My Life is a Story with a New Chapter or “Please read me the shoe again”

So, many people have been asking me “How is your book doing?” I am not always sure how to answer them and am realizing that is okay. My book, like my life, is an ongoing story, ever growing and developing with landmarks and growth spurts along the way .

So after a two year gestation, my first published work The Wondrous Story of the Little Shoe is now two months old. It is selling online internationally in hard cover, soft cover and e-book via Amazon and online bookstores everywhere. I was very excited to learn it is selling in the UK!

There are nineteen wonderful five-star reviews of it on its Amazon book page. I welcome many more and look forward to the day when it finds a home on the top 100 list. I am naive enough to believe it can become a best seller.

I am also selling it directly from my publishing company Celtic Cottage Press here in Rochester.

I am hearing ongoing reports of how children and adults alike are loving it as a bedtime story with little ones requesting “Please read me the shoe again.” I tell people it is a children’s story, but is it?

I am learning the art of marketing it, which I am told takes a good five years and never ends. I have it currently placed in three public libraries in the Rochester NY area (including a recording of me reading it for their story times) and am working toward seeing it on the shelves of brick and mortar bookstores and gift shops locally. I am looking for people to help me by calling local bookstores and requesting it, so there will be buzz already created when I approach those bookstores to present it. (By the way, anyone who wants to help me here, please just comment on this piece. I would be most grateful.)

I sent a much-worked-on press release to the local Democrat and Chronicle newspaper but learned that they no longer do press releases on new local books. And so I am pursuing other creative alternatives and welcome suggestions.

My husband wonders if it would do well published in a Spanish language format. Something to consider?

And so the story of the story continues as it and my life of learning to market it writes yet another chapter.

Don’t ever stop asking me how “The Shoe Book” (as little people call it) is doing. For now YOU are part of this precious, powerful and ever-growing story that has taken on a life of its own. In today’s world, that is good news!