ABOUT US

The Character Studio Dot Com

Bringing Characters to Life…

The Character Studio Dot Com and Mary’s Lamb Publishing are both divisions of Mary's Lamb, Inc.

At Mary’s Lamb, Inc. we know children learn from books and God’s Commandment based morals and even basic good manners are taught by many authors across the nation. This is the guideline for most publishers and editors have a keen eye for it. We are all trying to make a difference in that young child’s life, that may one day be a leader in our society. Regardless of our efforts, still thousands of good books go unread. Bookshelves only have space for publishers who’ve gone the extra expense to market their books, and publishers can’t possibly publish everyone, so they want to know how the author plans to sell their books before considering them for their extravagant marketing budgets. What they are really looking for is what you have that is different, new and exciting that will attract attention, because the trouble with book marketing is that everyone is all doing the same thing. New writers don’t have much of chance being selected by a traditional publisher without a platform of some sort. To fill this need, we focus on unique forms of marketing and writer’s services that will provide more children’s book authors that “platform” they need to find space on the shelf.

Marketing your book – The key is to be creative!

Entertainer first, author second, LeFerna found herself writing a 365 page novel to introduce her character in a way she thought children could not resist. Trouble was, even with 100 pen and ink illustrations in it, what child is attracted to such a big book? The adult child of God, and parents were a part of her target market, but what a slow process this would be to finally reach unchurched children. Next, the “Give and Share Program™ was created and many books given away along with spending $5000.00 on publicity and marketing and a lot of great reviews later, LeFerna’s book became known as “the first children’s novel for adults” because of the ease of understanding and the interesting myths and secrets she exposed about our biblical history, it helped adults with their own hidden questions of faith. This is wonderful news! But this could take years for the younger children to know J.C. Lamb. At that point, the only schools the character was making his way into were home-schools, which is wonderful, but J.C. Lamb is on a mission for God to reach the unchurched as well, so LeFerna had to do better. She needed to come up with more marketing money so her son (an amazing story in itself) helped her incorporate the Mary’s Lamb Children’s Ministry, so that they could sell stock to interested family and friends and have the money to create an entire world around J.C. Lamb, drawing the attention to him, as a reminder of Jesus. With many ideas in store, even reviewers of the book have asked to buy stock in the company for their children, as they could see J.C. Lamb and this corporation going places. They joined in on the mission!

Putting Your Characters First –

Now, as the creator of The Character Studio Dot Com, LeFerna’s mentor, second after Jesus of course, has always been Walt Disney. Thinking of him, didn’t he create Mickey Mouse first? He put the vision of the mouse on paper, and then what did he do? He gave him a voice! And when Mickey needed someone to talk to, many more characters followed. With this theory in mind, LeFerna gave J.C. Lamb a voice in all her interviews. The voice was so popular with the ones doing the interviews that she decided to polish it up by doing a pre-recorded interview on podcast, planning out everything J.C. Lamb would say to promote his own book. BUT the interviewer didn’t stick with the questions she gave them, and she was not pleased with the way she had to ad lib. This expensive venture led to J.C. Lamb’s own interview podcast about his own book and she gave all the characters voices. That was when LeFerna decided it would be a great marketing idea to share the spotlight as a service, and interview other author’s picture book characters and make their own shows available on podcast for children to hear.

Christians helping Christians -

The interview idea went over so well with LeFerna’s writing, publicity and marketing friends, that it was agreed at the annual board meeting that Mary’s Lamb, Inc. would invest in the recording equipment needed to make a high quality podcast radio show doing character book interviews as a top quality service provided to other authors who want their characters to be heard by children instead of just adults. The decision to invest in this new marketing idea came easy for the publishing division of the corporation, because a syndicated radio representative liked LeFerna’s first podcast and offered her a radio show. This wasn’t possible because the interviews she wanted to do for other authors had to be pre-recorded for perfection, so they could use them as advertising over and over for as long as the book was in print. They could not be spur-of-the-moment and sometimes awkward interviews like they can be when you are doing them live. LeFerna explained this, and she was told that as long as she didn’t date the shows, and she built up enough of them to run daily and keep them going, J.C. Lamb and all the characters he interviewed would still be perfect candidates for syndicating on national radio because this idea is so unique.

The rest is history in the making.

The J.C. Lamb Morning Show was created to get children off to a “God-start” each morning. A service for authors that took a lot of planning and recording work could not be offered for free, but each show features their book and can be written off as advertising, while the interview price is set low to continue to help J.C. Lamb on his mission to become popular enough to reach the children and teach them to collect all kinds of children’s books. The introductory price of the recording package is in the same price range as your better book trailer packages, and the difference in publicity goes beyond the interview, to ring tones on phones, itunes for ipod and the possibility of your characters getting national radio play. Something new and very unique! All to support children’s book authors who spend so much of their time teaching our kids today.

Once your character gets a voice – Your star is born -

LeFerna used the original song that brought her the vision of J.C. Lamb, Mary’s Lamb as the theme song for the show, and this triggered another thought. Why not write the characters their own song and let them sing on the show? This would be a very time consuming effort, but as a gift from God, she was a songwriter, and this would be well worth the advertising investment for the authors, and even publishers. Now the characters could not only sell their own books by being interviewed, but they can also become singing stars! J.C. Lamb would have a talk show with characters children couldn’t wait to hear each morning, while downloading a page to color or parents could even record the shows to play in the car on short trips. The possibilities are endless.

Build it and they will come -

So Mary’s Lamb, Inc. built a singing studio for characters, and another division of the corporation took flight. The Character Studio Dot Com. The only thing left to do was to find the authors who wanted to be in on this new venture with LeFerna!

Now, marketing children’s books is getting more exciting all the time for Mary’s Lamb Publishing and The Character Studio Dot Com as they team up with great illustrators and yes, even animators to do voice-over work and make music videos of the author’s characters. Websites can now have “jingles” or little advertising bits play when people visit them. Distributors can now send out a promotional CD of singing characters from the books they represent and authors can send podcasts and mp3s through their e-mail. This will excite any bookstore and make room for your books on their shelf! If they don’t, the parents will go into the store and have it ordered! It’s fun! It’s fresh! And for the time being, it’s the only place to go to have it done! So get scheduled in the studio today!

It all starts with your characters receiving a voice for the J.C. Lamb Morning Show!

Once they have the voice then you have a choice of adding other recordings to your package. (See the introductory prices on this website and read the agreement for more details of what we do for you.) Now music videos are part of the package!

It Looks like LeFerna’s hobby of ventriloquism has brought some fun to a rapidly growing industry!

God Works!

T. W. Phillips, V.P.
Mary’s Lamb, Inc.
For The Character Studio Dot Com