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Posted on Aug 18, 2013 in Blog, Lego, Writing

Digital Book Creation and Marketing: A Workshop with Christopher Cheng

Digital Book Creation and Marketing: A Workshop with Christopher Cheng

After posting about the “shoulds” of social media, I had the good fortune to attend a Toolbox Workshop given by the Austrialia children’s author Christopher Cheng. The 20 workshop attendees in Hudson, NY were treated to three separate workshops concentrated into one day, beginning with a morning session on creating books in a digital age. This hour and a half session introduced the fast-changing world of e-books for young readers and concluded with an e-book Cheng made in one evening using photos from the SCBWI conference in Los Angeles earlier this month (Cheng is one of SCBWI’s hard-working board members) and a cute teddy bear, Teddy Eddie, who accompanied Cheng and his wife on their global journey.

After lunch, Cheng covered book trailers, social media, and other marketing topics. Again, he used examples from his own work and gave the audience useful do’s and don’t’s. Don’t #1 was “Don’t go over one minute–30 seconds is even better,” advice I egregiously disregarded when making the trailer for Gringolandia. (But I loved that song so much!)

chrisandnancyThanks go to SCBWI Regional Advisor Nancy Castaldo for organizing this valuable workshop. Here, she’s pictured with Christopher Cheng. In this photo you can’t see the braid going all the way down his back, but the first thing I thought when I saw that is, “he looks just like the keyboard player in the Brazilian Carnaval band!” that I’m assembling along with the giant truck that serves as the band’s stage. More on this once the truck is completely finished — I still need to choose a name for the band and design the poster that will decorate the truck — but it’s what’s known as a trio elétrico and is keyboardplayersmallgenerally found in the Carnaval in the Brazilian state of Bahia. I was worried that people would think the keyboard player was female because of the braid, but after yesterday’s workshop, I guess I don’t have to worry anymore.

Here’s our fearless workshop leader’s (fearless because of some unexpected wrestling with Amtrak) take on the day: http://www.chrischeng.com/2013/08/7505.html.

2 Comments

  1. hey Lyn,
    thanks for the writeup. was a buzz to get to Hudson adn meet you all.
    Cheers
    Chris

  2. I enjoyed meeting you as well and look forward to seeing you again the next time you’re on this side of the world.

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  1. LEGOctober | Lyn Miller-Lachmann - […] and talented Christopher Cheng (who has his own minifig look-alike as the featured image of “Digital Book Creation and…

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