This press for I Miss My Mommy appeared in the October 15th edition of print edition of Kirkus Reviews. Novelist Louise Erdrich appears on the cover.
My Book + Employee Assistance Programs …
October 24, 2024
This is called “putting it out there.”
ASKING FOR YOUR HELP
“A stirring resource.”
I’m glad Publishers Weekly chose the word “resource” to describe my illustrated book, I MISS MY MOMMY.
The book follows the lives of orphaned adults, documenting their day-to day challenges getting out of bed, walking the dog, sitting at their desks at work, all the while lost in a haze of grief. I positioned the book as something raw, relatable, occasionally funny, that was written and illustrated by a fellow grief traveller, not a clinician or counsellor.
But being a self-published author and entrepreneur, I can’t just rely on book sales through discovery on Google or generative models, like SearchGPT. Nor can I bet on the buzz of social media. I like the idea of creating targeted pitches to potential partners.
Here’s what I’m thinking: Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs).
EAPs are workplace benefits programs in Canada, the US, and around the world that help employees resolve issues impacting their lives. The idea is to address personal challenges before they interfere with work performance. EAPs serve employees who need mental health support, substance abuse counseling, financial and legal advice, and ➡️grief and bereavement support⬅️
Bosses who are good at grief leadership* know that the organization will benefit when employees aren’t struggling with overwhelming personal stressors. When it comes to grief, a heartfelt acknowledgment by your boss and co-workers is a balm, while silence is a blow.
A television producer who came to my studio to shoot a segment about my book said all she had been looking for after her mother died was “validation for my need to grieve, and I found it in your book.”
THIS IS WHERE YOU COME IN
If any of you work with, or are in touch with, EAP service providers (LifeWorks, BetterUp, ComPsych, MantraCare), I would love an introduction and/or a good word. Thank you, everyone!
And now back to the book distribution war map,
Alison
Come and learn more about my book at PenJarProductions.com, including some TV interviews.
*H/T to Gini Dietrich for introducing me to the concept of grief leadership on her ever helpful SpinSucks.com blog.
Magazines: A Comeback Story
October 3, 2024
The story about magazines dying was true until it wasn’t.
I don’t have any hard numbers (yet), only the growing pile up of titles on my desk from brands looking to make printed keepsakes part of their content marketing strategy. Mazda, Holt Renfrew, The Humane Society, GoodLife and more are leaning into print on demand and the postal service. A hat tip to Joe Pulizzi who has been tracking this trend for a while.
Magazines, yes, magazines, are how you reach and re-establish that special bond with your audience at a time when social media is past its prime, and just plain gross.
But that’s not all. As AI takes over as the shifty Chief Explainer of Stuff on the Internet, humans working for brands are seeking to collect their stories in trustworthy off-line formats and, in doing so, they’re rediscovering the simple beauty of perfect binding.
I would never have predicted that Generative AI might be the force that brings magazines back. But print on demand is an affordable marketing option in 2024 (h/t Lulu Press, Inc.) Technology is meeting a moment.
Here is a snapshot from 2013 from my blog, Society Pages, that shows the bind magazines were facing back then. All of us assumed the situation would keep getting worse. Time will tell.
Feb 12, 2013 from “Society Pages” at AlisonGarwoodJones.com
“Newsstand sales of magazines and gum are both down. There’s a connection”
David Carey, president of Hearst Magazines, is calling it “the mobile blinder effect.” Talking to the Financial Times, he said that people waiting in line at the grocery store and the newsstand are staring at their phone screens during this key impulse purchasing window, rather than looking at the magazine racks and candy spreads. The latest reports show gum sales in the US are down by 2.7 percent (or $3.5 billion) while sales of consumer magazines dropped almost 10 percent (8.2%) in the second half of 2012.
Adding more screaming headlines to the newsstand and more flavours of gum, like Eclipse Polar Ice and Extra Dessert Delights, are not bringing readers or chewers back. In the case of the gum, the dizzying explosion of flavours over the past few years actually cannibalized sales rather than attracting new consumers. “We’ve made shopping for gum very complicated,” Casey Keller, president of the North America division of Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. told The Wall Street Journal. “We have 50 different varieties of gum in a convenience store, and that’s just Wrigley.”
Gum makers, including Wrigley’s, are considering a return to the classic flavours (remember mint?) and re-marketing gum as a “concentration aid” — something that will help video game addicts, students studying for exams and other high-strung types focus on the task at hand. They also want to make the packs small enough (6 pieces per) to fit into a smart phone pocket and cheaper than the cost of downloading an iTune (i.e. less than $1). Last year, the average price of a pack of gum in the US shot up to $1.58, whereas the average download was .99¢.
