Dear Friends of Pacita,
We hope you, your family, and your pacifiers are staying safe and healthy.
As you might know, May 1st was the initial release date for our beloved pacifier fairy tale to come to life, and we couldn’t wait to start helping children quit pacifiers while empowering families in this difficult new challenge: a life without binkie.
This was obviously a plan that did not account for the global pandemic that is currently shaking the entire planet. These unprecedented times have changed our lives and our projects, to a point where we’ve decided to postpone the release date of “Pacita the Pacifier Fairy” to September. As we approach the initial publication dates, we want to take this opportunity to share our reasoning and our plans for the future, but to also take this opportunity to share a bit more about who we are.
Family comes first
The past few weeks have been very intense for all of us. We are a small team of busy writers and publishers, but most importantly, we’re parents. Just like you, we had to adjust and reorganize our personal lives. Shelter-in-place orders, homeschooling, new dynamics at home… It’s been quite a change! So we’ve decided to make sure that both our readers and our own families had a better grasp on the situation before moving forward. That’s why we took the tough decision to postpone the release.
Giving up pacifiers requires calmness
We believe quitting pacifiers is a major milestone in the life of children and their families. Under normal circumstances, it generates stress and uncertainty, so we asked ourselves if this was the right time to add an additional challenge at home, when most parents already feel overwhelmed or disoriented… And the answer was obvious. We don’t want to add more pressure to a situation that is already stressful. There will be better times for parents and their kiddos to face a new challenge together. So Pacita will wait a bit before entering our lives.
The book industry is on hold
Due to COVID-19, many small businesses had to shut down and bookstores are among those that were forced to close. Orders numbers have been divided by at least 10, live events have been canceled, and publishing professionals are buried under tons of unread emails. We feel like it’s not the best time to start ad campaigns to chase reporters for a book review when people have so much on their minds (and to do lists!).
Bad timing for a first time
We believe Pacita deserves a warm welcome, and that means a lot of preparation; outreach to journalists, reviewers, and bookstores; and logistics. Especially since this is our first children’s book. Although the books are ready to be shipped, our marketing and promotional campaigns have barely started, and we have so much more to do! So we’ll put on our masks and resume our emails and phone calls, but without precipitation. And we’ll find the right balance between the desire to promote a book we’ve been working on for almost three years, and the slow (yet chaotic) pace our world has taken on.
We’ve already received a lot of support and we feel lucky and grateful for it. First of all support from Itasca books, our distributor, who has been so flexible in this book crisis. Support from our first reviewers who gave us such amazing feedback, and from the first readers who pre-ordered the book and will have to wait three long months before they can open it. We believe it will all be worth the delay and your patience and will just have to keep our excitement contained a little while longer.
If you’re a journalist, a blogger, or a reviewer who would like to write a review or if you’re a reader and have questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us (Press release here).
Thanks again, and stay safe,
Charlotte, Sophie, Jeremie, Olivier, and Alexandra
“Pacita the Pacifier Fairy”
New release date: September 1st.
You can already pre-order and review the book here:
