Waking Up Grandma Cover Competition Winners

To ensure that there was some impartiality to the proceedings, my sister-in-law Pontsho was kind enough to choose the winners of the Waking Up Grandma cover competition. 

And the winners are:

1st Prize - Po
2nd Prize- Claudia
3rd Prize - Anonymous

Congratulations ladies!

Claudia please send me your email address to damariasenne@gmail.com

One Of A Kind By Pamela Moeng

Check out Pam's One Of A Kind, a children's non-fiction reader which explains what DNA is and what different kinds of professionals do with DNA.

One Of A Kind is part of Cambridge University Press' Rainbow Reading series. It is graded as a level 5 book.

The paperback edition retails at R18.95 on Kalahari and the audio book is available from the publisher's web site.

Congratulations, Pam!

You can also check out more of Pam's book from the series, which was published in 2009. The books are  in Our Books page.

"Boitshoko" On Sale On Chapter 1 Books

  Yesterday I found out that Boitshoko, my reader for newly literate adults published by Heinemann Publishers in 1995 is now on sale as a rare, out of print book on Chapter 1 Books. 

I'm not sure who the seller is, but I think it's a private sale. It's odd to think of second-hand copies of my books changing hands years after they were published and they were almost forgotten. According to the dealer, the softcover book is still in "good condition."

The sale reminded me that I should find out when the rights of the book revert to me and to make a decision about what I plan to do with it once they reverted. Boitshoko was also translated into Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa and Sesotho. I also found a half-hearted listing of the book on Amazon. The  listing states that it does not know if and when the book will be in stock.

I'll probably release it as an ebook on Amazon as I did with The Doll That Grew. But that will be some time down the road.

Anyhoo, if you're interested in a twisted love story where title character is already dead, click here.

Also check out Our Books page. I updated it and put in the majority of our old books that are currently available on sale from online stores.  I've been meaning to list our books on this blog for quite a while, but it's a biggish job, especially considering Pam's academic book list. 

Revving Up My Social Media Marketing

I hope you like the new look and feel of the blog. I hadn't intended to change the scheme, but I lost the template for the last design while I was experimenting with blogger - something that I usually do so when I actually upgrade my designs I know what I'm doing. So, I decided to go with a predominantly blank canvass, with book covers and hopefully, photographs, bringing in the colour.

The upgrade was timely though, because I've recently revved up our social media marketing with the help of Gaynor Paynter of Talking Point Media Consulting and it will be nice for our visitors to find us on a fresh, updated site.

Gaynor's role is to promote my books online. Basically, she will maintain the Damaria Senne Media Facebook page, integrate it with my twitter, Google+ and other social media platforms,make sure that they are all updated regularly, arrange guest-blogging gigs for me and place free articles in article directories and place free adverts for the books in various online marketing directories. Gaynor will also help me get the books reviewed.

Outsourcing this task will cost me a bit of money, but I'm very comfortable with the decision, as it frees me up to spend more time writing, publishing and doing client work while having the assurance that the marketing and promotion work is getting done.

BTW, don't forget to take part in this week's competition to vote for your preferred Waking Up Grandma book cover. 

1st Prize =  $5 Amazon gift voucher + two of my ebooks of your choice
2nd Prize =  Two of my ebooks of your choice
3rd prize= A Kindle copy of Waking Up Grandma

Enjoy the rest of the weekend.