Laura Erickson's For the Birds

Monday, September 24, 2007

Wanted: Photos of YOU holding my book!


When I wrote 101 Ways to Help Birds, I envisioned it as my "Rachel Carson book." I was the exact same age when it came out as she was when Silent Spring came out, and I hoped it would be an excellent resource for everyone who cares about birds to see the myriad ways our human activities are currently hurting birds and what we each can do about it. So far the book hasn't been mentioned or reviewed in many birding magazines (Birding Business, Birder's World, and Cornell's BirdScope are important exceptions), and it's doing no better than the marketing departments of two big publishers who turned it down predicted. They thought birders just aren't interested in books about conservation.

But SOME people are! Please--if you have read my book and liked it, send me a photo of you holding it. And if you possibly can, send me photos of any "top guns" holding it. And if anyone can possibly get a photo of Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert or Dave Barry or Ewan McGregor or George Clooney or Bob Balaban or Oprah Winfrey or Chandler Robbins holding it, well, I'll die a happy woman.

Also, if you can get a photo of it in an out-of-the-way, independent bookstore, I'd love that. Like if it turned up in Garrison Keillor's bookstore in the Twin Cities, or in The Tattered Cover in Denver, for instance.

(Disclaimer: Scott Weidensaul has not read my book yet, though he was kind enough to pose holding it. I sure hope he won't regret it!)