No, I was not in heaven. I spent the day representing Sharing-Books at the Vancouver Angel Forum, where 70 potential investors heard the stories of 32 firms looking for funds to develop their business. Sharing-Books was one of the firms as we have interesting features we want to add to the site and to the services we offer to our book creators and readers.

While I enjoyed meeting potential investors, I also every much enjoyed meeting the other firms participating in the program. I always find it interesting to hear other entrepreneurs explain how they discovered the problem(s) they want to address and the business models or technologies they invented in response.

Creators of businesses are just as passionate as creators of books. Both are good crowds to hang out with.

You can read more about our presence at the 25th Angel Forum of Vancouver on techvibes.

Labels: angel forum, angel investors, entrepreneurs

So there are only a few days left to get your work into the Simone Wood Contest, 2009. This is your chance to win some of the $600 in prizes up for grabs, so if you have been working on your book for the last few months don't miss your window to get into the contest! You have until midnight on Sunday to get your work submitted to Sharing Books.

The contest will then run during the month of June, and the most popular books will win the awards. Keep in mind this is a full juried award, and will look awesome on your CV! Street cred comes on the side!

Labels: awards, contests, deadline, Simone Wood

One of our colleagues at Sharing-Books brought to our attention this article on the BBC site about drawing of violent images by boys. We thought you might find it of interest.

As a child I never experienced or witnessed violence, yet I was always fascinated by war movies, western stories and everything related to fighting. I remember drawing armies and combat images like the ones described in this article.

Yet as parents we really made an effort to keep violent images away from our children and we distracted or guided them in a different direction if they drew violent scenes.

Of course in the case of Sharing-Books, our contribution guidelines do not welcome books with violent images. This was chosen out of our desire for good content as parents but I must admit there was also a certain amount of political correctness in our choice.

This choice is a bit of a challenge as we build our online library of classic books. Many of them are rather dark and often violent. For example, we have scanned and uploaded some of the stories that come from a family book I grew up with, a 1892 edition of the Contes de Perrault written in 1645. This original version of the Little Red Riding Hood (in French) ends in a bloodbath with both the grandmother and the child killed by the wolf. I have not yet uploaded the scan of Blue Beard which features a murder with a very realistic image.

This is an interesting topic in the context of the emerging "maleness malaise" that is discussed by many sociologists. See for example the books by Dr. Michael Thompson.

We are not the experts but we hope you see value in thinking this topic through as parents and/or as book creators.

Labels: children books, parenting, violence

It is not really a surprise to all of us who are parents, but it is comforting to see that research confirms that children continue to love being read to. We will see a gradual change from paper to e-books but the art of storytelling and reading by a parent will remain a child's favourite activity.

Dr Richard Woolfson conducted a study commissioned by the Disney/Pixar World of Cars. You cane read the Reuters report on Dr Woolfson's study on The National Post site.

Labels: children's books, parenting, reading

We at Sharing-Books want to make you feel welcome to enter our Children's eBook Contest. It is our way of encouraging you to give birth to that character who is aching to be noticed, but who is too often drowned out in the hurly-burly light of day.

This season, a favourite grandmother is being honoured. Simone Wood shared the dream of reaching out to others. Whether she befriended a field mouse with bits of cheese on her back stoop, or resurrected used books in her Oxfam shop, this Grandmother would have welcomed you.

For us, a contest is simply another way that our book creators can reach out to their audiences. Prize money is an added incentive to depict that character and share his or her story. In the children's book world, it is common to charge a fee of $25 to entrants for competing. We would rather not. We simply want to award three buckets of cash - not just one - to those who contribute to our community and share the dream of giving books away free to children.

So come on, join in the fun. Answer that little voice. When you participate, it tells your audience that you are sincere in your wish to publish. It allows your audience to encourage you by voting for your work. At Sharing-Books, you are in the community of friends, one who supports the act of creative writing and illustrating. Our community is around the globe, and each of us look forward to tuning in to read the lastest development in the children's book world.

Labels: Children's books awards, children's illustrators, children's writers, contests, ebooks, Simone Wood

Larry Low has contributed seventeen different short stories to Sharing-Books.com. His stories reflect his passion for words. In addition to writing he invests a lot of his time helping students improve their command of the English language.

S-B: Larry, each time one of us reads one of your books, your rich vocabulary puts a smile on our face.  Where does your love for interesting words come from?

