Missed this book off the list of potential award winners as posted earlier this month. The Mystery of the Round Rocks by Mark Meierhenry and David Volk, with illustrations by Jason Folkerts, is also a finalist in the IPPY Awards as presented by Independent Publisher Magazine.
Sometime this evening or maybe tomorrow morning, we’ll find out which medal this book and The Sioux in South Dakota History has won; gold, silver, or bronze. We are, naturally, hoping for gold in both cases.
At the end of the editing process for each book, we “calmly” send the manuscript off to the designer. Then we wait, eagerly.
Eventually, the designer works through the project and we start getting the various elements of the book back for discussion, comments, and changes. And, although every one of us has, at some point in life, been told not to judge a book by its cover, it is the cover that seems to bring the most excitement.
The third Prairie Tale is at that stage. The Prairie-Dog Prince cover design has arrived, which is the point of this post, and is a chance to show it off to all and sundry. So feast your eyes, and leave a comment should you see fit. We think it looks great.
As noted recently, we have hit the book awards season. Hot on the heels of the news that our books had received winner’s and runner-up medals in the Indie Excellence Book Awards comes the news that we have two more imminent chances to win prestigious book awards.
Cowboy Life: The Letters of George Philips is a finalist in the autobiography/biography/memoirs category of the Benjamin Franklin Awards as presented by PMA the Independent Book Publishers Association. We’ll be attending an awards ceremony at the BookExpo America in Los Angeles to find out if Cowboy Life has won.
The Sioux in South Dakota History also placed as a finalist, but this time in the IPPY Awards presented by Independent Publisher Magazine, in the anthologies category. The IPPYs also have a gala awards ceremony tying into the BookExpo America and so we’ll be there as well (the day after the Benjamin Franklins) to see if this book wins.
Regardless of whether we eventually receive the winner’s medals or not, to have two books make it to the finalist list in these highly regarded awards is a great honor.
Over the past 11 years, the Press has published 31 books. Of those 31 books, 13 have now won an award of some description or other. I make that roughly 42%. Not bad, we’d like to think.
Yesterday, we received word that the National Indie Excellence Book Awards has chosen 3 of our books for awards. Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life won the Biography category, The Sioux in South Dakota History: A Twentieth-Century Reader received a finalist award in the Anthologies category, while Sunshine Always: The Courtship Letters of Alice Bower and Joseph Gossage was a finalist for the History category.
The Press would like to thank the National Indie Excellence Book Awards for recognising our books and our work, and would like to congratulate the authors in question for their success.
We are fully into the book award season, so we have our fingers crossed that we’ll be getting a few more of these notifications over the coming few weeks. After all, it’s nice to have something to brag about occasionally.
S. D. Nelson kindly joined us recently to chat about his illustrations and work on Dance in a Buffalo Skull. The interview is now available for download. He had some interesting things to say about the significance of the story and the particular techniques he uses to paint his pictures. It is well worth listening to.
Along the Grapevine Trail: Vineyards and Wineries in South Dakota, Wyoming, and Nebraska is due out this summer and we’ve received the cover design from our designer.
We think it looks great and can’t wait until the book comes back from the printer and people can start reading it.
Along the Grapevine Trail covers the burgeoning wine industry in these three northern plains states–an industry that might surprise a few people.
Continuing our new series of podcast interviews with our authors, the second installment is now available on our main website.
Betti VanEpps Taylor is the author of the recently published Forgotten Lives: African Americans in South Dakota and we were delighted to interview her recently and find out more about her, her book, and what made her want to write it.
Stop by the Press’s website and download the interview!
