I woke up this morning to some amazing news. My new book, Sea Star Summer, has made the Exclusive Books HomeBru list!

This is a big deal for local authors for several reasons. Number one, its free publicity to a national audience from one of the country’s biggest retailers. Two, your book gets featured on in-store promotional material and gets placed front and centre where customers can see it – in all stores. Three, HomeBru titles get promoted digitally across mailing campaigns to a huge database. Four, Exclusive Books Fanatics cardholders receive double points when they purchase any HomeBru title, so it’s a great opportunity to promote sales for local titles that can sometimes go forgotten among the shelves.

It’s a great boost, especially at a time like this when events, launches, and festivals have been cancelled due to COVID-19.  Exclusive Books hosted a wonderful digital launch for me, but it’s still a huge loss not to be able to attend festivals like the Franschhoek Literary Festival or go on tour to other cities. Plus I missed out the big weekend bookstores reopened when Lockdown entered Level 3 as my books were delayed in the warehouse.

This promotion came at exactly the right time for me.

My last novel, Mine, made the HomeBru list in 2018 and as you can see, the in-store promotion is pretty wild.

Here’s what the official press release says:

Homebru is one of Exclusive Books’ biggest promotional campaigns for the year and this year highlights how the book seller stands behind SA authors.

The books are chosen across a wide range of genres – reflective of the current burgeoning publishing of local writing. Cookery, biography, fiction, current affairs, inspirational and children’s writing are all covered in the selection. There are more than 60 titles in the Homebru selection.

This year, the Homebru campaign is planned to run over five weeks, from June 22 to the end of July 2020.

There are some fantastic titles on the list this year, including Thembi Mtshali-Jones Theatre Road as told to Sindiwe Magona and Afterland by Lauren Beukes.

You can buy Sea Star Summer here.