Galley mailing to key reviewers and media outlets 4-5 months prior to publication.
Advanced review copies and press materials sent to a targeted list of 150-200 reviewers. Additional review copies available by request: [email protected].
National advertising: Poets & Writers, American Poets, and the Academy of American Poets newsletter.
Outreach to online media and bloggers including BuzzFeed, Bustle, Book Riot, Literary Hub, etc. for poems and essays on motherhood and mental illness.
Buy-ins to relevant academic conferences, trade shows, and publications: American Library Association Annual Meeting, CBSD Sales, and Academic catalogs, etc.
Spring book announcements submitted to Publishers Weekly.
Online/social media campaign: promotion through BOA’s website, blog, e-newsletter (7,400+ subscribers), Facebook (7,000+ followers), Twitter (9,000 followers), Instagram (2,500+ followers), and Pinterest (840+ followers) accounts.
Full-page feature in publisher’s in-house catalog.
E-postcards will be sent to the author’s email list of 900 followers as well as BOA’s academic contacts, reviewer contacts, bookstore contacts, and literary bloggers.
Simultaneous ebook and print publication. Ebook ISBN will be included on all press materials, author and publisher websites, and whenever print ISBN is listed.
Book launch and readings to be pitched for NYC area, Hobart Women’s Book Festival, Sarah Lawrence College, and other universities and booksellers in New York.
Possible joint events with Kimiko Hanh (W.W. Norton), Aracelis Girmay (BOA), Shira Erlichman (Alice James), Rachel Zucker (Wave), Cate Marvin (W.W. Norton), Mahogany Browne (Willow Books), Rachel McKibbens (Copper Canyon), Alicia Ostriker (University of Pittsburg), and Cheryl Boyce Taylor (Northwestern University).
Limited co-ops available.
Promotion through the author’s website, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook & Goodreads: www.elanabell.com
Mother Country examines the intricacies of mother–daughter relationships: what we inherit from our mothers, what we let go, what we hold, and what we pass on to our own children, both the visible and invisible.
As the speaker gradually loses the mother she has always known and upon whom she has always depended to early onset Parkinson’s disease and mental illness, she asks herself: “How do you deal with the grief of losing someone who is still living?” The caregiving of a child to her parent is further compounded by anxiety and depression, as well as the pain of a miscarriage and the struggle to conceive once more. Her journey comes full circle when the speaker gives birth to a son and discovers the gap between the myths of motherhood and a far more nuanced reality.
