Createspace ISBN. All the books under my pen name, Leslie DuBois, have my company as the publisher.

Finally, if you have to buy lots of copies to distribute to bookshops, isn't that really expensive?

It depends. If you're giving your books to bookshops on consignment, then yes, you have to buy the books and personally deliver them to the shop and make out a contract with them for how much you get paid per book. But since your book is listed with Createspace, the bookshops can order them themselves. Honestly, though, you get a great price from Createspace so it is worth it to order a bunch of copies and sell them yourself. You make more money. For example, I can buy copies of my book Priscilla the Great for about $4 per book from Createspace. The book retails for $12. I can offer the bookstore a discount of $2,sell it to them for $10 each and I'll still make a profit of $6. If they order the book themselves from Amazon, I'll only make $4 in royalties from Createspace.

If you have questions, send me a tweet @sybilnelson.

5 Tips for Turning FREE into Profit!

I just wanted to let you know that I've started a biweekly radio segment about book marketing. My first show airs today and it is titled The Power of Free. In it, I give several tips for how and why you might want to give away your book for free for a while. Listen to the show here.

Notes from the Decatur Book Festival

I was really nervous going into this festival because three days before, the author I was sharing a booth with cancelled on me leaving me with all the costs. The booth itself cost $465 dollars, plus there was the cost of gas, hotel, and food. On top of that, I had to drive four hours out of my way in order to recover over 60 of my books from her. Ultimately, it was worth it because I ended up needing those books to sell.

This festival was so incredible that I ended up making back the cost of the booth on the first day alone! I also sold out of Priscilla the Great book one and Priscilla the Great: Vampire Slayer.  Not only that, but I had some wonderful experiences. For example, first thing Saturday morning, I met Kara. She is a Priscilla the Great super fan who has read all five books! She came by just to take a picture with me! Because she had read all of the PtG books already, she ended up buying four of my Leslie DuBois titles and I gave her a copy of Priscilla the Great: Vampire Slayer for free. Kara was such a sweetheart that she came back on Sunday and gave me printed copies of the pictures that she had taken the day before.

On Sunday, more awesome things happened. Maya was a little girl who bought Priscilla the Great book one Saturday. She stayed up late and read the entire book that night! First thing Sunday morning she was at my booth wanting to by the rest of the series. Here’s the crazy part though. She had to buy the books with her own money and all she had was $23 in quarters! In the picture above, you can actually see her holding her bag of quarters. She sat there at my booth and counted out $23 in quarters. Her grandmother then lovingly chipped in the rest so that she could get books 2-4. I have labelled Maya my superfan of the weekend!

Almost directly after that, one of the coordinators of the festival came by and let me know that the person next to me wasn’t showing up so I could expand my booth. So for the entire day, I got two booths for the price of one. It was awesome! I was able to put all of my Leslie DuBois books in one booth and all of my Sybil Nelson books in the other. I went from having half a booth to having two booths!

At the beginning of Sunday, I was really nervous since I was all out of Priscilla the Great book one. But customers didn’t seem to mind. They just paid for book one and allowed me to mail it to them. Several people bought books two and three and let me mail book one for free. One person even bought books two through five and agreed to wait for book one in the mail.

All in all, I thought it was a fantastic festival. It was definitely my best so far. There are a few things I learned and a few tips that I will be stealing from other authors.

1.  Never under estimate the number of books you will need, especially if you write a series. Theoretically, I knew this. But for some reason I still only brought the same number of books each of the five PtG books. Next time I will make sure to have at least three times as many book one’s as the rest of the series.

2. I saw a few other authors had hired fans to walk around in their t-shirts or other garb and pass out bookmarks etc. For my next festival, I plan on doing something similar. I will find local fans willing to wear my t-shirt all day and hand out coupons for a free book. The coupons will be for a free copy of Priscilla the Great: Vampire Slayer or a short story from my Dancing Dream series.

3. You can never have enough freebies to give away. I also plan on having some stickers to give to kids to wear just as another way to get my name out there.

4.  My Kindle giveaway was great and I had well over 100 people enter. But I noticed that the booth next to me was also giving away smaller prizes every hour. I thought that was a great idea and I will definitely be stealing that.

5. I have 15 books of my own for sale, so for me, sharing a booth probably isn’t the best idea. I actually needed the space all to myself. If you have many books of your own, you may want to make the investment and have a booth all to yourself.

Kickstarter

So I'm attempting something new today. I really want a collectors edition of the first five books of the Priscilla the Great series with hardcovers and brand new artwork. I estimate that the entire project will cost me around $6000. So instead of putting myself in debt, I'm going to give crowdfunding a try. I did a little research and decided to go with Kickstarter. The way the program works is that you explain what you need the money for and then offer a series of rewards for people who decide to back you financially. If you raise the money, you are responsible for getting all the rewards to the backers. If you don't raise the money, all bets are off and no one gets anything. So I figure I have nothing to lose. But now that the program is running, I'm not really sure how to go about promoting it. I'm too afraid that it seems like begging. Anyway, check it out if you have a moment.

Sybil's Kickstarter Page

Authors Around the World

In addition to winning a Kindle Fire from the Authors around the World blog, I also wanted to give you an opportunity to win a $15 Amazon gift card. This just might be the easiest giveaway you've ever entered. All you have to do is connect with me through some social media and you're entered! Contest ends August 12th. Just fill out the rafflecopter form below. And be sure to check out the other authors on the blog hop. There are lots of great prizes to be won.

a Rafflecopter giveaway