The Renfrow Story

It was just over a month ago that we crammed all of those boxes into our Explorer on a frigid January day. Since that day my focus has been on sharing the books. It has been so much fun to talk with people who’ve read it and hear their thoughts. I have been especially moved by conversations with people who were not familiar with the story at all before they read it. They help me remember what an inspiration Edtih Renfrow Smith truly is.

One thing that I have made a priority is fulfilling what was promised to those who provided funding for this project last April. Many donors gave extra funds to provide books to libraries. Because of their incredible generosity, I have 500 books set aside to donate to libraries. Figuring out the logistics of how to do that was a bit tricky, as I discussed in the last post. But things are progressing well.

I’m happy to say that I’ve had a lot of requests from libraries around the state and have books going to 67 public libraries in Iowa so far. They are marked as green dots in the map above. You can see that many of them are going to small libraries in all corners of the state. The pink dots indicate where books will soon be delivered to elementary schools – 300 school libraries in total. I am super grateful for my friend Dawn who shared the book with her AEA Media Specialist friend. She’s excited about the book and is going to be recommending it to teachers through her curriculum work. She also helped connect me with the AEA delivery service so I can minimize the expense of sending them.

So that’s 367 books to libraries and 123 copies to Kickstarter donors. I’ve got about another 100 I’d like to get to more libraries, hopefully in the Chicago area, but they have been harder to connect with thus far.

If you add in the copies given to Edith and Alice, to the illustrator Erica, and to various other people who were special to the project in some way, I have personally passed the book on to over 500 people. Another 500 copies went to the bookstore and the college alumni office. The bookstore has sold over 275 copies already.

I love hearing about the book finding its way to other states. Many people have told me they’ve purchased copies to send to loved ones. And I know the bookstore had orders from all over. So we are making progress towards the goal of having this amazing woman’s story known by people across the country.

One thing I am still struggling with is getting it into other independent bookstores. Lots of people ask if it’s on Amazon, and I’m still reluctant to do that (and honestly a bit daunted by it). But if you have a connection with an independent bookstore and can connect me, I’d appreciate it. If you are on Goodreads and want to add a review, that would be great too. You can find the Goodreads listing here.

Word of mouth is the best marketing, and that takes time. Caroline Arnold, the author who helped so much with the book, has connected me with Deborah Kalb who writes a book blog, Book Q&As. I’ve sent her a copy of the book and hope to be included in her blog, which would be great publicity.

But all in all, I’m thrilled with how things are going so far.