black ink jumps off page
somersaults, bounces, leaps high–
royalty statement!
–Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved
I just got my April royalty statement, and attached was the first royalty check I’ve ever gotten. It’s not a big check, mind you. A week of working at Target would pay more. But it means some people are actually reading BookSpeak!, so it’s the happiest-looking paper I’ve ever seen, I think.
Congrats on Bookspeak, this is an exciting day! The start of many more checks to come.
Congratulations on Bookspeak. I showed it to a librarian friend yesterday who wrote down the title!!! She is a poetry person. I will tell more teachers about it, especially when I am at IRA next week. I think you did a beautiful job with your poetry and the artwork really invites you in. You are doing work that teachers need to know about (if they don’t already because I know many do), and it is great to get the monetary reward, too, obviously. I have a thought and am clueless about if this could ever work, but, is there any way the Kidslitosphere group or some subset (say the poetry books or the non-fiction) could figure out how to have a “book store” that would travel to state reading conferences or places teachers might be, so they could actually check the books and buy them? I think that is a big problem. Unless you live in a metropolitan locale, bookstores don’t always have a great variety of poetry books for kids. Or others. They stick to the most marketable ones. I am a book-lover and I know that it is hard to find new ones. Many teachers get book through the student bookorders from places like Scholastic. Of course there is Amazon, but that is not the same. I want to see the book before I buy it. Some books then are book in groups to be used for shared and guided reading. I think kids deserve to learn from real books! And in this age of the CCSS, I hope that we can get more of them into their hands. Anyhow, just a thought. I think if we can get great books out to the teachers to check out there would be more sales.
Oh, the joy I can see in your words, ‘black ink jumps off page’. Terrific for you, Laura.
Thanks, Linda. My goal is to one day make some percentage of my income from royalties, so this is my first, teeny tiny step!
Ooh, I got a tiny one today, too.
Joy!
Yay! Congratulations, Tanita! Even a small check is so much better than my usual statement that just shows how much of my tiny advance hasn’t even earned out:>)