Magazines are also playing with pricing, offering cheap digital downloads. Whether they can make the consumer stop and stare, or care, is the current challenge. My pal Kat Tancock put it best. Commenting on this story on D.B. Scott’s Canadian Magazines blog, she said.
“Competing in a busier space just means magazines have to prove their value rather than just taking advantage of impulse buys. Frankly, if bored shoppers are the only reason a magazine can keep going, it probably isn’t that good a magazine. Instead of trying to protect the old, dead business model, let’s work on creating great magazines that people really want to read.”
Otherwise, magazines could all come polywrapped with a pack of gum inside to help keep readers focused on the contents. I dunno, I’m chewing on it.
Gan Arts Fest
September 24, 2024
Massive book sales? No. Deep connections? Yes. More on that in a future post.
This past weekend, I took the train up to Gananoque, Ontario and introduced I MISS MY MOMMY— both the book and six framed portraits from its pages — to this historic town during its annual Gan Art Fest, part of Ontario Culture Days.
Talking about a new book, especially one that covers a sensitive topic, like grief, feels a lot like speed dating. You’re both looking for resonance and connection, and it’s not always possible in a five- to ten-minute encounter. But lightning struck four times on Saturday. Happy and spent is how I felt by the end of the day.
My thanks to Dennis O’Connor (O’Connor Gallery) for being the biggest champion of the arts along the entire Québec-Windsor corridor. Thank you, John Fletcher, for framing each orphan portrait with such sensitivity and care, and for making us dinner.
And a mid-week shout out to the artists exhibiting on either side of me: @LizRaeDalton, @
Finally, thank you, Jane Thelwell, for opening your home to us. And to Greg, the only guy I want carrying my books.
I Miss My Mommy:150 Portraits of Orphaned Adults is printed and shipped with care by Lulu Press.
Photos by: Dennis O’Connor, Liz Rae Dalton, Monique van Someren, Alison Garwood-Jones
Students lean into AI
September 10, 2024
“AI is a huge opportunity for liberal arts grads,” says my friend, Stephen Ghigliotty. What he actually said, as he went on to remind me in my LinkedIn comments, is: “we are living through the revenge of the liberal arts majors…” Even better.
I’m seeing that play out in class at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies where I teach courses in Digital Comms Strategy (2875) and Writing Digital Content (3681).
Why would something so technical be such an opportunity for humanities majors? Ethan Mollick says it best:
“Writers are often the best at prompting AI … because they are skilled at describing the effects they want prose to create. They are good editors, so they can provide instructions back to the AI. And they can manipulate narrative to get the AI to think in the way they want.”
This video shows 5 AI tools SCS students are using to manage their time and super charge their creative expression. All are learning to be the conductors of an orchestra of AI apps (h/t Christopher Penn).
Book Gets Kirkus Star Rating
September 5, 2024
Getting the word out about an independently-published book takes persistence and the forward lean of a battering ram. It also takes a set of clear targets.
I LOVE LIBRARIES
From the start, I wanted I MISS MY MOMMY, my illustrated book for orphaned adults struggling with grief, to be available in libraries, starting in Canada. It’s personal. I am a huge user of the Toronto Public Library.
I started by pitching to earn a listing in Whitehots, the catalogue Canadian librarians peruse when they have the budget to go shopping for new titles.
I earned a spot. Yay!
But my listing didn’t come with a book cover image, a throw to my website, or an ISBN — just an N/A in all fields. The customer service rep was unable to correct the issues.
Having provided all of this information in my application, I wondered if my self-publishing status was resulting in this latest wah-wah-wah moment.
ENTER KIRKUS
By mid-August, I discovered that I MISS MY MOMMY had been awarded a star by Kirkus Reviews.
Established in 1933, Kirkus Reviews is the New York-based literary magazine synonymous with the gold standard of book reviews. A few Google searches helped me understand what the star meant. Of the over 10,000 books reviewed every year, ten percent earn the star.
Did this mean I could stop pushing and sit back? No. While the Toronto Public Library has already said yes to carrying my book, now it’s up to me to approach the purchasing departments at the libraries in Hamilton, Vancouver, Halifax, and more to ask if they will too. I’m good with that. I like the feeling of representing myself.
Oh, I went back to Whitehots and mentioned the star. Within five minutes, my listing went from a string of grey N/A’s to full-on technicolor.