LL: That's an interesting question.  I know exactly where my love of words comes from.  My grandfather was the best read person that I ever had the privilege of knowing.  He was a pilot for the B.C. Pilotage and as such he had lots of time to read when a ship that he had been in charge of on the West Coast, especially on the way to Anyox or Prince Rupert, was anchored waiting to go through Seymour Narrows for example.
 
S-B: How long have you been writing and what got you started?

LL: I started writing seriously on the Saturday that Prince Charles was born.  I spent all of Sunday quizzing my mother about what it would be like when the Prince became King.  The next day at school our grade five teacher read my rendition of the future king's probable adventures to the class and I won a prize.  As time went on, I was somewhat thrown aback by how the royal experience was somewhat different than I had imagined it would be. That's when I discovered that fiction was a better bet than historical accounts were.
 
S-B: What keeps you writing?

LL: Writing is like any other habit.  The longer you do it, the more entrenched you become in repeating the process.  I always knew that I could write quite well but I would not admit it to myself. There were lapses when I did not produce any stories at all.
 
When I started tutoring English Second Language students, I kept hearing a common phrase.  You are the writer. Show me how to rewrite this.  Gradually I began to believe what I heard.  Praise alone does not work but results do.  Every once in a while, I have an experience that reinforces my eagerness to get back to writing.  

When I was teaching school in the Australian Outback, I began writing stories for children but they were dreadful.  When I came back to Canada after eight years away Down Under, I started in writing for my ESL students and gradually taught myself to write kid's stuff.  By that time however, I was much more confident.  After all is said and done in the time that I was away from Canada I managed to publish material in twelve countries.
 
S-B: You help a lot of young people enrich their English vocabulary.  How do you make them love the discovery of a new word?

LL: Let's start with a word that is unknown to my student.  I tell a story about it.  It goes something like this: Monsoon comes from the Arabic for season.  The word in Arabic is mausim.  In the tropical world there are two monsoons.  A dry monsoon and a wet monsoon. 

By the time that I have finished the story about the word of the day let's say, my student(s) will never forget it.
 
S-B: Share with us a few of your favourite children books and why you loved them?

LL: Robert Louis Stevenson was my favorite author when I was young.  I liked Treasure Island and Kidnapped because they were gritty and scary and also full of suspense.
 
S-B: What advice do you have for new writers?

LL: The first thing I have to say about new writers is that they need to go through a learning curve of their own.  The second thing is to read some of the better writers.  Short stories by Somerset Maugham would be one of my first choices. My favorite line in a SM short story is about a French speaking man who is on a steamer during the days that there was a French Indo China.  The Narrator, Maugham, says, "If my French were not so good, I would have a lot of trouble understanding his English."

To tell you the truth I cannot remember the title of the story.  However, I do remember that one sentence.  I read the story to a student in grade eight.  He said, "My grandmother does the same thing.  If my Mandarin weren't so good, I wouldn't be able to understand her English.

The moral of the story is try to write at least one telling sentence in every story you write.
 
S-B: Is there a question you wished we’d asked and how would you answer that question?

LL: What would you be doing if you were not writing? I do not have a clue as to what I would be doing.  I hope that the answer would be found in the word - rewriting.

Labels: children books, e-books, Larry Low, Vocabulary

We are happy to report that a pile of our books are now available for the visually impaired on BookShare.org as of today. The following works are available:

A World Too Much With Us - Larry Low
Can't Complain - Larry Low
Chelsea's Chariot - Carol Mayer
Crossing Rubicon - Larry Low
Grandmother Goodness - Larry Low
Mrs. Whip - Larry Low
North to LA - Larry Low
Philmore, Xebob and the Impossibility Theory - Lucas Spata
Saying No to Video - Larry Low
Small Paul - Larry Low
Songs Said to Have Been Sung by Sam - Larry Low
Sunka and the Great Camel Race - Larry Low
The Case of the Macabre Maccaw - Larry Low

Labels: Bookshare.org, content, news

As announced last week, Bookshare.org, the largest online library for visually impaired readers will publish selected books from the Sharing-Books collection. We are please to report that the first Sharing-book published on Bookshare is The Little Suitcase by Andrea Azevedo.

This is the book that got the idea of Sharing-Books started, so it is very appropriate that it should be the first one selected and published by Bookshare. You can refer your friends interested in this special version of The Little Suitcase at http://www.bookshare.org/browse/book/78534.

Labels: Bookshare.org, children's books, Print Challenged, Visually Impaired Children

Jennifer, tell us a little bit about you?

I’m passionate about words and what they can achieve, they reveal, they hide, they give happiness, they cause grief etc… Add visuals and it is mindblowing!

Tells us why you need to write?

