The Great Giveaway

One cool thing about being a writer is you occassionally get to donate books. You get a small number of free books from your publisher, and I keep a few, give a few to family, and donate the rest away.

Recently I was able to get donations of 42 autographed books from several Utah-based writers, and working with a few families from the area, we created "The Reading Tree." Utah has a Festival of Trees every year, where hundreds of decorated trees are donated and auctioned to benefit the Primary Children's Hospital. Our tree was so cool, with a reading lamp as the star, a reading chair, rug, cuddly toys, and a bookcase full of these wonderful, signed books. I don't know who ended up buying it, but I hope it was a library or hospital or somewhere the books can be read.

After hurricane Katrina, I emailed my publisher, asking if I could buy 50 books with my author's discount and have them sent directly to Texas where thousands of people were living in a sports stadium. Bloomsbury emailed back, offering to do 500! And I just heard--you know how the goose girl paperback had that printing error and they recalled all the copies? Well, Bloomsbury was able to donate 20,000 goose girl paperbacks First Book, who is getting these books to children who lost everything in the hurricane. What a tremendous thing to come out of a mis-printing.