Category Archives: promotion

This refers to media used to announce availability and support or follow-up an appearance including author visit packets, postcards, bookmarks, business cards, activity sheets, posters, websites, blogs, television, radio, podcasts, booking agents

Author Visit Worries

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Even seasoned school visit presenters have moments of doubt, as do authors new to the circuit. Recently, when I did a presentation on author visits at the SCBWI North-Central California Spring Spirit Conference, the participants’ three major worries had to do with the content and pacing of their presentation, what fees to charge, and getting gigs.

Since these might be some of your worries, too, here are some articles to get you started. Search for more on this blog site, and, if you are a member of SCBWI, check out my SCBWI Bulletin column, “The Truth About School Visits” for additional articles.

QUESTION: What should I do in a presentation? How do I pace my time? How do I keep from boring the kids?

ARTICLE: What Do I Do When I Get There?
ARTICLE: Plotting Your Assembly Story

QUESTION: How much should I charge?

ARTICLE: How Much Should I Charge?
ARTICLE: Fee or Free?

QUESTION: How do I get gigs?

ARTICLE: Getting Gigs
ARTICLE: Nine Business Basics for School Visits

Please share any questions you might have. I’m happy to connect you to helpful resources.

Example: School Visit Video

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Here’s a 1:20 minute school visit promotional video by Tina Nichols Coury that promises a star-spangled presentation.

Tina Nichols Coury is the author of Hanging Off Jefferson’s Nose: Growing Up on Mount Rushmore (Penguin USA). I like that she has produced more than one video, and that one of the videos — the Mount Rushmore Tour – wasn’t just about promoting herself or her book. It offered educational value for students. I can picture teachers and librarians using this to prepare kids in advance of her visit.

Here are my thoughts on her School Visit video:

This is a professional-quality video, produced by Tina herself
The length is just right — in the sweet spot of 1:20 minutes
The video mixes still images with live action
Images show Tina interacting with kids in the audience as well as on stage.
The kids are engaged – those in the audience are raising hands and those on stage are wearing costumes.
She clearly shows the cover of her book
The contact information including her phone number and email stays on the screen long enough (11 seconds) to copy down

Here are some tweaks she might consider making:

School librarians love to show author videos. Make this section easier to find. Make a button called VIDEOS. List all videos here – the school visit, the tour, the three book trailers.
I wouldn’t use the word “promo.” It’s too industry-chat / sales sounding. Instead of “School Visit Promo,” she might call it “A Visit with Tina” or “Star-Spangled Assemblies” or “Spend a Day with Tina”

Thanks, Tina, for the opportunity to take a closer look at your school visit video.

Does anyone else have a school visit video you’d like to share? Send it my way!

Make a Video Calling Card for School Visits

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After my last post, author Carrie Pearson invited me to take a tour of her website to see what I thought about her school visit pages. A brave soul!

The first thing I saw — and clicked on – was a video posted prominently at the top of her school visit page. In the next 2:16 minutes, I enjoyed images backed with pleasant music. From that brief encounter, here’s what I learned about Carrie:

1) She’s fun
2) She’s published science-related children’s books
3) She’s willing to travel
4) She’s presented programs for kids in Pre-K to 7
5) She’s done Family Night events
6) She conducts writing workshops
7) She has great testimonials from adults and kids
8) She is easy to reach (website address is posted at the end)

Carrie created this “video calling card” via Animoto, using a template. I’ve also seen them done through Vimeo as well.

While I think the sweet spot for this kind of promotion (including book trailers) is between 1 minute and 1.5 minutes, I think this works really well to introduce Carrie to potential hosts. Personally, I liked that it wasn’t a hard-sell, but I might have added a tag line that expressed what action I want the viewer to take: “Invite Carrie to your school! www.CarriePearsonBooks.com”

According to a recent article by Teymour Shahabion Digital Book World, as of August 2014, Facebook has been delivering more video views than YouTube—by about one billion views. A video posted on Facebook is far likelier to be seen than is any other type of post. So, when you do make that school visit video, be sure to post it to Facebook as well as YouTube.

Do you have a link to a school visit promotional video you’d like to share here? Send it to me and I’ll post it for others to enjoy.

School Visits – Are You Easy for Hosts to Find?

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It’s one thing to say that you want to do school visits. But are you making it difficult for potential host to find you?

