Early Buzz for A Tulip in Winter

Sometimes a book, no matter how well written and illustrated, edited and designed, fails to find its intended readers. The reason is sometimes a mystery, but how much effort a publisher puts into promoting a book definitely has an impact.

Lucky is a book whose publisher’s publicity department is hard at work even before its release, so that as soon as it’s out, it can hit the ground running. A Tulip In Winter: A Story About Folk Artist Maud Lewis is one of those lucky books.

Before its release…

• It had already attracted several great reviews including a much coveted Starred Review in Kirkus.
• A book blogger with more than 84,000 followers on Instagram had created a great feature that takes the book right into Maud Lewis’s house at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, making it clear what a great tribute to Maud’s joyous art Lauren Soloy’s illustrations are.
• Greystone’s US publicist arranged for me to write a guest blog post for the Nerdy Book Club’s large audience. Check it out if you’d like to read about a detail of Maud’s life I opted not to include in the book.

On March 7, Maud’s birthday and the book’s pub date, Greystone emailed a wonderful newsletter to booksellers, librarians, and educators all over North America.

The next day I learned of bookstores that already had A Tulip in Winter on their shelves and it received another starred review!

My heartfelt thanks to Greystone for helping me and Lauren Soloy make this book as wonderful as it is (she says humbly 🙂 ), then doing all they can to ensure that Maud’s story will find its way into the hands of readers.

Have you got your copy yet?