Could you go back to school to support your children's book business?

Suppose you have been listening to our podcast show.

In that case, you have heard each children's book author discuss their experience of school classrooms, assemblies, or other reading events as part of their children's book revenue stream strategy.

A few weeks ago, I was asked to read our children's book the Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear to my youngest grandson's class.

I was thrilled, but he is in grade six.

This audience was a little older than our target audience of ages 4 to 10 for our children's book the Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear.

I knew I had to change it up a bit and after I read the book, I created a workshop on how to write a children's book.

It was fun and the students were very engaged.

The question and answer portion went on longer than I expected.

I put together a small package of activity sheets for each student and a bookmark for an audiobook of our children's story.

I received a great review from my grandson's teacher which I've posted On our website caboosetherockymountainbear.com if you get a chance, please give it a read.

I was hoping that the handout would create some interest in her book, but I didn't see any sales.

As a result of her handout, which included mention of our website and a link to purchase our book, I realized the audience I read to was much more interested in how to write and publish a children's book.

I will change up my workshop material should I engage in an older audience.

Again, I thought back to all my discussions with the children's book authors I've interviewed, as well as our conversations about how they manage their school, classroom assembly, or other book reading events.

However, few of my fellow children's book authors had a well defined plan to support a book reading revenue model.

Very few had a children's book reading visit fee, and if the authors did have a fee, it was very low or much too flexible.

If a school pushed back, they would drop the price for a school reading visit or do the reading for free.

Free would be okay if you could obtain commitments from the teacher, the school, or the school board that they would send home an order form or at the very least a piece of marketing material that directs parents to your website or provides a link to purchase your book.

This rarely happens.

What is sad about these entire school visits is that teachers, principals, administrators of these schools or school boards would not give up their salary or work for free.

I love educators as I have a degree in adult education.

However, I would challenge all educators to help children's book authors earn revenue from school visits or assemblies.

Not one children's book author is getting rich from your classroom or school assembly visit.

The children's book author will likely earn a minimum wage or less from the visit.

From what I gather, the administration of a school or classroom reading visit is often loose and unstructured.

There's no clear plan laid out by the school or the classroom for such visits.

The teacher, the school, or the school board has no guarantee of delivering any specific results.

The children's book author is often left to handle things to their imagination and means Part of this episode I'm including two audio clips from previous episodes because they deserve a additional sharing and focus.

We must hear and learn from doers children's book authors who are making it happen.

First is Monica voiku denison episode 21 who has the most comprehensive school visit program I've seen.

Please enjoy this audio clip.

You have a comprehensive Just so the listening audience knows, Monica has a comprehensive school visit schedule.

Like I I was really impressed about.

How you did this.

So you have not only do you have a one pager showing about the school visits, then you have a single presentation, a half day and a full day.

So talk to us about that.

It's quite interesting.

So that's new and it was inspired by seeing it on other authors websites.

And I thought I wanted it to be upfront for schools and organizations, organizations that were interested in booking me.

They could see exactly what they're getting and I wanted to put forth a really professional kind of menu of options because I do find that a lot of people expect you to do school visits for free.

They don't think about how it's somebody's time and it's somebody's gas money and it's somebody's babysitting money and it's all the costs that go along with it.

And so my goal is I did some free school visits last year and I'm no longer doing free school visits because I just can't afford to.

I if somebody if the school doesn't have a budget to pay for the visit, I think of other ways we can.

Maybe there's like a minimum amount of books they can order or something like that we can work out.

But I'm trying to get away from offering free school visits because I feel like that does a disservice to authors generally because it is time and work for us and schools often do have budgets for these things.

And I couldn't agree with you more.

Because that's been my most difficult thing is people have said, how many school visits have you done?

I haven't done any.

And the reason being is because it's all the efforts that you put into things come at a cost.

And to your point, as school visits, people don't realize there's a lot of costs involved to get to the school.

It's important for people to understand when you go to read to grade one or two or grade threes or kindergarten, whatever, when you get there, it's not like they've got 20 bucks in their pocket that they're going to buy your book.

It's not direct selling.

No.

And so you have to.

Yeah, I send like a pre order form that I asked the school to send it out.

Yeah.

So I've done.

How many school visits have I done?

3 or 4 at this point and I haven't been paid for any of them.