Frankly, I just spent a full day clicking on over 75 author websites for a Friends of the Library project. Schools don’t have the time or tenacity to go through this volume of names just to find one person for a day of assemblies. Here are some tips for making it easy to be discovered.

Your Number One calling card is your website. If you don’t have a real author-dedicated website – preferably in your own name – you’re not serious about being an author who does presentations. Have a friend check your links to make sure they work.

What do you need on your website? I visited many “pretty” websites. “Pretty” on its own doesn’t sell a school visit. Information in an easily accessible form does. You must have at least these two buttons: one for “Books” and another for “School Visits” or “Presentations.”

Under “Books” include story summaries, reviews, awards.
Reviews that carry weight will be from any of these sources:
School Library Journal
Publishers’ Weekly
Kirkus
The Horn Book
Booklist
The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
Library Media Connection

Some of the types of awards that are prestigious are:
State Awards
Best Books lists (i.e. Bank Street College)
Junior Library Guild selection
Children’s Books Notable Lists (Social Studies, Science)
American Library Association Awards (i.e. “Oscar” status) Batchelder, Belpré, Caldecott, Carnegie, Geisel, Newbery, Odyssey, Sibert, Wilder
Young Adult Library Services Awards (YALSA) including the Alex, Morris, Edwards, Printz, and YALSA Excellence in nonfiction.
National Book Award
Boston Globe-Horn Book Award

About books. If you plan to work with a bookseller at your appearance, then know that the bookseller needs you to have at least one book in print and available for students to access. If your book is digital-only, understand that many schools will not be able to provide it to share with or assign to students in preparation for your visit.

Under the “School Visits” or “Presentations” button
Describe your presentation(s) and number of sessions you can do per visit.

Tell what grades your presentations are best for: Primary (K-2); Intermediate (grades 3-5); Middle School (Grades 6-8) or High School (Grades 9-12)

Post testimonials from people who have seen you perform along with their positions (If you can’t write a specific name, put their role and school, i.e. Librarian, Buckley Elementary; 6th grader, Easton Middle School, etc.)

Outline your fees (optional). Many authors like wiggle room to negotiate, so they choose not to post set fees. Others want potential hosts to know up front what all costs will be (honorarium, travel, lodging, meals). In this area, you can breakdown options (full-day/half-day/hourly; assemblies, workshops, small group sessions; in-person/SKYPE).

For a good example of an author who includes it all, check out Lee Wardlaw’s detailed descriptions of her presentations.

Discoverability is challenging. After you spruce up your website, get on professional lists and keep them updated. If you are a member of SCBWI (and why wouldn’t you be?), be sure to update your information on the Speakers’ Bureau site. Network with authors about school visit leads. Here are some other posts I’ve done related to this topic.

SKYPE: A Great Tool for MG and YA Authors

Brochure Overhaul for School Visit Promotion

How Much Should I Charge? Three Rules of Thumb

Make it easy for hosts to find you. Your website is your first most important calling card. The next is the quality of the books you write and the presentations that you deliver. So get going!

How Can You Entice Teens to Your Library Programs?

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Here’s the issue. You’ve been invited to do a talk at a local public library. You know that the library will promote through their usual channels. But if you’re not a middle grade or YA star author, attendance can be all over the map, with nothing guaranteed. So what carrot can you have the library offer to motivate an audience to show up? The answer is credit. From teachers. For attending your event.

I’ve seen this in action at my local library. Our Friends of the Library group sponsored a program called, “Shakespeare in Song: Songs & Sonnets Celebrating the Bard” created and performed by William Clark. They knew adults would show up, but they wanted to attract a younger audience, too. To motivate students, the Friends of the Library sent a notice to all English teachers in local middle schools and high schools that announced the program and (here’s the key) suggested that teachers offer a homework pass to any student who showed up. The library created a form to certify attendance that was signed by a volunteer at the event, and the student was given a program as extra proof of having been there.

The result? A Standing-Room-Only crowd filled with students.
Why not suggest this kind of partnership the next time you do a library gig? It’s a winning situation for you, the library and, most importantly, the kids who come to meet you.

Podcast: Evergreen School Visit Advice

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Grab your earbuds and turn up your speakers for some “evergreen” school visit advice. This is an interview that the one-and-only Katie Davis did with me on her podcast, Brain Burps About Books. Katie is a writer, an illustrator, and a video marketing maven (her description — and it’s true!) Her podcasts include interviews with publishing industry leaders on the creation, promotion and writing of children’s books.

