An Interview with YA Author Holly Cupala

I’m excited for you all to read my interview with author Holly Cupala. She’s been doing some exciting and innovative things to help promote her debut novel, Tell Me a Secret, including serializing an audio book of her own.

I love how she’s used social media along with along with other tools to really create opportunity for herself and her book. I hope you enjoy her story.

Your book is “traditionally” published (by HarperTeen), and you had an offer for a traditional audio book, too. But you turned that down to do it on your own. What were your reasons for maintaining control (and turning down money!)?

We can blame it on the audiobook version of The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson. That’s where I first heard award-winning actor Jenna Lamia, who has also read The Chosen One, The Secret Life of Bees, The Help, and many other gorgeous books. My dream was for Jenna to one day read my work.

Last spring we had an offer for the Tell Me a Secret audiobook from a major audiobook publisher, but the hitch was they wouldn’t let us consult on the narrator.

We’ve listened to the good and the not-so-good in audiobooks, and Jenna was by far my favorite reader. So my husband Shiraz said, “Why don’t we do this ourselves?” He has experience in media projects, and the more we talked about it, the more possible it seemed.

I looked Jenna up to tell her I was a fan and to ask if she might be interested in our project. She emailed me immediately. She loved the first two chapters I sent and put us in touch with her agent.

Shiraz negotiated the terms while researching directors and production companies. He stumbled upon the post-production house for Carol Lynch Williams’ The Chosen One, and they connected him with the director, Jerry Maybrook.

Right about this time I was heading to BEA in New York at the same time Jenna and Jerry were there for the 2010 Audie Awards. Shiraz arranged for me to meet up with Jerry, and we completely hit it off. He has worked with major celebrity actors and bestselling books, so it stunned me when he said ours was “a dream project.” The very next day, Jenna won the 2010 Audie Award for Best Female Narrator for The Chosen One.

I suppose you could say it was a bit crazy and a ton of work, but also a lot of fun! By doing it ourselves, we’ve had much more creative freedom. We licensed a track from the latest album by symbion project, and we’re including it as a full bonus track on the audiobook CD version.

Shiraz produced the entire project from start to finish, right down to the packaging for the physical special edition product, which we will be launching soon at select retailers. We’re now in talks with a couple of major audiobook companies for iTunes and Overdrive distribution.

Now that you have the audio book, you’re releasing it for freeeeee as podcasts via your site (and iTunes). Are people downloading it? Have you seen the numbers grow from the first chapter til now?

Yes! That’s part of what we wanted to do differently. As of typing this sentence, we’ve released about half of the novel as a serialized podcast at www.tellmeasecretnovel.com. It has not only spread the word about the book, but also given listeners a kind of modern serialized radio drama.

The audience has grown to thousands of downloads per week, thanks in no small part to the book bloggers who have posted our podcast widget on their sites. I’ve seen it cropping up all over.

Readers can listen week to week—or if they can’t wait, they can get the print version from the library or bookstore. Soon they will be able to buy the full special-edition packaged audiobook through our site and select retailers.

You’ve used social media (blog tours, blogging, and Twitter) and online tools (podcast, an award-nominated trailer) a lot in your promotion of Tell Me a Secret. Have you found that this has helped you create awareness for the book?

I’ve been a blogger since the day I found out I was slated to receive an SCBWI Work-In-Progress grant for Tell Me a Secret (then titled “Brimstone Soup”). It occurred to me that people might actually be interested in the manuscript, so I got to work right away! Since then it has grown from friends to other writers to book bloggers and now teen readers.

I might not have put quite so much effort into blogging if I hadn’t attended the 2008 Kidlit Blogger Conference (Editor’s Note:  Holly and I met at Kidlitcon). The biggest takeaways for me were blogging every day and contributing to the conversation. A huge benefit has been connecting with other bloggers.

I ended up doing a blog tour by accident—it wasn’t actually part of the original plan, but I kept receiving emails from bloggers who were interested in Tell Me a Secret as well as Google Alerts (my best friend through all of this) telling me who was talking about the book. I asked if they might be interested in doing an interview, and pretty soon I had seven weeks lined up!

I definitely think these wonderful bloggers helped to get the word out about the book far more than I could have done on my own.

The trailer (Editor’s Note: recently a finalist in School Library Journal’s first ever Trailie Awards) was another homegrown project. We were thinking of doing something live action, but then my author friend Molly Blaisdell hooked us up with her screenwriting partner, indie filmmaker Paul Michael Gordon, who does this amazing motion work.

Paul came up with a completely original concept based on our script, and Shiraz worked with him to refine the details. I even did the voiceover!

We ended up launching the trailer a month after the book came out, at the tail end of the blog tour. I thought this would be a detriment, but we turned it into an online trailer launch party with hundreds of bloggers posting, Twittering, and Facebooking the trailer. We had a few thousand hits in one day and later uploaded a high def version here.

What about for YOU as an author? Do you think you’ve created fans for you?

Every once in a while I see a review from someone who declares they will read anything I write. I’m incredibly flattered and have to laugh, because they honestly would never want to read the very awful picture book manuscripts I’ve stashed under the bed!

But it makes me really happy that Tell Me a Secret has affected readers, and that they are waiting for the next YA novel (Don’t Breathe a Word, coming Fall 2011). Their support means the world.

Has your publisher been supportive of your activity? Have they helped out on any of your projects?

We’ve been outside the norm in a lot of ways, and I think HarperCollins has been pleasantly surprised by our crazy ideas and how they have come to fruition.

We’ve tried to be respectful during the process by keeping them involved, and they have been very supportive of our efforts. We’re all on the same team, to get the word out about the book and to give us momentum.

The hope is that we’re not just launching a debut book but a future in YA lit.

Finally… what have you learned in the process of doing it your own way… and would you do it again?

We’re definitely doing it again with Don’t Breathe a Word. We’ve learned quite a lot about the ins and outs of talent, production, distribution, media licensing, word-of-mouth, and the simple act of making friends.

Now that we’ve done it, we know we can do it again—and we know what we might let go the next time in order to pursue something fresh and unique.

My favorite part has been working closely with my best friend/confidant/business partner/husband, Shiraz, and we are already talking about the new ways we will go with the next book….

I want to thank Holly for answering all my questions and letting me share her story with you. There are more innovative ideas coming from Holly and Shiraz that we couldn’t even cover here today, so stay tuned.  And I hope you join me in wishing them continued success.