At an early age I was introduced to the marvelous inventive inanity of Lewis Carroll and my passion has been writing and art ever since! Having said that, like most writers and many artists, I have worked full time most of my life at other things. The range is broad – circus hand/usher to assessment package writer and book reviewer for the Education Department, to tutor/editor working with international postgraduates and focus editor for an online magazine.
Writing is a passion, an escape, a must do, a way of entertaining myself and my children and, hopefully, others.

How long have you been writing?

Ever since I could hold a pencil! I drew my stories in pictures first, then I wrote plays, poetry followed and finally stories…. I was first published as a ‘serious’ poet in my school days. I have been fortunate to have my work selected for literary journals of the stature of Quadrant, Social Alternatives and Antipodes [the Journal of Australian and American Literature] and many others. Writing for children has been a venture that only started in the 1990s. I have 9 books out there with commercial publishers to date and more coming. Writing and illustrating are things you that are part of your life rather than ‘work’ although, of course, ‘work’ is involved, especially in the mechanics of the whole deal. I plan to get an agent to help with that side of things. I don’t think writers and illustrators necessarily are the best at that – they are best at their art and ideally need others to partner with them to achieve the rest – publication, film rights etc etc, I’ve had to do the lot myself so far. GOOD EXPERIENCE! It makes me appreciate the more what an agent or publicist does!

What is the first children’s book that you remember?

Lewis Carroll’s crazy wonderful rhymes are the first ‘children’s stories’ I remember. My father and grandfather used to recite them to me ad nauseum [thank goodness!].

The first book I actually got my little hands on was a very, very old encyclopaedia called “People and Places” which wrote about amazing cultures now disappeared and amazing wild places now logged or covered in office blocks.

Who are some of your favourite illustrators?

So many……the PreRaphaelites, Dore, Tenielle, Dulac, Rackham, Klimt, Beardsley, Ohara Koson, Rockwell, Heath Robinson, Nielsen, Atwell, May Gibbs, Norman Lindsay – there are so many so great - and so many, many great modern illustrators who are their successors!

You are very good at networking and project cooperation. Tell our readers why it is important for you and maybe how our readers can network and cooperate better on projects.

Funny, I don’t think of myself as a networker, just someone who likes to get things done!

Bringing talents together that mesh and seeing what happens is always exciting!

Working with others on projects – well, it’s basic bridge-building - it has all been said before but

I guess no harm repeating –

Collaboration is all about learning from each other and creating something unique! Treat others the way you would want to be treated, be considerate. Be reliable – if you have said you’ll do something, DO it! Keep track of things. Be clear, be ready to improvise and assist – troubleshoot – never imagine you have all the answers. Guide gently if necessary. Be keen to learn new skills, new ways of expressing yourself in words or images. Expect to learn something new! Give credit where credit is due, don’t be slow to congratulate others and compliment them on their efforts.

Respect your partners’ skill and encourage them. Seek to bring out the best in each other. Too
many folk are too quick to criticise, too slow to show gratitude and appreciation! It needs to be give give give before the gimme gimme gimme.

Give and take is critical, don’t insist it be all you way – there are always others ways of seeing things, always room to improve – be open, be receptive. Consider the considered and the spontaneous opinion of others!

I’ve been AMAZED, DELIGHTED, BLOWN AWAY TOTALLY by the UTTERLY AMAZING CREATIVITY OF ALL MY COLLABORATORS! An email from a collaborator is like an incredible surprise package! What have they come up with now?! These VERY talented people have all added immeasurably to me and to my work and for that I am enormously grateful! I hope they have received as much back in working with me!

We are very proud at Sharing-Books to have you as one of our authors. We were especially pleased when you started to innovate with our site and created the Poster Poem format. These are very well received by teachers around the world. Tell us how you came up with the idea and please share some of the feedback you received from teachers.

Nice to be there and work with you WONDERFUL TEAM of innovative folk!

Poster Poems/minibooks - I’ve had the idea for a long time but lacked the resources to bring it to fruition. Discovering Sharing Books provided the answer.

If the responses I have received to date are any guide, teachers have indeed received the provision of downloadable posters enthusiastically. They have been utilised as worksheets in class, as stimulus material in discussion of various topics, as reading material, as translation material for English classes [e.g., in the Ukraine, the children had a lot of fun translating the poems into their native language] and, of course, as posters for the walls.

What advice would you offer to someone just starting to write or illustrate children’s Books?

