Please visit the new Authors For Japan auction which is now LIVE – comments are open and you can start bidding!

To bid, you’ll need to leave a comment (with the amount of your bid) in the relevant comments box – just the same as the A4Q auction but this time in UK pounds.

The auction will close at 8pm on Sunday (the 20th).

At the conclusion of the auction the bidder who has made the highest bid in UK Pounds will be deemed the winner.

Winning bidders will be notified by email and instructed to make their donations to the British Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal. (International donations are accepted.)

$20,231.11

Thanks so much to all of you who have made your payments.

However, we’re having trouble contacting a few bidders. Reminder emails have been sent out but because there have been some problems getting the emails through to people in some cases we want to give them another chance to pay their pledged amount and receive their item.

Therefore we’ll be sending out one more email, with a deadline for payment of Friday March 11th. After that time, we’ll offer the item to the second highest bidder, where appropriate.

If anyone would like to discuss this, please feel free to email us on authors4queensland@gmail.com

Also, if you are worried about missing emails – maybe you paid ages ago and have not received your item, or you’re a donor who hasn’t received notification to send the item – please do get in touch. A combination of our gmail address and the subject line has caused problems for some people but we’re on hand to rectify this.

Thanks and best wishes!

Emily, Kate, Katrina and Fleur

However, several donors and buyers have informed us that our emails have been going straight into their Spam folders. So please check the Spam for all email accounts you might have given us in case there are any emails lurking there.

Any queries, please get in touch at authors4queensland@gmail.com

We’ve also received many receipts – 187 items have been paid for, with the money going directly into the Premier’s Disaster Relief Fund, a total of $12,687 safely deposited so far plus another $194 in extra donations as highest bidders in some cases rounded up their figures (thank you!).

We look forward to processing many more receipts and then announcing our final grand total – in pledged donations it is well over $20k now!

Thanks again to you all!

Thank you so very much to everyone who has already sent us their receipts and contact details. We will endeavour to send you all a confirmation over the weekend, as well as respond to any personal queries or messages you might have. Sit tight. We’ll get there! You are awesome.

Hundreds of emails are on their way to you right now but please don’t panic if you haven’t received yours yet, or if you’ve only received one and you actually bought 15 items (yes, I mean you at the back!), or donated several. We had to send individual emails for every item.

Some of them are getting stuck in the system (for example if a mailbox rejects one) and this holds up the whole process because we have to….well, that’s really dull so I won’t go into it but suffice to say it’s all happening! The email is from “Authors For Queensland” so do check your Junk mailbox just in case. We won’t take it personally. (We will.)

There is a line in the Buyers email to explain that although you are getting one email per item, you are free to pay into the Premier’s Disaster Relief Fund in one lump sum and send the receipt for that.

And the message to the Donors is basically “no need for any action yet”!

We have also included a dedicated email address for any queries. But it’ll still just be us answering them. In our pyjamas.

Thank you very much for your patience and, again, for your generosity. Over 100 emails have gone out but there are still over 100 in the queue, so no need to worry just yet.

Emily, Kate, Katrina and Fleur

$19,981.39

for the Queensland Flood Relief Appeal.

Thanks again for supporting this auction. We now have a comprehensive database of all the highest bids and will be sending out emails containing full instructions (to highest bidders and donors) very soon.

There are some other fantastic initiatives going on, please see our More Support For Flood Appeal page.

Firstly, I just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to this auction – the donors and the bidders. It’s made our hearts so glad to have had your support. From little things, big things grow, huh?

What we plan to do next is to contact the winning bidder with all the information they need to finalise their bid. Donors, once bidders have done their bit, we’ll be in touch with you with the information about how to send off your item.

As we had so many items and bidders, please be patient with us. We aim to have all bidders contacted by the end of the week – hopefully sooner!

Once again, big, enormous thanks to you all. We are so chuffed and we know that the recipients of your donations will be very grateful.

Fleur, Katrina, Kate and Emily

ITEM: An original piece of artwork.

DETAILS: This artwork is unframed and measure 30cmx30cm. The artwork was created by illustrator Judith Rossell for the book ‘Too Tight Benito’, written by Janeen Brian, illustrated by Judith Rossell and published by Little Hare (2008).

CV: Janeen Brian is an award-winning author of picture books, short stories, poetry, non-fiction, short fiction and novels for young people and the educational market. She grew up in Brighton, South Australia, graduated as a Primary teacher and taught for over twenty years before becoming a full-time writer. Janeen lives in Glenelg, South Australia with her husband Jon and has two grown-up daughters, Natalie and Cassie. To find out more visit Janeen’s website: http://www.janeenbrian.com/

Please bid in the comments box below.

Meredith’s Picture Book CV:

TRADE TITLES
Musical Harriet (illustrated by Craig Smith)(Scholastic Aust, Sydney, ’95)
Totty’s Potty (Australian Family Magazine, Melbourne, 2000)
Doodledum Dancing (Penguin, Melbourne, 2006)
No Noise at Our House (Windy Hollow, Melbourne, 2008)
My Baby Love (Hachette Children’s Books, 2009)
Bed Tails (Penguin Books, 2009)

Please bid in the comments box below.