Category Archives: getting gigs

This refers to setting fees and promoting availability

4 Ways to Make Librarians Love Your School Visit: Advice from Toni Buzzeo

6 Replies

BUZZEO_TerrificConnectionsCoverToni Buzzeo, award-winning author, librarian and educator, has been giving great advice to authors and illustrators even long before the publication of her book, Terrific Connections with Authors, Illustrators and Storytellers: Real Space and Virtual Links, co-authored with Jane Kurtz, in 1999. Read on to find out her expert suggestions for making terrific school visit connections with librarians.

+ + + 

I come to the topic of school visits wearing two stylish, but completely different, hats. As a children’s author, I have visited hundreds of schools across this country and around the world. And as a school librarian, I played host at Longfellow Elementary School in Portland, Maine to at least two authors every year for eleven years. As a result, I’ve gained a deep understanding of what it takes, as an author, to wow a librarian host. And I’d like to share my ideas with you.

1. Be clear, be prompt, be honest, and be gracious in your communications. Every school visit begins with a conversation, either in person, by phone, or through e-mail or snail mail. Whether the librarian is the one to reach out to you, or you are the first to establish contact, the impression you make in your first and ongoing communications will set the tone of the visit. Be clear about your needs. Hedging in order to land a visit and then suffering under unsuitable arrangements or honoraria will not serve your interests well and may ultimately alienate your host. Always respond promptly and honestly about arrangements as you plan. And above all, be gracious even when you feel put off by something that is suggested. It well may be that what appears to be a verbal or written mis-step was unintended. Leave room to discover this and smooth the waters.

2. Know and understand developmental ages and stages. Librarians, and all educatorsBUZZEO-JustLikeMyPapacover in the schools you visit, will appreciate your thorough understanding of the variety of developmental ages and stages within the groups of students that you meet. While some hosts may ask you to address a combined group of kindergarteners and fourth graders, or eighth graders and seniors, this is the perfect time to be clear and gracious. Explain that each of your presentations is designed with specific developmental learning stages in mind, making it necessary to avoid the combination of such disparate grades. It is essential that you do create presentations that are suitable for each age/grade range in the school, changing not only your content but also your method of delivery to suit the developmental needs and understanding of each group.

3. Understand and design presentations to respond to local curriculum. Your first reaction to this advice may be, “But I’m not a teacher!” Actually, that isn’t true. When you are in a school, you are temporarily in the position of an educator. Because every school hour is BUZZEO-StayCloseToMamaCover-Largeprecious in this age of standards-driven education, and because in all but five states (see map),  those standards are national (entitled the Common Core State Standards), it is easier now, than ever before, to become comfortable with the standards that govern educational goals and incorporate them into your presentations. Start here  and then solicit help from teachers you know to refine your presentations.

4. Learn and practice appropriate “behavior management” techniques. If you have taught school or led Scouts or other youth groups, you already have experience in guiding children or teens to appropriate behaviors. If not, however, learning intervention techniques will benefit you by making you comfortable in dealing with students and make you a valuable visitor, readily handling disruptive students and situations yourself and moving quickly back to your presentation. Seek out avenues for learning successful interventions such as observing veteran teachers and librarians, discussing options with educator friends, and reading articles online or in educational journals.

 BUZZEO-ToniHeadShotTrimmedAbout Toni Buzzeo: Working both from her colonial farmhouse in Buxton, Maine and her sunny winter nest in Sarasota, Florida, New York Times bestselling children’s author Toni Buzzeo has published 19 picture books so far, including the 2013 Caldecott Honor winning One Cool Friend. She also wears the hat of a seasoned educator. A former college and high school English teacher, Toni then became a practicing Library Media Specialist and was named the 1999 Maine Library Media Specialist of the Year. In that hat, she writes many professional books and articles, Common Core curriculum based on children’s literature, as well as teaching and promotional guides for children’s books. Learn more at www.tonibuzzeo.com

Proposing Sessions at Conferences

5 Replies

I love going to conferences.Reading. Library. Social Studies. As an author, it’s the best way to meet dedicated teachers, librarians and decision-makers.

Sometimes, invitations are sent my way. For example, last week, I presented workshops at a summer literacy workshop for K-12 educators sponsored by the California Reading and Literature Project at California Lutheran University. My two sessions included teachers, principals, and even an assistant superintendent. These are my people! Influencers. Kid-lovers. And I had a chance to show them, using examples from my books, strategies for research and revision that I’ve learned from years of being a children’s author.

But you don’t have to wait for invitations. Be proactive. Make a list of national organizations that serve a population that would benefit from your book. Also search for contact information for their local affiliates (i.e for the International Reading Association, state affiliate is the California Reading Association and my county affiliate is the Ventura County Reading Association). Find out when they hold their conferences and submit a proposal. But don’t just focus on the reading and library conferences. Seek out organizations that relate to the content hooks in your book – math, science, history.

About proposals. When you submit a proposal independently to conference organizers, consider putting together a team. I used to evaluate proposals for a national conference for teachers. My boss leaned toward ones that had more than one presenter. Why? Because it meant more bodies at the conference, more income for the organization. So consider inviting a local university person, librarian or bookseller to moderate a panel of authors on a topic related to the conference’s theme.