This interview is an hour long. In case your time is short and you want to jump to the bits that are of greatest interest to you, I’ve provided a list of topics we discussed and approximate times in the podcast they appear (minutes & seconds).
Episode #31: School Visit Questions with Expert Alexis O’Neill

00:00 General announcements
05:54 Introduction of Alexis O’Neill, SchoolVisitExperts.com
08:00 Importance of authors being compensated for work
09:01 Surprising world of school visits following publication
09:30 Selling vs giving. Expertise & intent
13:54 AUDIENCE QUESTION: What’s the best way to get school visits?
17:48 Fees & discounts
28:53 AUDIENCE QUESTION: Crowd control. How do you deal with loud, noisy assemblies? How do you get their attention and respect in a humorous way?
35:45 AUDIENCE QUESTION: How can I connect with schools? Mailings fall flat. Other suggestions?
42:18 AUDIENCE QUESTION: How can I develop a program to create an on-going relationship with a school?
46:26 AUDIENCE QUESTION: How do you get in front of the decision-makers – teachers & librarians?
52.10 AUDIENCE QUESTION: How can we promote to schools and keep “green”? Who’s the first contact at a school?
57.22 AUDIENCE QUESTION: I donated a school visit. Media will be coming. What I should I be prepared for?
01:02:05 AUDIENCE QUESTION: How do you know what to charge for the different events? Do you think it’s important to include kids in the presentation or is it okay just to do a PowerPoint to the kids?
01:09:21 END of Podcast

5 Things to Do While Schools Are Sleeping

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Here’s what you can do now while kids out of school and teachers are recharging their creative batteries this summer:

1. Business cards & bookmarks: Is it time for a redesign? A reorder? You can get some great deals through online printers such as GotPrint.com, Overnightprint.com and Vistaprint.com, to name a few.

2. Brochures & Websites: Is the information updated? Complete? Ask your critique group members to review your school visit page or print brochure. Better still, find a principal, teacher or parent give you feedback on it to see if you’ve made it clear how your presentation will benefit their students and tie into the curriculum.

3. Rates: Review your school visit rates. Do you need to change them for the coming year? If you’re unsure or you’re just starting out, compare with other published authors in your geographic region. A good place to start is with local PAL members of SCBWI.

4. Email updates: Enter your contacts from the past year into a database. This may include hosts of schools you visited or conference and workshop attendees. Be sure to note where you met them so that when you send them an announcement, they know you’ve already established a relationship with them.

5. Reminders: Compose a note now to send in August reminding contacts of your availability to do school visits in 2015-2016. For schools you’ve just visited, ask them to refer you to another school. For contacts you made at events, plant the seed that you’re available in the coming year to inspire their students.

BONUS TIP
If you haven’t visited a school in 5 years, it’s time reestablish a relationship with them. Tell them what’s new. Suggest you return to meet their new batch of students.

If you do these five simple tasks (six, if you count the Bonus task!), you’ll be in great shape when the school year revs up again in August!

Connecting Author Visits with Picture Book Month: Advice from Dianne de Las Casas

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If you haven’t ridden the wave of Picture Book Month activities this year, it’s never too early to start planning for next year. My friend and founder of this celebration, Dianne de Las Casas, author, storyteller, and children’s book advocate extraordinaire, gives terrific advice on just how to do this!

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Picture Book Month is an international literacy initiative that celebrates the print picture book during the month of November every year. Now in its third year, through the power of the Internet and social media, Picture Book Month has grown exponentially each year with partners such as SCBWI, the Children’s Book Council, the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, and many more. Every day in November, the website features an essay about the importance of picture books written by a prominent author, illustrator, or mover and shaker in the children’s book industry. All over the world, schools, libraries, and bookstores are celebrating Picture Book Month with author visits, Skype author visits, Google hangouts, YouTube and Vimeo videos, blog posts, Twitter chats, and big picture book displays. In addition, students are reading thousands upon thousands of picture books. A school in Hungary last year read over 6,000 picture books during Picture Book Month! Here’s how you can tap into the movement and connect with Picture Book Month.

