:: Monday, February 12, 2007
I wrote up these ten tips to supplement a talk given this past weekend at the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators convention. The tips refer specifically to picture books, but I've found that they're useful in any genre, really...
1. Have an official website for your book. You'll need legal permission from the publisher to use pictures from the book, but it's easy to do. On the website you can include: interviews with the author/illustrator, reviews, games, printable coloring pages, or other stories about the characters in the book
2. Work with your publicist. Publicists are not psychic, nor are they omnipotent, and you are not their only author. If you give them a list of contacts at your local newspapers, magazines and TV stations, they are often more than happy to send out a press release on your behalf when you have events.
3. Go to local bookstores. Let them know you are a local author, and that you are available to read at storytimes. Don't wait on your publicist to do this for you. Take the initiative. Offer to sign their stock if they have books on hand.
4. Go to local libraries. Love your local librarians. Offer to read at a storytime. Librarians are more than happy to have you help them out!
5. Visit local schools. We love our teachers too! Ask your friends and co-workers with young children to hook you up with their teachers to come in and have a storytime.
6. Make storytime fun. Talk to the kids before you read the story and ask some questions. Get them involved. Ask them to help you as you read the story. Be inventive with the characters. Use voices, if you can, and inflection. If you like to dress up, use that to your advantage. Read SLOWLY, so that the audience can keep up. Ask them questions after the story, or talk to them a little bit about how you wrote it and why you wrote it.
7. Make sure your contact information is easy to find on your website. As word gets around, you will have folks contacting you about appearances. Do all you can to make those happen. Everything they need to know should be on your site.
8. Have something to hand out. Leave your audience with a lagniappe. Buttons, pencils, bookmarks, magnets -- most of these things are readily available on the internet. If you've got a tight budget, have a flyer to hand out, with a puzzle or a word find on it. You can always leave these with the teacher, or on a table at the library or bookstore.
9. Talk to as many people as you can, face to face. Seek out local conventions and writers groups. When you do go to conventions, make sure you are on one or two panels, and carry your book with you at all times. People are very visual. When they ask, "What book did you write?" hand it to them and tell them a little bit about it, or yourself, or how much fun you're having with the kids.
10. Be classy. The publishing world is a very, very small one. Today's Sales Assistant is tomorrow's Head of Production. Restaurants are public, hotel walls are thin, and memories are long. The one nasty thing you do (think Harlan Ellison) is the one story everyone will know about you. The only time you are "offstage" is in the privacy of your own home. Everyone is a potential customer. Always dress and act in a professional manner. Be gracious, appreciative, humble, and self-effacing. Be as wonderful to the 300th person to ask you how they can get a book published as you were to the first. Be kind to other authors. They've worked just as hard as you, and their egos are just as fragile. Yes, you absolutely deserve to have your career handed to you on a silver platter. Just never act like it.