THE REVIEW
Now the review. I thought it was sharp and very fair. I’m glad the reviewer and the editors understood and celebrated the spirit of my book. They did wonder, however, if I’d lost the plot when I included Trump and Putin in my lineup of grieving orphans.”Can their personalities be boiled down to a reaction to grief?” they asked.
This question is exactly why I included them in the book.
My book is available at PenJarProductions.com. It’s printed and shipped by the nice folks at Lulu Press.
End of Summer
August 30, 2024
In 1927, in the final days of summer, New Yorkers flooded to The Cyclone, Coney Island’s newest ride engineered by inventor Harry C. Baker.
“Let’s go for a wild ride,” they told their friends and family members.
A giant chain slowly pulled the three-car train up the wooden tracks. The cars rattled, herked, and jerked ladies’ pin curls and mens’ beer bellies before stopping at the zenith overlooking Luna Park and the Atlantic Ocean to the south.
After a beat, it descended at speeds of 68 miles an hour, serving up nine more drops and six curves. The kids turned into a choir of white-knuckled screamers. Ladies’ hats littered the pavement below.
New Yorkers stepped off the ride windswept and unsteady on their feet. After enough time passed, they stopped at Nathan’s Famous Frankfurter & Soft Drink Stand for a 5¢ hot dog and a free root beer.
Illustration: I drew this one with my favourite Uniball Roller Pen (black).
Beyond the reach of tech
August 27, 2024
Longing for yourself is an ache that most people are familiar with, even if they can’t explain it. Attentiveness is an effective way to ease that ache. So is self-reliance.
Attentiveness and self-reliance can take you to a realm that is beyond technology’s reach. This mysterious realm hovers above the Google search bar and AI’s prompt box, and it’s not always accessible despite multiple takeoff attempts to get there. This place is where ideas and art spark and oxygen is abundant.
Many humans have found that the introduction of technology inside this realm consistently thwarts combustion and thins the air. The heat and light that we can sometimes managed to coax into being fizzles upon contact with apps, along with our sense of self.
May experience grant us all the courage, wisdom and serenity to know when and where technology can best serve us.
My Mother’s Spice Tins
August 1, 2024
In 2021, Benjamin Dreyer, the former managing editor and copy chief at Random House, wrote a beautiful piece for his Substack newsletter. “The First Withouts” describes his life during the year after his mother, Diana, died at 91.
In his first dream about her, mother and son went right back to FaceTiming each other, she joking that she couldn’t make their next dinner date. Surely this is proof that our own bodies and brains are designed to support us, offering comfort through humour just when we need it most.
Other memories about Diana tumbled forth during that year of firsts: past conversations about her tastiest recipe (“You roasted CANNED potatoes for us?!”). Then there was the frequently made observation that Anne Frank was born five weeks before his mother. And yet, there was Diana Dreyer, decades later, “living on the Upper West Side, free to read her books, play computer solitaire, and make the occasional trip to Broadway or Lincoln Center to take in this play or that musical.”
One detail that Benjamin posted confirmed all the ways that orphaned adults are unknowingly connected. Diana liked to dust those roast potatoes with paprika. It was one of her son’s strongest sensory memories of her. When he was cleaning out her apartment, he found a 40-year-old tin of McCormick’s paprika.
Like Benjamin, I was struck by the time capsule hidden away in my mother’s kitchen. Our 40-year-old spice tins were from Club House (“Our Mission Is to Help Canadians Live Happier and Healthier Lives Through Rich Flavours.”) Benjamin took a picture of Diana’s tins (above), and I made a drawing of my mum’s (below). The humour of the moment inspired each of us to make a record of the life and times of our parents. And for anyone who enjoys a company’s branding history, there’s that.
This drawing appears on page 46 of my book, I MISS MY MOMMY: 150 Portraits of Orphaned Adults.
My book is heading to the library
July 29, 2024
My graphic novel, I Miss My Mommy: 150 Portraits of Orphaned Adults, will be available at the Toronto Public Library.
👐Jazz hands👐- Thank you to the team in the purchasing department at the Toronto Public Library who contacted me yesterday to let me know that they were buying multiple copies of I MISS MY MOMMY, my new book about the grief of orphaned adults.
For an indie publishing house like mine, that was a definite distribution victory. My bookstore and print shop is Pen Jar Productions.
Fun fact: The TPL has 100 branches and a higher circulation per capita than any other public library system, making it the largest neighbourhood-based library system in the world. Torontonians are readers! 
