Big Fish Sales Mission Small Pond Marketing Strategy what the heck does that mean?

When my granddaughter and I co authored.

Our children's book the Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear, the origin story of our children's book took place in the small Rocky Mountain town of Bighead.

Bighead is based on a real town where Kira and I spent years enjoying outdoor adventures together.

The Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear is a modern take on storytelling through the eyes and words of an adventurous bear named Caboose.

The book is written to inspire young children to embrace Mother Nature and all her beauty, the wildlife and humans that live within the community, and to enjoy the many adventures that Mother Nature has to offer.

If you click on the link provided in the Show Notes Grammarist According to their definition, a big fish in a small pond will never achieve the same success as those in a bigger pond.

A big fish in a small pond usually hints at a person's lack of overall motivation.

It serves as a low key criticism of someone feeling more important than they really are and who wouldn't be successful in a bigger pond.

In this episode I will share with you.

It's not the pond that limits you, it's recognizing possibilities.

Splish Splash.

Let's dive into this episode when thinking about the possibilities for a book launch, felt that because our children's book had gotten its inspiration from the small town we called our home away from home that the small town media would be interested in our story behind our story and how our children's book came to life.

The local newspaper showed great interest, took pictures, interviewed me, and published the interview and the photographs.

And luck will have it, a local retailer loved our children's book and added it to their children's book inventory.

This could have been the end of our story of a fish in a small pond.

If it hadn't been for our approach to selling our children's book to the local newspaper and a local retailer, we would not have caught the attention of a radio producer looking for a story.

Little did we know, the waves of our little newspaper story spilled over into a larger pond and caught the attention of a radio producer.

This radio producer contacted the the local store's buyer and before we knew it, we were talking to the radio station's producer.

Within a few short weeks, my granddaughter, co author and I were guests on two different radio stations in two distinct markets.

The radio interviews went well and the listeners complimented us and as a result, we saw a bump in our children's book sales.

In today's episode, we share one of the stations Radio Interviews we had such fun doing the radio interviews, we decided we needed to expand our children's book author's voice and produce a podcast dedicated to children's book readers and the story behind the story of children's book authors.

Children's books allow children to experience many emotions including joy, happiness, love and laughter and much more.

They can also reflect on moments of sadness which usually leads to happy endings or positive lessons.

Even though we can't interview all the world's children's book authors, we aim to share as many behind the scenes inspirations for developing, writing and producing children's books content as much as possible and how each author uses their imaginative and creative hearts to publish, sell, market and distribute their books.

As children's book readers, you can't possibly purchase every child's book written.

However, giving you a glimpse into as many children's book authors, we can help you as the reader, lower your risk of purchase.

You get to know each author and see if their stories, characters and messages fit with you, your children or your grandchildren.

Enjoy our radio interview on CBC Radio Calgary called the Home Stretch and listen to my granddaughter and co author Kira and decide if our book is right for you, your children or your grandchildren.

If our book is a good fit for your children's book library, please purchase and know that your purchases go beyond helping us bring more adventure stories in our book series, the Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear.

It helps us to continue to produce our children's book authors podcast Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors.

Please know that our goal is to release one new podcast episode a week introducing you to children's book authors, their children's book and the story behind their journey to bring a children's book to life.

Add outdoor recreational activities to living in harmony with Mother Nature each week.

Cheers and enjoy our radio interview.

Hi Chris, thank you for having us.

Thank you for joining us.

Thank you and congrats to you both on the book.

Rick, I'll start with you.

How did this all start?

It actually all started when Kira was in daycare and we had a condo in Cammore and she would come down with me and I actually taught her how to ski.

And when we were on one of our adventures on going down to ski, Kira had said to me, oh, can I bring my friend Georgia?

The daycare had this stuffy named Georgia and Georgia was a bunny.

And so what happened was they would if a child from the daycare went on a vacation, they could take Georgia and her suitcase Full of clothes on the vacation.

And then when the child came back to daycare, they got to tell stories of the adventures they had together, wherever they were.

And so that's what ended up happening was Kira was in the backseat in her.

In her child's proof seat.

And then I had to buckle in Georgia beside her, and Georgia came with us.

And really, Georgia was the inspiration behind Caboose.

Wow.

And Kira, do you remember that a little bit?

Yeah.

I do remember how much I, like, loved stuffies, and I constantly wanted to be bringing them on trips and buckling them in.

I, like, treated them like they were just a kid, like me.

Yeah.

So what did the two of you want to.

Want to do with these stories?

And.

And why did you want to get together and start writing these books?

What happened was when.

As Kira got older, of course she got.

Then she didn't have to go to daycare, but she said to me, papa, you know, like, we don't have Georgia.

And actually the daycare even had a brother named George.

And there.

So there was two of them, but so there was no more Georgia and George to take on our trips.

So Kira said, can we come up with our own stuffy?

Maybe I'll let Kira tell some more about that.

Yeah.