And I have two coming up that I will be paid for.

And I think my website has helped with that.

And I think it was a lesson learned for me because there was during month of the military, Month of the military child last year there were two schools on a base that I offered to come to and one of the schools couldn't afford to pay me and I said, okay, that's fine, as long as you send out pre order forms to your school, I can just come visit for free.

And the other school, same base, I didn't realize they could have paid me and I was just trying to be fair.

So I said, since I'm not making the other school pay, you don't have to pay either.

Just please send out my order forms.

The first school I got, I sold like 30 books or something, which is great.

And then the second school, I think only two people bought books and they could have paid me, but I, because I was trying to be fair, they didn't.

And so that was a lesson learned for me of don't just offer to do it for free.

And because I don't know, I don't know what happened there, I think maybe somebody didn't send the pre order forms with enough notice or something.

It was bizarre to me because it's the same exact group of kids, basically it's like the same base.

So it's not.

There shouldn't be a reason why One school bought 30 books and the other school bought two.

It just seemed weird to me.

And so that I think was a really good lesson for me that obviously if there's a case where a school really wants me to come out and they can't afford it and they're asking what can we do?

I'm going to work with them.

But I shouldn't just offer to come for free.

And you know what I loved about how comprehend when I said it was comprehensive.

I think this is a lesson for all of the people aspiring authors or children's book authors.

You set out a single presentation price, a half day price and a full day price.

The nice thing about it, it's a la carte.

You've given the school's options.

I just love that because I noticed most authors just put a 1 flat rate and they really aren't.

They don't go into the detail like you did.

So hats off to you.

Great job.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Monica has offered us so much value in the show notes.

I've included Monica's website.

Please view her author's visit tab on her website to get an idea behind her entire visit program.

Monica's website can provide you with a children's book author visit program.

Should all emulate.

Monica mentioned developing her programs from other sources, children's book authors.

And I'm sure she would not mind you modeling your book reading visit process from her.

Be sure to give her a big shout out and encourage people to purchase her books.

Next, I'm including an audio clip to serve as a guide on how to create a point of difference and add value to your book reading visits.

The audio clip is from Amber B.

Mitchell, episode 32, who developed a unique idea to support classroom, school assembly and other book reading events.

I want to get to what I think is so magical what you did.

And I know I teased everybody at the beginning of the show, including Amber.

I teased her like, what am I doing?

Special and magical that Rick hasn't seen with any other children's book author so far.

And when I looked at your website videos and you were at the assemblies and you had a puppet, a fit.

Yeah, I thought, oh my goodness, that is phenomenal.

And the reason I get so excited about this is if you look behind us.

And so those who are listening in, I tell the story on some of the episodes when my granddaughter and I came up with our idea about this adventurous bear, it was all based on a real story that happened to us.

And what happened was my granddaughter went to a daycare and the daycare had two stuffies.

One was a rabbit named Georgia and one was a bear named her brother George.

So there was Georgia the rabbit and George the bear, and they were brother and sister.

And the daycare would give them to children if they were going on vacation.

And then when the children came back, they would tell stories about their adventures.

So Kira brought Georgia a lot, the stuffed bunny.

And we did so many adventures.

We ran all over the Rocky Mountains, and we just had so much fun.

Kira outgrew the daycare and.

But we had all these adventures.

We had all these stories, but we need the character.

We had a character in mind.

We just didn't know how to bring the character to life.

My wife and I talked about this adventurous bear so much to my wife that I'm sure she thought I was crazy.

But we were down in San Francisco on a holiday and went into one of these plushie bear places that they had this bear, and then they had this engineering outfit.

It was magical.

Caboose was born, and we actually used the.

This bear in the background that, of course, anybody listening can't see.

But the bear ended up being our inspiration for our main character.

I took a picture of the bear and gave it to the illustrator.

And our illustrator built our whole book series around one stuffy.

I love that.

That's why I'm excited about what you're doing, because I never thought about a puppet taking your main character and turning it into a puppet.

So I'm so interested, and I think, as a storyteller, like, what a great thing to do.

Tell us about that whole experience.

How did you come up with that idea?

I'm trying to remember where I did come up with the idea.

I think I was trying to figure out a way.