1. Become a Picture Book Month Ambassador. Become a Picture Book Month Ambassador and place the Ambassador badge on your website, with a link PictureBookMonth.com. There is no cost and it shows your support. Educators, librarians, the home school community, booksellers, bloggers, literacy organizations, and parents are celebrating Picture Book Month in November. Becoming a Picture Book Month Ambassador demonstrates that you believe in the power of print picture books and support picture books as a building block of literacy. You can register to celebrate Picture Book Month (it’s never too late) and even get listed as an author on the website.

2. Offer School and Library Visits During Picture Book Month. Many schools and libraries celebrate Picture Book Month with author visits. If you are an author of picture books, November is a great time for you! Send out postcards, advertise in your email newsletter, and post to your social media sites that you are available for author visits during Picture Book Month. Check with your local libraries and schools to find out what they are doing to celebrate. Perhaps you could be part of their kick-off or finale.

3. Offer Skype Author Visits During Picture Book Month. Librarians like John Schumacher from Brook Forest Elementary School in Illinois and Teachers like Colby Sharp, who is a Nerdy Book Club Blogger, love doing Skype visits with authors during Picture Book Month. When schools and libraries don’t have the funds for an in-person author visit, they often turn to Skype author visits as a viable solution. They love nothing more than to connect their readers with the writers of their favorite books. A Skype Author Visit is a great way to link your picture books with schools and libraries during Picture Book Month.

4. Check Out the New Picture Book Month Teacher’s Guide. Marcie Colleen, Picture Book Month’s Educational Consultant, has created an incredible 16 page Picture Book Month Teachers Guide. The guide correlates picture books to the U.S. Common Core and learning standards. Educators have less time to spend on content that falls outside of their assigned curriculum. Our Teacher’s Guide demonstrates, with research and data, that picture books are a valuable part of a student’s education. You can use our study guide as a springboard to create your own and illustrate how your picture books tie in to the curriculum and the Common Core.

5. Connect with the Picture Book Month Community. One of the great ways to receive invitations to schools, libraries, and conferences is to become involved in social media. Picture Book Month has a thriving Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest community. Our Twitter handle is @PictureBkMonth and our hashtag is #PictureBookMonth. Join the conversation, post your favorite picture books in response to our daily theme, and even connect with other authors and illustrators. Many of our Picture Book Month champions are on Facebook and Twitter. Read the daily essays on the Picture Book Month website and be sure to comment. Each comment is entered into our drawing for a chance to win autographed books from our Picture Book Month Champions.

Picture Book Month is all about promoting literacy by celebrating print picture books, the authors and illustrators who create them, and the readers who love them. Join us! November is Picture Book Month. Read * Share * Celebrate!

Dianne de Las Casas is an award-winning author, storyteller, and founder of Picture Book Month. Her performances, dubbed “revved-up storytelling” are full of energetic audience participation. The author of 22 books and the 2013 recipient of the Ann Martin Book Mark award, her picture book titles include The Cajun Cornbread Boy, There’s a Dragon in the Library, The House That Witchy Built, The Little “Read” Hen, and The House That Santa Built. Visit her website at diannedelascasas.com. Visit Picture Book Month at PictureBookMonth.com.

5 Things I’ve Learned About School Visits: Advice from Laura Purdie Salas

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In this series, expert school visit presenters share what they’ve learned from experiences in the trenches. Thanks to Laura Purdie Salas for the following contribution.

1. The school owns you for the day. Do all your negotiating ahead of time. Make sure the schedule is do-able, that you have your necessary bathroom breaks, etc. Then, once you show up, just go with it. If the school asks whether you want to eat lunch on your own or with teachers, offer to eat with teachers (or students)—whatever they will get the most out of. If the numbers/venue aren’t quite as described, oh well. They have brought you there, and all you can do is give them everything you’ve got for the day(s). The kids deserve that.

2. Keep your sense of humor. Things will go wrong. Wildly wrong. I’ve had principals change the schedule, fire drills send me into the ladies’ room with a bunch of 4^th-grade girls, slides that all appeared green because of a cable mishap, a first grader throw up, a blizzard close down a school, and much more. I learned a great lesson at a Rob Thomas concert when his tech stuff failed. He just laughed, talked with the audience, and tried to give us his best, even in less-than-best circumstances. Laughing beats crying. Save that for the car ride home.

