November 25, 2024 - Stephanie Cooke

Hi friends! It’s been a couple of months, apologies for the lack of updates here, and in general. I’m not going to lie though, 2024 has been a bit of a rough one for me and my mental health, and it’s been tricky to stick with my routines that I spent years building for myself.

As you may know, I have ADHD and sometimes I feel like I’m being pulled in a million directions. It also means that it’s very hard for me to create routines and follow them—one of the cons of having ADHD is that I can’t form habits organically, and when I do create habits, any bump in the road can derail it. I’ve been in the derailment phase for a while, and have been struggling with trying to get back on track. Some days I do really well, and I’m proud of what I’m able to accomplish! But if I’m not able to stick with things, it brings me down even lower than I was before, and it’s hard for me to be kind to myself.

Maybe I’m oversharing but it feels important to share the highs and lows of being a self-employed creator, and right now this is a massive struggle for me—on top of the fact that it’s been one of my worst years for work. There’s always ebbs and flows to any career but with AI gaining traction, and the general destabilization of the world, it feels scarier than ever to not have solid footing under me for work and life.

It’s easy to look at what someone is posting online or their output for work (ie. my books) and think that everything is sunshine and rainbows. But I want to share that I struggle too, and I’ve felt blocked creatively for almost this entire year. I had a great release schedule for 2024 with The Racc Pack, Pillow Talk, My Little Pony: Camp Bighoof, and Cat Ninja: Heart of a Hero, but none of these projects are actually from this year. These are projects that I’ve been working on for ages and they all just happened to be released around the same time. So just a bit of a perception vs. reality check there—and ultimately I’m okay, but it’s been a tough year for me.

Which brings me to the second topic of discussion that I want to cover for this update: PREORDERS!

I just wrote up a big explainer on the importance of preorders, so if you have a moment, I highly recommend checking it out. Not just because I wrote it but because if you’re a book consumer, it’s great to better understand why your favourite creators are regularly trying to encourage preorders (hint: it’s not just for the heck of it!)

I’m going to share the TL;DR version of the article here, but if you have the energy to read up on it a little more, I expand on everything in the post shared above.

Pre-orders help determine a number of different things including:

Publisher marketing budgets to promote a book
Bookstores interest in ordering books (and the quantities they order)
Interest for book tours/festival and convention appearances

And one of the biggest ones:

Whether or not a publisher wants to acquire MORE books from creators Consumers have sway over the market for the creators they enjoy.

Let’s get a little more lighthearted and talk about some updates and other things that have been going on lately!

I’m all out of upcoming events to share. I don’t have anything else going on until 2025, so check out my appearances page for updates on that. I just got back from a trip to the East Coast though, and spent four days in Halifax where I attended the delightful Hal-Con. It was ridiculously charming, and I had the best time there! The staff, volunteers, fans…EVERYONE was top-notch and made it one of my all-time favourite shows. I will absolutely be back in the future.

I wish I had took more photos than I did, but I’ll share this picture that Jay from Capes and Cowl Comics and Collectibles took of us. Please go support their incredible store. I nearly cried several times hearing Jay talk about the space they’ve created and I wholeheartedly support what they’re doing with this wonderfully inclusive store.

OH, AND I HAVE AWARD NEWS! PILLOW TALK is nominated for a White Pine Award, which is a part of the Forest of Reading program across Canada. I am so honoured to be included, especially for this book—I truly did not expect this, and I am so grateful that this program will help spread the word about our delightful graphic novel all about the real underground pillow fight league.

And speaking of which, if you didn’t already know about my experience with the real underground Pillow Fight League in Toronto, School Library Journal invited me to do a guest post with them and talk all about it. Read it by clicking here—it’s a wild journey!

BOOKS OF NOTE:

I admittedly haven’t been reading as much as I normally do, which I think is partially because of The Funk that I have been in (see beginning of this post). But that being said, since my last update, there are two books in particular that really stood out to me:

THE BUTCHER OF THE FOREST by Premee Mohamed – I picked up this book on a whim and I think it’s now one of my favourite reads of 2024, and is on an all-time faves list too. I am in my Dark Fairytale Era, and this scratched that itch for me. I don’t want to give too much away but if you’re a fan of T. Kingfisher or Holly Black, this book will be up your alley. Trust me.
A SWEET STING OF SALT by Rose Sutherland – Just before I went out east, I decided to start this book because it’s set in Nova Scotia and is all about one of my favourite creatures from folklore: the selkie. I love fantasy and folklore, and this scratched an itch for a magical realism love story that felt like it could have happened to someone, somewhere. A sapphic romance at its core with a mystery weaved throughout and seeds planted for something fantastical.

TV:

Since I haven’t made any concreate decisions on whether to keep this section in or not, it remains! Once again, I watched a lot of reality TV as I finished off Below Deck S10-11, and watched Love is Blind S7 because (in Marie Condo voice) I love mess. I don’t really count this as reality TV (even though it is) but I finally got caught up on Taskmaster S18 too, and what a treat. Rosie Jones is an absolutely unhinged hero, and I adore her.

And while still in the reality TV realm, but switching to documentary, I watched HBO’s Chimp Crazy, which is appropriately crazy, as advertised. If you haven’t watched it yet, oof, it’s from the same folks who did Tiger King, and while it is sometimes heartbreaking to watch, I deeply admire the filmmakers for trying to raise awareness of the exotic animal trade going on in the USA, which is wild (no pun intended) to me.

