Holiday Shopping by the Stars—and for Your Favorite Stargazers

Featured Author: Mary English

It’s not too late to find just the right gift for your stargazing friends or one that matches their astrological make-up. With our enquiring minds, books are made for the astrologers or Astro-curious on your shopping list.

Of course, I would love for everyone to buy copies of The Crystal Ball for friends who would appreciate a literary eggnog, mixing humorous mystery with astrology, flower essences, longevity and a New Year’s Eve party (talk about timely). And we’ve had some past fun here shopping by people’s Chiron signs.

There are a couple of my colleagues who have fantastic offerings that would be great gifts under anyone’s tree. I’m starting in this post with Mary English, whose How to Soothe a Virgo is featured in the Radical Virgo sidebar.

Mary’s Books

Virgo is just one of the twelve signs featured in her complete series, and they’re available in various formats. These Astro-gems are best displayed on Mary’s Amazon author page. These titles are available in paperback in Kindle, and other eReader versions. They offer to show you how to:

• Survive a Pisces
• Cheer Up a Capricorn (just in time for your favorite Goat’s birthday, too)
•  Soothe a Virgo
• Love a Libra
• Win the Trust of a Scorpio
• Bond with an Aquarius
• Listen to a Gemini
• Appreciate an Aries
• Satisfy a Taurus
• Care for a Cancer
• Lavish a Leo
• Believe in a Sagittarius

As you can tell from this delightful title round-up, you may want to gift your friends the book(s) for their significant other as much or more than their own sign’s guidebook—though, on days I can’t stand myself (and don’t we all have them?), How to Soothe a Virgo would surely be an invaluable reference, all kidding aside.

If you shop at Barnes& Noble, this link will take you to Mary’s twelve books there. Her books are also available on iTunes and for Mac devices.

Excerpts from Mary’s Books

Want to know more about Mary’s books and writing style? Donna Cunningham has excerpted several of them on her Sky Writer blog and was kind enough to share the links with us. Here are some posts from the series, starting with the sign we’ll be entering just before Christmas:

•  What Makes a Capricorn Father Tick

•  How to Survive a Pisces Dad--and How I Survived  Mine

•  How to Bond with an Aquarian Woman (Donna told me this one was the most popular one in the series)

•  Scorpios in Service Careers—Dealing with Life and Death

How Do You Wrap an eBook?

As a purveyor of eBooks myself, I have pondered this question as electronic reading has become increasingly popular. Even with all the eco- and other practical reasons for avoiding paper and tangible goods, it’s still fun to have something under the tree to unwrap or goodies in your stocking by the mantle to discover.

The easiest way to gift books available on Amazon, B&N, iTunes, etc.  would be to give a gift card from that retailer in a red, green or other holidayesque envelope. You could include a printout of this or other articles with suggested Astro-reads. An alternative: Type up in fancy script an Astro-Bibliography and email the original with the live links after your recipient sees what his or her gift is going to be from “the envelope, please.”

Similarly, you might print up the description of an eBook you want to gift a friend or relative on fine paper, pulling from their Amazon or other electronic sales channel, and folding it in a fancy envelope. Or you can make a card of it, if you’ve got the software and graphic skills. I like to borrow the cover art, print it out on cardstock, with a box in one corner that says, Your eBook Is on Its Way—or something to that effect. I put standard 8.5 x 11 sized “card” into a two-pocket folder in a holiday color, or when I can find one, a colored version of a manila envelope.

The last idea works best for PDF eBooks. I still sell many of them, as does Donna Cunningham. Speaking of Donna, she’s got a new book that will be of great interest to Radical Readers, and we’ll be featuring it this month, too.

~~~

Mary English was born in London and educated in Switzerland at the American International School of Zurich. She comes from a large family and is one of 5 children. Mary has been writing since she was 13 when her sister Lucy (a published author of fiction) gave her a diary for her birthday. Mary lives in Bath, UK with her husband, son, and her black cat.

She sees clients face-to-face and writes personal Birth Charts for visitors to her website. It was these consultations that inspired her to write about the Sun Signs to help her clients understand their motivations and learn about their Astrology profiles. Mary is a member of the Society of Authors, The Astrological Association of Great Britain and The Association for Astrological Networking. Visit her website http://www.maryenglish.com/.