So in my book, there are several times throughout the story when Finn, my main character, will sing, Chickadee Dee Dee this place is not for me.

And then at the end, he'll say, Chickadee Dee Dee.

This place was made for me, but I wanted the kids to sing that phrase with me, the Chickadee Dee Dee.

And I thought, what's a good way I can engage the kids to get them to say it, but to also quiet down after so they can continue to hear the story.

And I thought, what?

Have a puppet?

And I can hold him up in the air and say, when Finn flies up in the air, that's your cue.

And it's time to say Chickadee Dee Dee.

And then when he comes back down, we need to be quiet so we can hear the rest of the story.

I've used him as a tool, and it's funny because I did it in reverse of the way you did it.

I had my character drawn first and then I sent the picture that the illustrator created of Finn into a company called Budsies and they created the puppet and he came looking more like a penguin.

I'm not gonna lie.

So I.

That's fun though, because I will joke about that with the kids when I go and I'll say, how many of you think he looks like a chickadee?

And how many of you think he actually looks more like a penguin?

And they think that's fun.

That's hilarious.

The nice thing about the on the front cover is he's pretty fat.

Until you said that, I, of course I haven't seen Finn live as a puppet, but I thought, wow, that's pretty darn cool.

The hard thing is I'm like in the company's credit.

I don't know how you would make it look more like a chickadee because the coloring is very similar to penguin.

Tell us about the interaction with the kids.

Have the kids said, can I get a puppet to go with the book?

They'd never asked for a puppet.

Actually shocked that I yeah, so am I.

But I do have to say they haven't asked for that at school visits.

But when I've been at my farmer's market, I will set my puppet out on the table with my book and they will ask if they can buy the puppet too.

And I've said no, that one is just for when I go and read my stories.

But I'll let them hold it and pet it.

And I've added a link to Amber's website and you can view a video clip of Amber and Finn, her main character and puppet in action.

This entire concept behind this podcast episode is to encourage you to add value.

Get paid for school and book reading events.

If you can develop a point of difference as Amber has, there is much to gain allowing your revenue to grow and develop to support the sales and marketing of your book.

Remember, most of us will not get a traditional publishing company to publish our book.

However, these publishing houses do have guidelines for their school and reading visits.

These companies advise their authors not to sell themselves short, nor should you ensure revenue.

Whether it's direct or indirect is part of your goal.

This goal should be clear.

I felt it was essential to challenge you as an indie or self published children's book author to have a formula of what the minimum you should do for book reading events.

In this portion of the podcast episode, please note an overview formula entitled Children's Book Author Revenue for Successful Classroom School assembly and reading events.

We will discuss the following items to secure a paid reading visit Event okay, here we go.

Consider the type of event you're planning.

Classroom, school assembly or reading event visits, including the number of presentations, the age and size of the audience, and the venue.

Planning your timeline Use a booking calendar and there are many different booking calendar services you can add to your website.

Set up days of the week and times through this calendar.

Remember, using a booking calendar allows your clients options and they can pick the time or days that work for them.

Have a transparent cost structure on your website or marketing sheet for your classroom visit.

Look at a single visit price, a half day price, a full day price, and a detailed promise of what you are offering as content and the program for your visit.

Having published costs and options for your clients allows them to fit it into their budget or develop a budget.

The venue where is the school or is it a public library or is it a different location altogether?

Know the client's equipment that they are supporting you for your visit and reading.

What equipment, marketing and sales materials are you as an author allowed to bring?

Have your author's bio and books or books and other supporting educational materials ready to help the children that you are engaging with.

For example activity sheets, quizzes, coloring sheets, coloring books and review your children's book author's website.

The Event promise what is the teacher, the school, or the outside event promise?

Know the offer up front.

Explain to the students what the teacher or school would like each student to do.

I'm not saying have them go home and tell their parents they have to purchase the author's book, but at the very least go to the author's website or link to review the author's book or books and see if you can get support through that method.

Ask the school if they would use your order form.

It'd be the ultimate support for your children's book author's visit.

Am I encouraging all children's book authors to have a book reading paid program as part of their book business strategy?

No.

It can be a big commitment and you need to do some homework to ensure that this is a revenue source that will work for you in your marketplace.

Thank you for spending a little time with us today and decide if you're going to go back to school and support your children's book business.