As a Type A gal, I’m a sucker for lists and “best of” lists are no exception. For one, the review lets you analyze your year, which we’ve been doing in the Hive to see what worked and what didn’t, and how we’ll do things differently in 2013. More on 2013 in our New Year’s post, but for now we’d like to relish our favorite moments from 2012 and thank everyone who has been a part of our Hive this year – readers, authors, book bloggers, reviewers and writers. We couldn’t buzz without you. Photo slideshow at the bottom of the post and check out our books page for 2012 releases. – Malena Lott
1. Prom Dates to Die For model search and photo shoot
In March, we held a statewide model search for a cover model for our Prom Dates paranormal anthology and discovered Morgan Gover, who is a senior at Altus High School. A lot of kind souls took part in the shoot and we’d like to again thank:
Dress, Mac Duggal, courtesy BodyTrends BoutiQue www.bodytrendsspa.com
Hair by Shelly Price; Makeup by Amber Fike, The Makeup Room Agency
Photography by Leigh Thompson www.LeighThompsonPhotography.com
Publicist Cyndy Hoenig for setting it up!
The result was not only a gorgeous cover but the beginning of Morgan’s modeling career – she has since signed with Tabb Models. And wonderful new connections with cool people I’m proud to know. And the anthology itself – along with the follow-up, Something Wicked, is truly wonderful. A fun collection of paranormal tales with kick-butt heroines and heroes.
2. Get Togethers
Buzz held two workshops - a summer retreat in Guthrie, OK and Castle & Quill, a fall novel prep workshop at Castle Falls in Oklahoma City. Not only do we love to meet other writers, but we always learn something from each other, no matter what stage of the writing journey we’re in. It was great to meet young adult paranormal author Tara Hudson, who spoke at our fall workshop, along with Lucie Smoker, Mari Farthing and myself. Our Books & Boutiques event held at Northpark Mall in December in OKC was also great fun, getting to meet readers in a girls night out format.
3. Stingers
Sometimes my own enthusiasm for projects far outweighs the sales, which is why I’m thankful that ebooks have a “long tail” and are not taken off the shelf after the first three months. I personally love short reads and “Stingers” is a line I had hoped would find loads of readers who are short on time and only want to spend a buck. While these high-quality, well-written shorts haven’t found a big audience yet, I’m very proud of them and feel confident readers will connect with them. 2012 Stingers include: Mythology High Young Adult shorts, “Taylor on Lockdown,” and “Ryann in the Sky,” by Jammie Kern; dystopian comedy “Bra Wars” by Peggy Chambers; humorous essays “TMI Mom Bites the Big Apple,” by Heather Davis; and women’s fiction”The Pool Boy,” by Malena Lott. And a huge thank you to senior editor Mari Farthing for editing these. Her keen eye, great questions and spit and polish help us produce better stories. (Also for you writers reading this, Mari is offering manuscript services in 2013 so check out her blog for information.)
4. SWARM
I fondly remember when we got the submission in for what was then called, “Explode the Back,” which became DISTORTION by Lucie Smoker, our first Swarm title, our suspense line including mystery, thriller, and horror stories. It’s edgy and well-written and has a unique setting in Houston and interesting characters – Adele is an artist; her off-and-on again boyfriend is an activist and Adele’s best friend owns a sex toy shop. We are offering the DISTORTION ebook for .99 in the Kindle store through 1/13/13 so I hope you’ll give this new author a read. (And this happens to be my favorite cover of the year. Thanks to Rod Lott and Lucie Smoker for being so patient as we went through a thousand possibilities before striking on this one.)
5. Lift Off
While there are so many cool individual moments from 2012, I am especially thankful for what I call the “lift off” moments when things came together beautifully. Here are a few of them:
- Large spring story in The Oklahoman about Buzz Books and the authors we’d signed to date and then the September cover of ion Oklahoma about Buzz. Press is a good thing. People get to know about you and that you’re legit. We still get the question, “what do you charge,” and we are still traditional in the sense that we do not charge our authors for any of our services. We’re royalty-based, highly creative and highly social. Any author who signs with Buzz does so because they want to plug into a team versus going it alone on the self-pub route or waiting on a ‘big house’, which is now more and more consolidated, to come calling. We know it’s a leap of faith on both of our parts. We wish we could guarantee press for us and our authors as well as sales, but publishing is and will always be a venture that relies on connection, timing, great storytelling, hard work, passionate readers and a bit of luck. (Okay, sometimes a lot of luck.)
- Cool projects like our recipe series, The Poolside Companion and Holidays in the Hive as free downloadable pdfs, allow readers to get to know our authors and get something “free,” recipes along with learning about our stories. We’ll continue to do projects like that in 2013.
- Blog tours. While blog tours don’t guarantee sales for your books, they do result in impressions and awareness which must come before a sale can happen. You can’t buy what you’ve never heard of. So we are thankful for all the yes’ we received on our blog tours for our releases and finished well with a “Sleigh Read” tour that included twenty blogs and giveaways.
- Speaking of “yes,” that’s the best lift off we can get from authors, too. We’ve been working hard on our 2013 line up and it doesn’t happen without a lot of YES along the way. We’re looking forward to sharing our 2013 line up with you in our New Year’s post! And the “yes” from the readers: yes, I’ll buy it and yes, I loved it, is a sweet thing, indeed. Thank you from the bottom of our Hive heart.
Enjoy our photo gallery and see you in 2013!
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Tags: buzz books, Distortion, mythology high, short stories, small press, Stingers
Happy Mother’s Day to all of you mamas out there. To help you celebrate, we’re giving you some laughs on Kindle with a free download of Heather Davis’ TMI MOM BITES THE BIG APPLE, essays on her first trip to NYC last year when she was on a national talk show that begins with an “O” and ends in a “Z.”
picture. The novel is about three sisters who get an invitation from their estranged mother to take a trip around the world to see where she’s been the last twenty years. The genesis of the book came from my own experience being estranged from my mother for twenty years, but unlike the book, I did not get a trip around the world. I hope readers can identify with the story about hope, forgiveness and sisterhood. I’ll be doing a Sisterhood tour to promote FAMILY CHARMS and my first YA novel, TWIN FALLS (Lena Brown), so if you’d like to host me for your book club, e-mail us at buzzbooksusa (at) me (dot) com.
Buzz is pleased to welcome British author 
Next Left Cover
It’s no secret publishers and authors need buzz to build word-of-mouth for their books. Now Buzz Books would like to reward our readers with a club that lets us celebrate stories together. Check out the 
In SOMETHING WICKED, we get six Day of the Dead themed short stories sure to add a little horror (and some humor) into our Halloween. Publish Date: Oct. 2012, ebook and trade paperback