Let your right brain free, unfetter it from the constraints of commas and full stops, write till your arms drop off or you do! THEN edit and let the little comma Nazis do their thing!
Illustrators – do a doodle a day – if you are that way inclined I bet you are doing that anyway!
DON’T be afraid to take up challenges - push your boundaries – grow with your art!
A comfort zone is only a bus stop en route to your destination. A destination is somewhere from which to set out!

Some tips in creating uploadable art and text in poster or minibook format:

If you don’t have InDesign or Adobe, download Open Office. It is free. The Draw facility is a cross between PowerPoint, Publisher and Word and very malleable. Documents in Open Office can be exported as pdfs.

Do a mudmap of your poster first – a basic sketch. Do a story board of your minibook.
Get someone else to proofread your text – you have read and reread it so your mind is in autopilot and might miss something!

Labels: community, interviews, JR Poulter

Another site update on Sharing Books has gone out, and some users may have had a minor interruption of service around 9:30am PST. This update brings the following things to the Sharing Books website:

• Cleaner, quicker, and in theory more accurate search using quick search and advanced searching features on the site.
• Some improvements to some backend processes.
• For our Volunteer Librarians your navigation should now cease it's magical disappearing act.
• New and improved buttons for us administrators of the site to download your book and text versions of your book without having to download from the frontend of the site or the DB directly!

Labels: new features, news, site outages, site upgrades

At Sharing-Books we love to tell the story of how Jennifer Poulter innovated with our publishing model and introduced to us the idea of a one page book - the poster poem. This is a format that Jennifer perfected for the purpose of helping children learn. Jennifer engaged a number of her illustrator friends into collaborating for posters covering a wide range of topics. The poems address issues affecting all children and Jennifer includes in the description of the poster-poems ideas on how they can be used. Jennifer's works have received a lot of praise and we are pleased to share with you some of the kind words acknowledging Jennifer creativity.

"As  fourth grade teacher, I love Jennifer Poulter's poem posters. My class loves them for their richness of language and rhythm. Jennifer's topic selection is varied and great. There is something for every interest. The children enjoy being able to find and download new poems!" Teacher USA Feb 09

"This is a great resource."
Assistant Director, Assessment Resources Branch, Teaching & Learning Division
Queensland Studies Authority

"Materials super.......will activate people within QSA to develop some literacy enrichment learning materials around your work."
Teacher, assessment package writer /senior education officer Australia

"I will forward this on to my boss as he may like to forward it to schools in our district! Looks like really great stuff!"
AVT Behaviour Management Teacher & outgoing Artistic Director QPF

"I'm going back to work next week to teach two days a week in a grade 2/3 so these will be most helpful in my ideas and programming.
Great stuff!"
Australian primary school teacher

"I loved your poems. I shared them with the fourth graders in my class, and they enjoyed them too.
Thanks for sharing!"
Teacher USA

"Now at school we're having an English week. And I gave your poems to children to work with them as translators - to translate in poetical style. They like this type of work - so creative! So this way I use your poems, they are funny, I love people with the sense of humor, and I hope the students and I will laugh together listening to the kid's (your) poems in our native language."
Teacher Ukraine

"You know, today we've had a lesson using your poems - and my kids' translations (Expelling Spell, Pandamonium, Ten of Them and Little People...), if you could hear and understand Russian, it was brilliant, fabulous and funny, of course... lots of laughter!
They (age-11) translated the poems themselves and did not only translate, but rewrote them in rhyme. To my delight they caught the heart of your works, and some of their works were not worse than the originals :) And they asked me for more! I've just downloaded your other posters….
Thank you from me and from my students.
All the best!"
Teacher, Russia

"The kids and I did the Expelling Spell poem on Friday and they LOVED it as well as the illustration…"
American teacher, preschool and lower primary grades

"I downloaded your posters, thank you. Most of all I liked the ones about pandas and cats. My little daughter will be in a rave - she's a fan of animals, especially cats. Susie Dreaming is very nice and cute."
Parent /Teacher from Ukraine

"I have to tell you that I took it to school with me to read to my preschool students and they LOVED it! (So you know it's good now! They are truly the best sounding boards!)
The poem was a hit with the three and four year old age group, good job!"
Teacher review, USA

"I enjoy the poem very much, [I saw an Angel…]. Especially for children. Last week our topic in class was "Earth in danger", we were talking a lot about this,…. So your poem will be a good continuation."
Teacher Ukraine

"I read some of your work on Sharing Books.  One poem I was particularly taken with is Susan Watching Clouds.  It was really kind of sad--it stirred something in me."
Speech & Language Pathologist USA