If you’re having difficulty breaking in, study past conference programs and contact the author presenters to see how they landed a session. Ask them for advice. Ask for advice, too, from local teachers or librarians.  What slant would appeal to them most? Authors sharing research techniques? Writing techniques? Revision techniques? Do a little digging and you’ll come up with some nuggets.

 NOTE: See related post on 01-01-13, Focus Your Gig-Getting Energies in the New Year   

(My thanks to Mary Cronk Farrell, author of Journey to the Top of the World: How One Woman Found the Courage and Commitment to Climb Mount Everest, for the inspiration for this post!) 

 

Focus Your Gig-Getting Energies in the New Year

1 Reply

The number one question authors who want to do more school visits ask me is “How can I get more gigs?”

The simple answer is this: participate in activities where you are most likely to meet the people who are in a position to hire you. These people usually include librarians, teachers and teaching specialists, principals, curriculum coordinators, and parent group leaders. Also, booksellers often recommend authors to schools, so they are important contacts to have.

Look for opportunities to meet them where they gather – at workshops and conferences at the school district, county and state-wide levels. The best kind of involvement is doing presentations – either solo, duo or on a panel – where participants get a feel for your personality, presentation style and your books.

Concentrate on becoming known locally.  Even high-profile authors are feeling the funding pinch as many hosts are looking for local authors to save travel costs.

Schedule time to do an online search for professional associations. Find out when they meet and propose doing a workshop session. For example, I live in California, so here are some of the educational and literary associations, with their national counterparts, that I have been involved with (and most states will have similar groups):

Social gatherings are also great places to build relationships. For example, I attend some luncheons organized by teachers and librarians, especially those at which my friends are keynote speakers or who are receiving awards. These would include:

 Take time to find URLs for organizations, keep a database of conference dates and proposal deadlines, and strategize on where you can best focus your gig-finding opportunities in the coming year.

To get you started, here’s a link to reading associations in North America:

Brochure Overhaul for School Visit Promotion

This summer, suggest to your writers’ group that you devote one session to critiquing each others’ school visit brochures. If you’re like me, you keep cranking them out (or, if you’ve had them done at a printer, using them up) without giving them a second glance.  But is your brochure really doing the trick?  Is it outdated?  Is it convincing a potential host that the benefits of bringing you in will justify the cost?

Here are some elements that you should consider when you do brochure revisions.

Purpose: Your brochure is a school visit sales tool.  It should give potential hosts a taste of your personality, your program format and your presentation objectives as they relate to the curriculum. It should also clearly identify you as the author of your most recent or most popular books.

Bio:  Make the text fun. Use a family photo.

Program: Describe your program including what you will do, how you will do it, and how your content links with the curriculum.  Tell how much time you need for school assemblies. Mention if they can select any add-ons such as workshops, and send them to your website for details. 

Fees: I don’t suggest putting your fees in the brochure as this will date it quickly.  Have readers contact you or go to your website for details. 

Books: Include images of one or more of your most recent – or most popular – books.

Testimonials: Won any awards? Have a terrific quotable quote about a dynamite school visit? Include them. (Warning: be selective!)

Layout. Brochures are usually on 8.5” x 11” paper, printed on both sides and folded in thirds. This makes them easy to display or mail. White space is inviting to the eye. When designing the layout, leave lots of white space. I do all my layouts using Microsoft Publisher, a very simple and flexible program to learn.

Current headshot: People want to know what you look like today.

Contact information: Be sure to include your website and/or email address

 Remember – whatever you can’t fit in your brochure can be described at your website.

Do you have a school visit brochure that really works for you?  Send me a pdf at info2@schoolvisitexperts.com so I can see it, too!

Getting Referrals

 Piggyback on your existing contacts in your school visit database to help generate invitations for the coming year.

 If you followed my advice in a previous post, you’ve entered the names and addresses of your past school visit hosts into a database. 

 The next step is to print labels for all the schools you visited last year.  Send a note (preferably handwritten as these are more impressive!) to your hosts, thanking them again for inviting you to visit their schools.  Ask if they would be willing to pass along your name to a colleague at another school or organization in their district or another district.  You might consider enclosing a stamped postcard so that all they have to do is address it, write a quick note and pop it in the mail.  Time this to arrive after school reconvenes in the fall– and after the big crush of post-summer mail is delivered – so that your notes don’t get lost in the shuffle.

 You can write these notes at the beach, pool or park throughout the summer.  You’ll be amazed at how painless this task is when its spread out over time.  They’ll be all ready to pop in the mail in September.

 

Creating a Contact Database

If you’re like me, you look forward to the summer months to catch up on your writing, free from the time drain of school visit travel. But you’ll find yourself in better shape when the school visit season cranks up again this fall if you spend just a couple of hours a week getting organized in July and August.

Organizing your school visit contact information is a great place to start.

