The Aussie Swap discussion

Now I’ve been thinking. Those phillipino girls just did a month of Dystopian books. What if a group of us organise a month for Australian authors? With interviews, book talks, discussions, giveaways etc.?

I was thinking we could do August, since it’s the only month that starts with A and with ‘AU’ for australia.

What do ya’ll think?

I like this idea. Also the AU observation - very cool!

And to start it off I do have a signed copy of the new smaller paperback edition of Beautiful Malice by Rebecca James to giveaway which I’ve been hoping to include in that month.

I would definitely be in! It would be a coordinated event!! :D
Hmm... I'm going to brainstorm some ideas,::

Count me in!! :D Sounds great! It's spelt "Filipino" by the way ;)

Yup, I'm in! I was meant to do Aussie week in March but I was like nah....I have publicised Jessica Shirvington on the blog and more recently M.J. Hearle ( have you entered my giveaway?)and it's a huge turn out. ppl want Aussie so we'll give it to them! BTW Nic and Nomes are big Aussie supporters so wanna include them?

I've actually got heaps of Aussie books on the burner (aka. TBR). Great idea - I'm all in for it!

Cool idea. I'm in. I'm going to Supanova Perth next weekend and am hopefully going to interview Marianne de Pierres, so I'll see if I can make that my part if you like?

Great timing! I am planning an aussie author giveaway pack, i have a few aussie books that authors have donated that i want to giveaway. I might hold off until August then!

Alright cheers guy! I’ve already interviewed Rebecca James, MDP, Alison Goodman on the blog so I’m so sad I could’ve saved it for this. Haha!

S'okay, I'm sure we can re-interview some of them and find plenty of lovely new ones!

Great idea Braiden, am definitely keen to be involved :)

This is a great idea Braiden. I was going to have a Kristy Eagar week in August so it works in well.

Also there at least four new Aussie YA titles being released in August.

Awesome! Will try and get some giveaways going/ask the authors/publishers to help us out with those coming releases in August.

So that’s 10 of us so far, wow totally in awe of you guys. Now how do you think we should run this? Making people follow everyone’s blog seems too demanding. But we could do blog hops with links to each other’s posts and blogs?

We’ll work it out. <3

Braiden, I can contact some authors that I chat too.

I think a blog hop with links sounds like a great idea :)

This has to be international or else being Australian only doesn’t really do much to the cause.

No problems Nic!

Agreed!
I'm going to email some publisher friends tomorrow and see if they'd like to help out...

My publisher friends are probably your publisher friends...go figure :P

Okay, this might sound really dumb ( my teacher called me a violet crumble the other day...inner blonde "apparently") BUT what do you guys think of a Aussie YA Blog Central, like a group blog but for evrything Aussie only.

The August event can be like a grand opening...

I can already see Braiden giving me the weirdo look....

Lisa (Badass Bookie) wrote: "Okay, this might sound really dumb ( my teacher called me a violet crumble the other day...inner blonde "apparently") BUT what do you guys think of a Aussie YA Blog Central, like a group blog but f..."

That sounds good too.

I really like that idea!

No way Lisa, I think that's a great idea! It's not dumb at all!
I think that would be a great idea... We could sort of start it as a group blog to promote Australian authors... it wouldn't have to be regularly posted on... But I guess we could post links to our reviews of Australian books - so there all in one place and whatnot... :)

Nomes let me know that there is already an Aussie author month is April organised by another blog with publishers and authors etc. Do you think we should change ours to Aussie YA Author Month or do you think it doesn't really matter? Just thought I would let you guys know.

I think Aussie YA Author month works better anyway :)

I thought it was Aussie YA anyway...haha :P

Aww damn I already had a couple of Aussie authors lined up that weren't YA :-(

I have one non YA author.

Solution - we make them write YA!

SO I was thinking, I know a few US bloggers have ARC tours through their blogs, and I was wondering if anyone in AUS did anything like that, or should we start our own?

Also, should we set any guidlines for what we want to happen for August? I have a few PR agents asking for an outline of what we the authors to do etc......

We do have a traveling book - The Liar Society is out at the moment. Kylie has been managing that, so once she's back we'll probably be sending more books out. :)

Mm, I agree, we need some sort of outline. I think we need a coordinator to figure out how this will work, and we also need to work out which publishers/contacts have been spoken to so we're not all contacting the same people multiple times.

Well I've contacted Louise Cornege & Caitlin Neville from Pan Macmillan. Louise McClean from Random House. Lara Wallace from Harper Collins. Julie Griffin (non YA) and Caroline Payne from Simon & Schuster. Plus I will see Marianne de Pierres & Allison Goodman at supanova this weekend.

Cool idea. Maybe could organise it/do sign ups from Lisa's hypothetical Aussie YA Central blog? :)

okay, I'm borderline OCD so LIST time!

1) Figure out whether we're going to do a Aussie YA Central Blog or a Linky thing

2) How many authors, interviews, guest posts and giveaways are we looking at?

3) Figure out what authors we are going to interview or guests posts them( Do we want authors like Melina Marchetta whose already pretty big in US or do we want new authors?)

4) Divide the list up and have different people do different jobs...( eg. Someone has to make the blog (if we are), someone has to do headers and background, someone talk to publishers about maybe donations, someone email authors)

5) Plan out event. It's one month long right? Are we going to post reviews as well? Big giveaway or many small giveaways?

Okay now we talk :)

I think we could focus on books that aren't available outside of Australia, to hype them up (and possibly help them get them published elsewhere).
It also makes giveaways more special, because the prizes are quasi-exclusive.

They're all paperbacks here, around 500g. You can send that to the US for $11.75 by sea mail - I've spent more sending books domestically!

By air that is.

Good work with list writing Lisa! :) Don't worry, I'm a bit neurotic too!
I'm happy to help with some photoshop work... But I have no idea how to use Blogger!

I think a secret group to figure all this out is a good idea. I know that on Wordpress, you can create posts that require a password to view/post on - I could set one of those up? Or someone could do the private GR group...?

I agree with Skye, I think we should aim mainly at currently Aus only authors (although I guess it's okay to pop a few others in).

I'm happy to help with working out a schedule too. So if someone wants to get this private group going or whatever I'll set up a spreadsheet with dates and then everyone can let me know posts they have planned, I can factor them in and then we can see how many days we have left?
How's all that sound?

Yep :) I'm fine with it!

Me too.

Oh guys! I’m going to have to give up the reins for this now >.< My August has just become busy busy so I’ll just post for it.

I'm sorry to hear that Braiden :(

If no one else wants to I'm happy to try and organise all this? I mean, if you're all happy with it that is...?

I'm fine with that Sas.

We've done a little more brainstorming over at the private group: http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/5.... Come join! There's still a tonne to work out.

Plus, I just made a poll over there asking who'd like to participate and how much can they do so we can start rough scheduling: http://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/50...

sorry i skim read but is it a set list of we just read teh Aussieness beacuse i LOVE this idea!!!

let me know if i can help in any way! :P (email me though its easier)

I'm happy to organize a giveaway. Maybe...... Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier. She's a great australian fantasy author. I am happy to make it international and ship from the book depository.

That's would be great! and Sas I'm happy with you orgnaising :P BTW are we making a blog or not? or justa linky?

I am INN let me know what i need to do, and stufff Great idea dudes

Oh great idea, guys! I've got an interview with Marianne De Pierres that I'm going to post in August, so this fits perfectly! :D

I'm jumping on the August bandwagon and reading only Aussie books until the end of that month. I'm so behind with my Aussie reading.