So we went into a coffee shop, and we were like, you know what?

We have all these memories.

We have all these pictures.

Why don't we turn them into something?

And so, yeah, we sat down at a coffee shop, and we started looking through all these pictures, and we're like.

I think, like, we can do something with these.

We have all these stories.

Why don't we share them?

Wow.

And so, yeah, it sounds like the two of you had a lot of potential source material to go through.

Rick, tell us a bit about what happens in this first book.

Oh, okay.

Thanks, Chris.

So it's really about the birth of this bear named Caboose.

And what happened was, in this fictional town of Bighead, they hadn't seen the birth of a bear cub in many, many moons, as we say in the story.

And when they found out that Caboose's mom was going to have a baby, the town just went absolutely crazy with excitement.

And it's all about the excitement that built around this baby being born.

Baby cub being born in big Head.

And that's how the whole thing started.

Even the mayor got involved, and they called everybody together and they planned for the May long weekend.

And it was just.

The whole community got involved.

And it's all about community also in the book.

Yeah.

And I know there are some sections towards the back of the book where you've incorporated some blank pages and places for kids to color and come up with their own stories.

Why was that an important part to include, Rick?

It was really important because Kira and I, when we started doing all this, and of course, like Kyra said, we had all this, all these great pictures, you know what?

But what happens, Chris, is people have.

And you probably have had this happen to you.

You have all these pictures on your phone and you never see them again.

They just never come forward.

But for Kira and I, we went, as Kira said, to a coffee shop.

We were able to bring some of these pictures forward and from there it actually developed into all these different stories that we wrote down.

And then we had to have a character and the character evolved and that's how the whole book came together.

So that's what we're trying to do is we're trying to encourage, you know, moms and dads, grandparents, children to sit down.

And as you said, Chris, we have these activity, we call them activity pages towards the back of the book.

And first we ask you to write down your adventure that you had together.

And then we actually have picture framed spots where you can actually then bring your stories to life in sketches.

And that's pretty much what Kira and I did.

And so we thought if it got us involved and created these memories and brought them to life, then we want to definitely encourage other people to do the same thing.

It's so much fun.

Kira, is there a particular adventure that you've had with your grandpa that comes to mind that you are, as you're excited to tell.

Yeah.

So actually we have a book in the works right now, and this is actually our next book coming out and it takes place at the Canmar Folk Festival.

And it's when my cousin actually won a gift card to one of the shops downtown.

And yeah, she was called up on stage.

And that was a really cool experience and just being able to witness it.

That's cool.

Yeah, Chris.

We call it the Hijinks from the Big Head Folk Music Festival.

That must be so much fun, you know, coming up with this sort of alternate universe version of Canmore in the Bow Valley and writing these stories.

I mean, these are obviously very meaningful to the both of you in that these are things that the two of you and the rest of Kira's cousins have experienced together.

What do you hope, folks?

You know, what do you hope the general public gets out of this reading these stories?

You know, we always are looking for A way to bond with, with your families.

And you know, a lot of times grandparents, there's sometimes a disconnect because of technology and all that.

But if you incorporate, and that's what Kira and I did, we incorporated and we embraced technology so, you know, we, we didn't shy away from it and we incorporated into the storytelling so, you know, to be able to have the digital pictures.

And I tell the story of Kira being our first digital baby because you know what?

Kira, when she was born, we bought our first digital camera.

There is no film of Kira.

Kira's not on a roll of film.

All the pictures of Kira are all digital.

And guess what?

They all reside.

Well, a lot of them reside on my phone.

And then for Kira and I to sit down and add a coffee shop and go through the pictures and just.

It was.

It's incredible.

So that's what we're trying to instill in other people is sit down with your grandchildren or your children and, and look at the pictures.

Don't let them just sit there and lay dormant.

Bring em.

Bring em to life.

Yeah.

I think that it's just super important to just make the memories and live in the moment because a lot of the time in this age we can just.

We can just forget to live while we're just looking at our phones constantly.

And it's just super important to make those memories and try something you haven't done before.

Like horseback riding in the winter is one of my favorites as well.

Yeah.

And we wrote a story about that.

You know, the special horseshoes and stuff like that.

How many stories have you written?

I think we're up to about 38.

Wow, that's incredible.

That's a lot.

It is, Chris.

What we've done is creating most of them into audiobooks.

First, Kira's cousin Bailey, our middle granddaughter, she loves reading these things.

She.

And a lot of times she's the voice of Caboose.

Yeah, she does a really good job and she's, she's a good age to where you, you really feel like you're experiencing it through Caboose.

Oh, wow.

How old is she?

Oh, she's 13 now, but we started her when she was a little younger and she's got the perfect voice right now.

You know that.

And also our.

Our youngest grandson, he's just turned 10.

And he's amazing too, because you've got, you got, you capture that youthful young spark.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, congratulations on this, Rick and Kira, and thanks for joining us today.

Oh, our pleasure.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, thank you, Chris.