Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Fury of the Phoenix Giveaway

The delightful Ellen Oh (publishing the first of the Dragon King Chronicles next year) is hosting a Fury of the Phoenix giveaway in honor of the equally delightful Cindy Pon's upcoming release. You enter with a Haiku! How fun is that? First prize is an ARC of Fury. And a $50 gift certificate! Second prize gets a paperback of Silver Phoenix and $25. Not too shabby :)



If you remember, Silver Phoenix released last year and was universally loved by everyone who read it. The original cover looks like this:

SILVER PHOENIX by Cindy Pon

Since the book was phenomenal and seems to be gaining momentum, assumptions were made that the "Asian" needed to be toned down to reach more readers. Ellen offers perspective and class sharing her thoughts on the change over at her blog. All I can say is DAMN! How lucky is Cindy to have two such gorgeous covers for one book? And she's generous, too. You can get the first 70 pages of Silver Phoenix at her site for Silver Phoenix.

Check out the contest rules and what Ellen has to say about the significance of the cover change here. And brush up your haiku! Great prizes!
Posted by at

6 comments:

  1. Michael Offutt, Phantom ReaderFebruary 1, 2011 at 9:10 AM

    Hmmm. I think it's unfortunate that the "Asian" would need to be toned down to increase profits. Being half Asian, I find this kind of insulting. But whatever...it's her book and I wish her luck with it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. LaurelFebruary 1, 2011 at 9:20 AM

    @ Michael: Yeah, I think a lot of people agree with you. If you get a chance read Ellen's thoughts on it. She raises some good points. Malinda Lo had a recent post regarding same that I thought was great.

    I will be interested to see if the new cover style outperforms the old one. It's a catch-22. It would be depressing if it did, but I hope Cindy sells a ton of books.

    ReplyDelete
  3. cindyFebruary 1, 2011 at 1:21 PM

    thanks so much for the shout out, laurel! the paperback is carried in 4x more bn stores than the hardcover. the cover change was due to LOW sales. there would be no need to repackage if it was selling well. =)

    michael, it's not as simple as that, alas. (changed due to "Asian" aspect.) i'd recommend reading malinda lo's very excellent post on not judging a book by it's cover:

    http://www.malindalo.com/2011/01/dont-judge-a-book-by-its-cover/

    i share my thoughts in the comments section.
    thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  4. LaurelFebruary 1, 2011 at 1:39 PM

    Wow! Thanks for stopping by! Yeah, I don't really get the lower than expected numbers because I remember good buzz on this title. I'll certainly pimp it where I can.

    At any rate, what I took away from Malinda's post was that getting broader stories out there is the first step in the process of getting people to identify outside of their ethnocentric expectations. If you can't even get people to read it, no matter how invalid the reason, you've already lost that fight.

    Honestly, I think the market is so there for something that isn't driven by Fae, werewolves, and vampires. And I love all those things. But it's getting awfully hard to find something new to twist into the canon.

    ReplyDelete
  5. cindyFebruary 2, 2011 at 5:44 PM

    that's how deceptive the internet is, alas. i did do as much as i could to buzz the book online, and bloggers were so helpful. but actual books getting INTO the stores and actual teens picking up the books, it didn't meet expectations.

    happy news is that paperback is in almost every bn that i can see, and on endcaps. so i'm very hopeful. thanks for all your support!! i'll message you soon about my paintings too. =)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Angela AckermanMarch 18, 2011 at 2:48 PM

    *waves at Cindy*

    I'm very looking forward to reading the rest of this series. I enjoyed SP a lot. :)

    Angela @ The Bookshelf Muse

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)