When it comes to marketing children's books, Susan Salzman Raab's site provides a host of fantastic resources. In a recent column, Raab Associates reported the results of a survey of popular blogs in the industry. To my delight, the Fire Escape made the list:
We polled several hundred reviewers, teachers and librarians asking the following questions: Are there blogs you read regularly, and how often? Do you host your own blog? Do you feel blogs are useful?
...For those of us in the book industry, of the people who responded to our online survey, twenty percent did not follow blogs at all. Of those who did follow blogs, most were periodic readers of one or two blogs. The two blogs most frequently noted were the Horn Book Editor's Rants and Raves by Roger Sutton, and Cynsations by Cynthia Leitich Smith. Both include views on industry news, award announcements and information on new books. Cynsations also features author interviews and reviews. Other sites that received several mentions were:
- The About.com children's book site, by Elizabeth Kennedy, which includes regular reviews and award announcements.
- Book Moot, hosted by Kelly Herold, which features reviews and news about book events.
- Chicken Spaghetti, which has news and reviews hosted by Susan Thomsen.
- The Fire Escape, which is a resource for cross-cultural books, movies and television written by Mitali Bose Perkins. (That's me!)