Aussie Author Month 2011 – Come and join us!

Join us in April for a month-long celebration of awesome Australian authors.

You may have been wondering why reviews have been scarce on Book Thingo. Aside from the obvious answer—we’ve been lazy but not that lazy—we’ve been saving up some of our reviews for a special month-long event.

April is Aussie Author Month!

Aussie Author Month is a cross-genre collaboration to support and promote Australian writing. During April, we’ll be featuring bestselling and upcoming Australian authors, and highlighting some of our favourite Aussie books.

At Book Thingo, we’ll be reviewing Australian-authored books, most of which will be romances or feature romantic elements.

Who else is participating?

Aussie Author Month started off with a tweet last year, and it’s been a collaborative effort between several bloggers:

Nyssa at A Writer Goes on a Journey via the Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFFWA), who will focus on Australian sff authors,

Ali and Rosie at Fangtastic, who will focus on urban fantasy and paranormal romance authors,

and later joined by Marg at The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader, who reads within and outside of romance and sff.

You can find a list of participants here.

What’s in it for you?

Here are some of the activities we’ll be undertaking:

• Author interviews
• Reviews of Aussie books
• Promotions/discounts/specials at bookstores/online
• Start memes
• Blog carnivals
• Book/Writing competitions with prizes

Wanna join us?

If you run a book blog or website…contact us and we’ll list you as a participating blog. Nyssa will be managing the list, so you can contact her directly (see below), or you can leave a comment here and we’ll consolidate our lists. Please include your blog URL, the name of your blog and, if you have a specific focus, which authors you’ll be targeting.

If you’re an Aussie author…contact any of the bloggers above to organise a guest post, feature or giveaway, or you can give a book or two away on either your own site or our sites, and we’ll post links. Please try and target the right blog for your genre/category.

If you’re a bookseller…you can promote Australian books by having an Aussie book section display in your shop, or provide discounts on Aussie written books.

If you are a publisher…you can give a percentage of a books price to the ILP during the month (see below), or promote or giveaway your books through your own site or one of the blogs listed above. If you’re promoting books specifically for Aussie Author Month, please send us a link so we can blog about it.

If you’re interested in books…please feel free to link our Aussie Author Month posts to your blog or social media, buy Australian books and support the ILP.

Who to contact

Promotions and giveaways will be done through the most appropriate site.

If the book is sff, you should contact A Writer Goes on a Journey.

If the book is urban fantasy or paranormal romance, you should contact Fangtastic.

If the book is romance or has romantic elements (happy endings only, please!), contact me.

If the book is historical or general Australian fiction, contact The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader.

For all other enquiries, contact Nyssa at nyssa.pascoe@gmail.com.

Support the Indigenous Literacy Project

As part of Aussie Author Month we will be encouraging everyone to support the Indigenous Literacy Project. The ILP is a charity whose aim is to raise literacy levels among Indigenous Australians in rural and remote communities. The ILP works in partnership with the Australian Book Industry and the Fred Hollows Foundation.

We will be actively fundraising for the ILP through GoFundraise.com.au. This will
be set up closer to the start date of the project, so if you want to be
involved, please email us and we will keep you updated with the appropriate
links.

http://www.indigenousliteracyproject.org.au/

We can’t wait to celebrate Australian authors with you! Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting specific invitations for some blog activities we’ll be doing at Book Thingo, so watch this space.