I additionally watched Bodies, Interview with the Vampire S1, Evil S1-2, Agatha All Along, and Not Dead Yet S1. I don’t know that I have much to say about most of these, but I will say that Evil has been an unexpected treat and I’ve really enjoyed a show that goes back to the monster-of-the-week format. It’s kind of like The X-Files but for the Catholic Church, which I know doesn’t sound like the greatest pitch if religion isn’t your bag. BUT it focuses on the weird cases that they take on in the process of approving exorcisms, and other fantastical/demonic things within their scope. It’s not without heavy criticism of the church, politics, the police, and more though, and it’s pretty relevant to modern viewers, and I genuinely have been enjoying the flawed characters and their journeys in skepticism, belief, and more.

I guess I did actually have things to say about some of the shows. But other than that, I just started Not Dead Yet and that’s also been scratching a fun itch. It reminds me of Bryan Fuller’s short-lived series Wonderfalls, which is also a treat. Gina Rodriguez is charming as heck, and although she doesn’t always work as a Chaotic Mess character (she is too sweet and delightful), I am still having a lot of fun watching it (TL;DR she becomes an obituary writer and is haunted by the ghosts of the people she’s writing obituaries for).

MY BOOKS:

I’m going to hype up my books that came out this year, and encourage you to pick them up for the holidays, if you have loved one that might enjoy them. And additionally, I shared some thoughts on preorders so I’m going to put in the upcoming RACC PACK sequel, and if you are able to preorder, I would greatly appreciate it.

PILLOW TALK – Inspired by Toronto’s very real underground pillow fight league (that I was in for one night). Meet Grace (aka Cinderhella) in this coming-of-confidence story all about a young woman who finds the Pillow Fight Federation and rises its ranks and discovers her own self-worth along the way.
THE RACC PACK – Two raccoons and a possum who thinks he’s a raccoon, go on a heist for the BEST GARBAGE EVER!
THE RACC PACK: PRINCE AND THE PAWPER – In the second book in the series (each is standalone), the Bins’ Family discover that celebrity pets are a thing, including a celebrity raccoon named Prince, who happens to be nearby for PetExpo. The trio break into the convention to meet him, and get some tips on how to win over the humans (and their food).

SOCIALS:

I’ve been a little less active on socials lately, but if you want to follow me online, you can find me:

Again, this wound up being a pretty long update, so apologies for that. But if you made it all the way through to the end, thank you so much for your support and patience.

Until next time…

Preorders are an extremely vital and important part of the process to getting a book out into the world. It’s vital to all creative processes, beyond just for books, comics, and graphic novels, but we’re going to focus on the publishing world for the purpose of this post.

I’m going to go into depth on the why behind everything but feel free to scroll down to the TL;DR summary, if you want the short version.

If you follow any creators on their social media, you may have seen them hyping up their projects available for preorder. On top of creators just being downright excited for something to be almost out in the world, it serves an important function: to tell bookstores and publishers that a title is worth stocking or that the creators are worth acquiring more stories from.

You might not think anything of it when you know there’s something you’re excited about on the horizon—you can just pick it up in stores on the day of or whenever you’re next out, right? But what if you go to pick it up, and it’s not stocked? It could be that they sold out, sure, but it could also be that without preorders to let a book buyer know about a title, it got lost in the shuffle and didn’t even wind up in the store in the first place. There is a lot of competition for not a lot of shelf space, so a book needs to standout to get a spot.

You’ve probably seen bestseller lists before like the New York Times or USA Today or within Canada, the Globe & Mail. All of these lists track the sales data for books to see what is doing well. They can be localized, regional, national, or international, but all of them compile sales from a variety of sources to give folks an idea of what people are excited about. When a new release hits that list, it’s very often also because of preorders. Preorders get added to the data for the first week of sales, and they’re vital to helping put creators on the bestsellers map, so to speak.

Authors and creators that hit bestseller lists are far more likely to get bigger marketing budgets for their current and future books since “Bestselling Author” can be an enticing title for consumers when looking to check out new books. But even without the bestseller lists in the mix, preorders help to determine the marketing budgets for a book ahead of time—AKA how much time and energy a publisher is willing to put into promoting a title. If there aren’t a lot of preorders for something, a creator will likely be given a pretty small budget with minimal marketing and therefor might not reach as big of an audience as it could.

On a similar note, if you’ve ever wanted to meet your favourite creators and have a copy of your book signed or get to chat with them, etc., guess what? Preorders also factor into book tours, festival circuits, conventions, signing events, and more. More preorders again means that a marketing budget could potentially include travel to places where the preorders are prevalant or where there’s lots of hype! It helps gets more eyes on the creators and their works.

It’s all an ecosystem that has many moving parts that all feed into each other.

Consumers have a lot of say about which creators get marketing, and get out into the world. The books that you choose to support tell publishers that there is interest in those stories and the people who tell them.

So when creators ask for you to preorder their books, it’s more than just being excited for their stories to be out in the world, it’s part of them trying to continue to do what they do and make even more stories for you to read and enjoy.

TL;DR Summary:

Are you a reader who wants to support your favourite creators and books? Great! One of the absolute best things you can do is preorder your books. Preorders help determine a number of different things including:

Publisher marketing budgets to promote a book
Bookstores interest in ordering books (and the quantities they order)
Interest for book tours/festival and convention appearances

And one of the biggest ones:

Whether or not a publisher wants to acquire MORE books from creators Consumers have sway over the market for the creators they enjoy.

You can tell publishers how much you support them by preordering and encouraging others to do the same.

Speaking of which, if you want to help me out and support the work I do, please take a moment to visit RaccPack.com to preorder Racc Pack: Prince and the Pawper, which is out on January 28, 2025.

<3 <3