If you haven’t done so already, transfer your contact information to a database that you can sort and resort in a variety of ways. The simplest way is to create a table in Word, or other word processing program, with the paper in landscape format. Eight simple columns might include:

 • Date of contact (i.e. the day you met or the day you visited the school)

• State

 • City 

 • Email of host or contact

• Host/contact Name, Address (e.g. Jean Jones, Village Elementary School, 1050 Main Street, Appleton, NY 13421)

 • Position (e.g. teacher, librarian, principal, PTA Programs VP, etc.)

• Source (e.g. school visit, conference, workshop, service group, etc.)

• Notes on the experience

By having the columns “state” and “city,” you can quickly sort and see where the bulk of your contacts are and where you might need to make more.

The “date” column shows you when it might be time to approach them to suggest a new visit (usually 5 years following the initial visit, after the kids have cycled through the school)

And from your “Address” column,” you can create mailing labels for future marketing endeavors.

For those of you who are more adept database creators, you can design a similar form using an Excel spreadsheet program or Access database program. For example, if you learn how to use Excel after you’ve already begun your table in Word, you can easily transfer the data from the Word table to Excel. But I’m still at Square One with these programs, so a Word table is the simplest answer for me.

Do you have a different database program that you’ve found useful? Have any tips on keeping track of contacts? I’d love to hear about them!

Call in Your Questions to Brain Burps!

What burning questions do you have about school visits?

You might be a newly published author or illustrator, someone who’s multiply published, or someone who’s returning after a break from the biz.  You might even be an editor or agent who would love for their authors to make contact with kids in schools.  Here’s some good news for you.

Brain Burps Logo-smKatie Davis is going to interview me on the topic of school visits on her popular kidlit podcast, Brain Burps About Books.  I would LOVE for you to call her voicemail hotline at 888-522-1929 before February 7 with any questions you might have about school visits.  Your questions might be about

  • creating a program
  • getting gigs
  • crowd control
  • writing contracts
  • selling books

 – whatever is on your mind!

It would also be great if you have any funny or strange school visit stories to share.  I’ll answer questions on the show, and Katie will bring in stories to round out the episode. 

Though fairly new (since August 2010), Katie tells me that the show grows daily – she’s had over 7000 downloads in over 50 countries and Brain Burps About Books is #1 in the iTunes store in Children’s Publishing!

Please help spread the word about children’s literature by telling people about the show, and about calling in for my episode before Feb. 7 at 888-522-1929.

How to Add Gigs When Traveling

Cactus _Casa Grande_AZWhen my husband had to travel to Arizona recently, I went along, adding a school visit gig to sweeten the trip. Here’s how I did it.

 I didn’t know anyone in the smallish town where he was going to be headquartered, but I went to the school district’s website and found the email addresses of the 9 elementary school principals.  I wrote: “I just wanted to let you know that I am going to be traveling from California to your town in October. While I’m there, I would love to visit your school for an author visit.  I’m available on Friday, October 22. The only expense would be my honorarium since I’ll already be in town.”

 The email included a brief bio, how my books connect with the curriculum, and links to my website and on-line interviews.

This yielded a visit!  As it turned out, one school had just featured two of my books in a character education program the week before my note arrived, so my timing for them was perfect.  The school loved that they didn’t have to pay for travel or lodging.

If your search of public schools in an area doesn’t turn up any takers, author Bruce Hale recommends trying private schools.  He writes:

These days, I’ve been doing lots of add-on gigs when I know I’ll be in a particular city.  Since most public schools aren’t rolling in bucks these days, I visit privateschoolreview.com, plug in the city, and start cold-calling schools.

 Most times, I literally call the schools cold, with no lead or introduction. Sometimes I’ll send an email first, if the contact person and email address are evident on the school’s website. Often the principal is the decision-maker, but in some of the larger private schools, the librarian controls a portion of the budget and can decide whether or not to hire you.   

In general, I’ve had better luck with the larger private schools (look for the number of students on the website listing), but sometimes 2-3 smaller schools are willing to band together to split a day’s visits.  I’ve found that you often have to call a lot of schools before you hit paydirt, but cold calls get easier with time.”

So, whether you inquire by email or are brave enough to do this by phone call like Bruce, letting schools know that you’re in town and available can be a plus for both the school and the author.

Finding Funding for School Visits

In the past couple of years, many schools’ traditional sources of funding (parent organizations, booster clubs, etc.) have been called upon to support basic needs  — copier machines, supplies, and sometimes even staffing. Finding funds for author visits, field trips, and assemblies can be challenging. Yet even when resources seem all tapped-out, there are pockets of money to be had simply by asking.  Take a look at this video tip and pass it along to potential hosts. (Click here for the link I mention in the video.)

Making Your Presentation Irresistible

To “make” more time for academics, many school districts across the country have chopped recess and axed assemblies. To make sure that you don’t fall victim to the “Dulling of American Students,” make your author visit program irresistible to administrators.  When you describe your assemblies, show administrators how your presentation links directly to the curriculum and educational standards. If you’re willing (and able) to do large group assemblies, this also makes your program more attractive to schools who want to be totally democratic and reach all children.