The Great Giveaway

Posted on the Squeetus Blog December 06, 2005 01:12 PM PST.
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.
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