Dzanc Books

Sample Letter for Write-a-Thon Participants

For those that have, or are about to, signed up to participate as authors in the 3rd Annual Dzanc Books Write-a-Thon, here is a good example of a sample letter that one of our participants from the past has used, emailing it all of her family and friends, and she's raised quite a bit of money in each of the two years:

I have decided to participate in the Dzanc Books Write-A-Thon which will take place September 1st through the 4th.   I plan to spend XXXXX hours on those days, writing, only taking breaks to eat and other necessities.   

Not only will it be a treat for me to have a dedicated time for my writing, but hopefully this will also benefit Dzanc. Dzanc is a wonderful non-profit independent publishing company that supports literary magazines, small presses, and publishes fantastic work. Also, Dzanc funds writing programs in public schools in both Michigan and New York, and is looking for funding to expand beyond those states, where creative writing classes are not offered. They also sponsor the Dzanc Prize which benefits not only the writer awarded it, but pays for a community based project like writing workshops in prisons, cancer centers, or working with immigrant populations.

I would be honored if you would sponsor my writing this year. Your dollars will help Dzanc Books to continue to support great writing and foster the creative talent of public school kids. If you'd like to pitch in, please click on the following link which will take you to a page where you can make a donation: http://dzancbooks.org/writeathon/

Thanks for your time!

Sincerely,
XXXXX

P.S. If you would like to get involved in the Write-A-Thon, please email Dan Wickett at dan@dzancbooks.org."

Dzanc Books Independent Bookstore Program

The Dzanc Books Independent Bookstore Program

 

August 16, 2010 - Ann Arbor, MI--Dzanc Books is excited to announce a new program, the Dzanc Books Independent Bookstore Program, which has Dzanc working in conjunction with one or two independent bookstores each month (from the 15^th—with a slightly delayed start this month—through the 15th, coinciding with our monthly online journal, The Collagist, to move forward with our mission of promoting literary fiction.

There was great interest during the month of July, where we at Dzanc donated books to many schools and libraries when provided proof of purchases of books bought at an independent bookstore.   We have decided to continue this offer.  We believe that by focusing on one or two bookstores each month, with the help of their cross-promotion, that we will be able to help inspire sales within the indie bookstore community of not only Dzanc books but all great books, while at the same time drawing attention to the many charitable programs Dzanc Books sponsors and runs, including our Dzanc Writer in Residence Programs and the Dzanc Prize, which the purchase of our books, and/or usage of our Dzanc Creative Writing Sessions helps our ability to sustain and advance these programs across the country.

The first store to celebrate this program with Dzanc Books will be the RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth, NH.  There are two main aspects to the program:

1)  Dzanc Books will continue the donating of a title from our catalog, or one of our imprints.  The patron of RiverRun Bookstore will inform us of the library to which the donation will be made.  Dzanc Books has created fliers that have a simple form to fill out and send to us with the receipt, showing that the book was purchased during the correct dates, and was for a book of literary fiction from RiverRun Bookstore.  The books do NOT need to have been published by Dzanc or our imprints.

2)  RiverRun Bookstore, along with promoting the donation of books, will also promote the Dzanc Creative Writing Sessions, our extremely inexpensive and successful writer mentoring program.  For every order to the DCWS placed by a writer that notes on their order that they were sent our way by  RiverRun, Dzanc will donate $5 to Seacoast Local, a non-profit based near the bookstore that promotes that people think local first when it comes to their money and time spent.  Dzanc Books will make this donation in RiverRun Bookstore's name in one sum at the end of the month.

Throughout the future of the Dzanc Independent Bookstore Program it is our goal to promote shopping at independent bookstores, develop better relationships with the stores we'll be working with, promote literary fiction, help writers via our DCWS program, and to donate both books to libraries, as well as money to worthwhile non-profits local to the bookstores we are working with.  Dzanc Books strongly believes that every single one of these aspects is vital.  Interested bookstores should email Dzanc Books at info@dzancbooks.org.

 

About Dzanc Books

 

Dzanc Books was created in 2006 to advance great writing and champion those writers who don’t fit neatly into the marketing niches of for-profit presses. As a non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, Dzanc Books not only publishes literary fiction, but runs inexpensive online mentoring programs, and sponsors the Dzanc Prize which has a literary community service aspect to it.  Dzanc also fully committed to developing educational programs in schools. For more information on Dzanc Books and its mission, books, authors, awards, and programs, please visit www.dzancbooks.org.

 

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3rd Annual Dzanc Books Write-a-Thon

First, a reminder:  The Dzanc Write-a-Thon is a chance to take a day or two for both yourself (how frequently does your planned writing day get bumped for something else) and to help others.  The helping others aspect comes from the fact that Dzanc earmarks the money raised during the Write-a-Thon for both our Dzanc Writer in Residence Programs and the Dzanc Prize.  We regularly receive interest in starting up new DWIRPs in various areas of the country in great need of such projects, but simply cannot fund each one on our own.  We are looking to expand this wonderful program and need the resources to do so.  The Write-a-Thon can greatly help us with this. 

As noted above, this year we've moved the Write-a-Thon away from the in between Thanksgiving and Christmas time period as we always got about a dozen emails letting us know that it was a bad time of the year.  So, we are bringing it to the beginning of September.  Like last year, the Write-a-Thon dates will spread over more than just one day, in case somebody really wants to participate but is busy on one or two of the days, they can still plan on writing on one of the other days--we'll have a prompt, and for those of you planning on writing all four days, we'll have slight deviations to that prompt if you so desire.

We'll be setting up a special page on our website as we've done the last two years, making it easy for authors that want to participate, and those that wish to sponsor an author, to do so.  To get things started though, if you are an author that would like to participate, please send an email to info@dzancbooks.org simply stating that you would.  We'll be taking this initial blast of sign-ups to get the web page started.

The Write-a-Thon will be September 2 through September 5 (getting in both weekday and weekend dates).

As always--we'll ask that writers participating:

a)  promote the event and try to find sponsors for your efforts
b)  send us the writing that is done on the day(s) of the Write-a-Thon.  While we'll only include it in the special pdf sent to participants and sponsors if you want us to, we do occasionally get asked by a sponsor if somebody actually wrote during that day when they don't see your work in the pdf.

The writer whose sponsors donate the most will receive a full run of the Dzanc titles from 2010:  Raffel, Parker, BotW 2010, Svoboda and Lopez (which will be sent when it is published).

Anybody wishing to sponsor may obviously do so--you do not need to know the author in question--once our web page is set up, we'll put up another post.  It's as simple as clicking on their name on that page to support the effort through them.

If you have any questions, please send them my way and I'll get back to you as quickly as possible.