3. If a third party arranges the visit, make sure you get a contact name, email address and phone number for someone actually at the school. And touch base before your visit. I recently appeared for a visit several hours from home, arranged by the local library through a state grant. The school had no idea I was coming. Let me repeat that. No. Idea. If I had contacted the school directly, even though the library wanted to handle all the details, this could have been avoided. (The principal was flexible, the kids and teachers were surprised, and the day went surprisingly well!)

4. Send posters and free books once the contract is signed. I had some mini-posters printed with a bunch of my book covers and an announcement that “Laura Purdie Salas is coming to school on ________!” On the back of the posters are tips to help the adults prepare for my visit. I send 3-4 posters plus 2-3 of my trade hardcover books in advance. The cost to me is well worth the extra excitement the materials generate.

5. Kids want to connect with you. That’s the most important part of your visit. Yes, design your presentation to support teachers, to correlate to standards, to share content. But then, focus on talking and sharing with kids and listening to them. Make eye contact. Be vulnerable. Be real. That’s how you reach those kids and give them a visit that they will always remember.

Laura Purdie Salas is the author of more than 100 books for kids and teens, including BOOKSPEAK! POEMS ABOUT BOOKS, STAMPEDE! POEMS TO CELEBRATE THE WILD SIDE OF SCHOOL, and A LEAF CAN BE…. She loves to introduce kids to poetry and help them find poems they can relate to, no matter what their age, mood, and personality. She has also written numerous nonfiction books. See more about Laura and her work at www.laurasalas.com.

2 Economical Bookplate Solutions

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The other day, my friend Barbara Elizabeth Walsh wrote to me for advice:

This is a classic bookplate design, originally developed for Antioch Bookplates, but now owned by Bookplate Ink

“I’m on the road looking for author bookplates. One school didn’t get their book delivery and I promised I would send inscribed bookplates to them as soon as I retuned home. Do you have any suggestions?”

It’s disappointing – to you and to readers — when schools or bookstores run out of your books during your appearance. Being able to autograph and personalize a book can mean the difference between a sale and no sale. So here’s a solution. Tell the host that for any book sold after your visit, you will mail autographed, personalized bookplates. After the event, have the host email the names she / he wants written on the bookplates.

Also known as ex libris (“from the library of”), bookplates are decorative stickers that are placed in the inside cover of books to identify ownership. But classic commercial bookplates are expensive (about $.50 and up per plate) and usually don’t have enough room for an author to sign, let alone inscribe a student’s name.

I tried to find commercial designs like these with enough room for me to write a message. They were sold in packages of 10 – 12, and the costs added up quickly.

There are other products that you can use for bookplates —

Commercial name tags: School supply stores usually have decorative name tags with enough surface area for writing. You can choose a design that complements the theme of your book.

In a school supply store, I found name badges with fun colors. The writing space was a bit cramped – 2.5” x 2.25”, but they worked – and were economical at 100 for $5.00.

Shipping labels: Office supply stores have an abundance of blank white shipping labels to choose from. Select a size (from 2” x 4” to 4 up to 3 1/3” x 4” is best) and make your own design. These can be printed up at home at your convenience. They have room enough for an inscription, autograph and date.

I made my own “themed” template for Loud Emily (top) and The Recess Queen (4” x 3.25”). I use a smaller label (2” x 4”) when I donate a book to a school.

Barbara Walsh decided to buy white labels and personalize them.

Here are two of Barbara Elizabeth Walsh’s bookplate designs for The Poppy Lady: Moina Belle Michael and Her Tribute to Veterans (Calkins Creek). I think the results look great.

Happy bookplate designing – and autographing!

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For more about Barbara’s book, explore this blog post the David C. Barrow Elementary Media Center in Athens, Georgia.

For more about Antioch Bookplate Company.

For more about Bookplate Ink.

School Visit Experts

Creating Programs That Kids, Teachers & Librarians Love

Category Archives: promotion

Author Visit Worries

Example: School Visit Video

Make a Video Calling Card for School Visits

School Visits – Are You Easy for Hosts to Find?

How Can You Entice Teens to Your Library Programs?

Podcast: Evergreen School Visit Advice

5 Things to Do While Schools Are Sleeping

Connecting Author Visits with Picture Book Month: Advice from Dianne de Las Casas

5 Things I’ve Learned About School Visits: Advice from Laura Purdie Salas

2 Economical Bookplate Solutions