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Received HONORABLE MENTION at the NYC Book Festival for BEST NEW CHILDREN'S BOOK!
Hello! Our names are Nicole and Ryan Mayer, the authors of AlphabetownUSA. Ryan has a Bachelor's degree from Rutgers University with a background in law enforcement and I,Nicole, also have a Bachelor's degree from Rutgers University with a background in psychology and education.
In January 2008 while Ryan was out of work due to an injury to his arm, Ryan began writing a novel that had been on his mind for many years. Our three inquisitive daughters could not help but be over his shoulder asking what he was doing several times per hour. After much persistence, Ryan explained that he was writing a book. Our oldest daughter, Hannah, decided that she wanted to write a book! The other girls squealed and jumped up and down, excited to write a real book. We went over the basics: Who will be your characters? What will they do? Where will the story take place? We all worked on the story together as a family. It was so much fun! Well, the girls were excited about their creation but not satisfied with the crayon and paper book that we made together and wanted their story in a “real” book. We did some research and found a company to put our book together. We remembered an old friend, Russ Simmons, who had done computer graphics for us in the past and gave him our ideas and asked if he could upload some simple characters for us to send in to the company. When we had gotten our book back it was so great that we ordered a copy for our friend Russ.
Ryan brought the book to the mall to show Russ. While waiting around for him, a woman approached Ryan and asked where she could buy his book. Huh, he thought… looking around to see who was playing a joke on him… no, this woman was for real, and really enjoyed reading our book. At this, Ryan called home and told me what had happened. We decided that this could be a fun venture for us to continue writing and selling our own children’s books!! Thank you to the “woman at the mall!” Our daughters wanted to make real books, but also wanted to donate books and money to charity. That is why we decided if we ever "made it," we would donate a portion of each book we sold to a childhood charity, no matter how many books we sold!
LAID OFF-TOUGH TIMES!!!!
A couple of years later, Ryan was laid off from his job as a police officer in NJ. After several months of trying to stay afloat, we lost our health benefits and then almost our home. We ended up relocating to North Carolina in hopes of finding work and when we were literally down to our last dollar and after years of rejection from publishers and investors, we got the call..."You got the money for the books!" Years of persistence paid off and we got an investor!
Since the national publishers didn't want to deal with us because we had our own illustrator and because we donate to children's charities, we decided to do it on our own! Please check out our books and charities and thanks for reading!
Ryan and Nicole Mayer
OUR CHILDREN, OUR INSPIRATION!!!
We write as a family and publish as one!
1-855-ATOWNUSA
www.AlphabetownUSA.org
alphabetownusa@gmail.com
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