Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Guest-blogger Children's Author Mary Lynn Patton with 5 Links on Mexico and E-Publishing

Mary Lynn Patton

Delighted to see Mary Lynn Patton's first two children's books, Sounds of Mexico and Sounds of Mexico Maya, up in the iBookstore with links from www.MaryLynnPattonBooks.com. As Mary Lynn writes:

"These two bilingual books star my canary, Pavarotti, who loves to sing along with the sounds of Mexico. He takes the reader on adventures set in the magical mountains of Tepoztlan in the first book and the sacred land of the Maya people in the second. I recall with a chuckle my first plea for your help in finding a publisher for these books and your suggestion to self-publish as an iBook (books with sound require a connection to iTunes so the Amazon/Kindle combination was not possible). My collaborators, illustrator Margarita Sada from Mexico City, Salvador Espinosa, sound engineer, and Judith Segura, translator, and I (all from Tepoztlan, Morelos home to the Canadian Mexican Literary Festival), worked together to publish. It was thrilling. By the second book we were becoming increasingly interactive in our presentation and for the third book we are considering the Read Aloud feature available in iBooks. I want a hard copy published book to hold in addition to these e-books but as the Madam herself asserts (Seven Reasons Why E-Books Will Be Big in Mexico) this works to reach readers here and now. A bit of research revealed the phenomenal escalating sales for e-books, $1.3 billion in 2012 (No, E-book Sales Are Not Declining). Mexico City has a new eBook publishing company called editorial-ink for digital books (www.editorial-ink.com) and a new digital library (http://goodereader.com/blog/most-popular-news/largest-childrens-library-in-mexico-opens-and-uses-3000-ebooks/). Children the world over from middle and upper class homes are receiving iPad minis in child-proof cases as their birthday surprise to download interactive books."
> Recent guest-bloggers here at Madam Mayo include novelists Victoria Wilcox, Amy Kwei, and Joanna Hershon
> Check out the complete archive of guest-blogs here.
P.S. My embryonic and to-be-frequently-updated list of recommended reading on Mexico is here.