"I absolutely love the sharing-books.com resource. Seriously, thanks for all you do."
Response from a parent [USA] on “Pandamonium” free teacher, librarian, home-schooling resource

"Jennifer Poulter skips and skims,
her words awake the free spirit within.
One laughs and giggles, but pauses some time,
To ponder the rhythm, the prose and the rhyme.
They create a world where ideas play,
But dance to the sound with the words that they say.  
A heart filled with colour, spectrum, and fun
To frolic and spin in the warmth of the sun
Thank you"
Jan Ramage,[primary teacher and double award nominee CBCA]

"I have just worked with Jennifer Poulter, writing one of her poems in calligraphy and placing the finished item,  Zoo View, on the site.  I understand that ISBN numbers are gradually being added to books/posters on the site, always good for publishing credit – Sharing Books is the publisher. If you investigate the site, you will see that Jennifer has been very creative and productive there lately, and teamed with many top illustrators – I’m sure to everyone’s advantage."
Peter Taylor, SCWBI Queensland Organiser, teacher, writer, calligrapher, illustrator

Labels: children books, ebooks, teacher resources, teaching english

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts: Ann Harrison, Benetech, 415-637-5262, ann.h@benetech.org
Maggie Kerr-Southin, Sharing-Books.com, 250-595-0136, Maggie@artemispr.com


May 5, 2009, Palo Alto, CA - Bookshare and Shared Books Ltd of Vancouver BC are pleased to announce a partnership that will expand the availability of children books in the Bookshare library. Shared Books, which operates the Sharing-Books.com website, has agreed to allow children’s books published on Sharing-Books.com to be added to the Bookshare collection. This initiative will increase the number of children’s books accessible to readers with print disabilities and provide an opportunity for authors published on Sharing-Books.com to offer their works to a new group of valued readers.

Schools around the world have signed up their qualified students for Bookshare and many parents have registered their children with qualifying disabilities for individual Bookshare memberships. The number of new Bookshare school and student members increased tenfold in 2008. More than 47,000 people with print disabilities now subscribe to the Bookshare library.

“The children’s books provided by Sharing-Books.com will be available to Bookshare members worldwide,” says Bookshare CEO Jim Fruchterman. “This partnership will allow Bookshare to continue to expand its collection of books for young readers who remain a critically important group within our membership. Sharing-Books.com is on the forefront of providing these texts in a digital format.”

“Having some personal experience with technology that serves the visually impaired, I was thrilled to see our authors being able to contribute content to Bookshare’s impressive library,” said Pierre Lapointe, CEO of Shared Books. Our team’s enthusiasm for Bookshare is unanimous. We want more people to read more books. Technology has an important role to play in reaching all potential readers.”

About Bookshare

Bookshare is operated by Benetech, a Palo Alto, CA-based non-profit technology organization. Bookshare offers people with print disabilities more than 47,000 books and 150 daily periodicals in accessible formats including Braille, large print and synthetic speech. People with print disabilities include readers who are blind or have low vision, learning disabilities or a mobility impairment that prevents them from reading a traditional printed book. In 2007, Bookshare received a $32 million five-year award from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) to give all U.S. students with qualifying print disabilities free access to the Bookshare library.

About Sharing-Books.com

Sharing-Books.com is an innovative business model combining private enterprise and social goals. Sharing-Books.com authors receive a third of the revenues of the company as royalties. Another third of Sharing-Books.com revenues are given to Room to Read, a charity that equips developing nations with literacy resources. The company operates an ultra lean virtual business model with the other third of its revenues. Sharing-Books.com disrupts the traditional publishing cycle by giving new authors and new books an immediate publishing venue. The Sharing-Books.com model identifies promising books and characters for the paper publishing, gaming, movie, and toy industries.

Labels: Bookshare, children books, e-books, Visually Impaired Children

So Coldplay are doing their part to thank their fans for paying to go to gigs by giving away an album, which will also be free for online download from May 15th onwards. So why is this important news here at Sharing Books, a children's book publisher?

Because it shows the growing trend. Authors, musicians, creators in general are increasingly giving their work away for free as marketing tools. In this case Coldplay are giving away their music because they like playing live, and can make money doing that. And selling merchandise. Children's publishing is no different, and Sharing Books offers an avenue for authors and book creators to take part in the growing free-content make money on residuals movement.

Book creators can easily use Sharing Books as a distribution platform, driving people to their work and brand. We are happy to be used that way, and fully hope that happens. So book creators, take advantage of the service we offer, and get in on the growing free content movement.

Labels: business philosophy, content