Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Associates links, which means if you click on them and make a purchase, I will receive a couple of pennies (at no extra charge to you).

I hope this is the first of several guest posts by Chelsea Tornetto, a former teacher turned author, because there are so many ways she can help children’s book authors with her expertise. Chelsea’s first book, Conquering Content Vocabulary, published by Scholastic, is educational. Picture books are her passion now, though. She’s the author of Gardens Are For Growing and God Made You Too.  When Chelsea isn’t working on her own stories, she helps others write for children as a freelance editor and author coach for At Home Author. Find Chelsea on X/Twitter and her website.

Beyond the classroom: 8 unique venues for children’s book author visits

By Chelsea Tornetto

Children’s book authors often dream of being invited to a local school to read their book to a classroom full of wide-eyed elementary students.

Those enthusiastic young readers are the exact reason why children’s book authors like me decided to write for kids in the first place,

But as many of us quickly discover, school visits can be difficult to book.

Schools are closing doors on author visits

With shrinking budgets, growing pressure to squeeze in more curriculum, heightened safety rules and regulations, and increasing demands on teachers’ valuable planning time, many schools simply choose not to go to the trouble.

It’s a bummer!

After all, school visits can be a major source of income and publicity for children’s book authors.

But, luckily, they’re not the only way to get lots of little eyes on your book!

In fact, sometimes looking beyond schools and classrooms can lead to even more interesting – and potentially profitable – opportunities.  

8 unexpected venues for children’s book author visits

What are the best non-school options for children’s book author visits? Here are eight alternative venues you’ll want to explore locally and when you travel.

1. Libraries

I’m hoping this one doesn’t come as a surprise; we should all be reaching out to local libraries to carry our books.

But, while you’re at it, ask if they offer any children’s programming that can include guests. They may have a budget to bring in outside speakers.

If they don’t? They might still be willing to let you host an event and sell books to attendees.

This is particularly true in the summer, when most libraries offer more kids’ programming to help parents looking for something to keep the little ones busy.

2. Children’s museums

Children’s museums are designed to get kids interested in learning while still having fun, so children’s books are a great fit.

Pitch yourself and your book as a way for them to attract new guests, or show how your book could support one of their existing exhibits.

In addition, many children’s museums have gift shops that might stock your book, even after your event is over.

3. Conservation and nature centers

I live in Missouri, which has a robust conservation department that offers lots of programming for kids and families.

If your book has a connection to nature or the outdoors, contact your local conservation department or nature center and pitch yourself as a potential presenter or guest speaker. (Especially for those rainy days when their usual outdoor activities get canceled.)

4. Community centers and recreation departments

Many municipal governments provide camps, classes, or other special events for local families.

Study the programming guide from previous years to get an idea of what’s offered, then pitch yourself as a possible addition.

Could you teach a workshop on writing for kids? Set up as an author at a career day event? Lead an art activity at a “mommy and me” play day?

5. Festivals and fairs

Be careful with this one.

Not all festivals and fairs are created equal, and some just aren’t a good fit for children’s books. (Oktoberfest, for example, may have huge crowds, but kids aren’t always allowed, and parents have other things on their mind ….)

But, if there’s a popular farmer’s market, touch-a-truck event, or street art festival happening in your area, reach out and offer to present.

6. Daycare centers

If your book is for younger children, daycare centers are good places to contact about author visits.

While they face many of the same funding challenges as schools, there’s usually less pressure to squeeze in curriculum, so they have more time for fun events.

It’s an especially good fit if your book explores a common early education topic such as the seasons, counting, or colors.

7. Alternative retail locations, including gift shops, toy stores, grocery stores, etc.

While bookstores get all the love from authors, I’ve actually had more success selling my books at non-book stores. There’s less competition.

Approach local shops your target audience frequents and ask about hosting a book event or even just stocking your books.

Authors in Grocery Stores will even help you arrange book signings in local chains in certain states.

8. Scout Troops, 4H clubs, Rotary clubs, etc.

When I was in 4H, our leaders had a guest speaker at every meeting to talk about something we were interested in.

Scout troops often do something similar.

Put yourself in the shoes of those group leaders and create a presentation that will help them out – and get you in.

Tips for approaching non-school venues for children’s book author visits

Be thoughtful about how you’ll approach venues that are the best fit for your book and its audience.

Remember that when contacting any of these places about hosting an author event, it’s up to you to add value.

Offering to sit and read your book out loud isn’t going to cut it.

Pitch them on a presentation with a clear theme and focus. Customize your pitch to support what they and their patrons want and need. When you do that, they’re much more likely to say, “Yes!”

Be open-minded and creative

School visits may be the most popular way for children’s book authors to reach young readers. But they’re certainly not the only way!

Anywhere parents, grandparents, and kids gather has potential for author presentations.

Look beyond schools and explore more venues for children’s book author visits. You never know where you might end up … and you might be quite pleased with the destination.

Do you have a question for Chelsea Tonetto about booking author visits? Please ask it in a comment.

I give a short presentation before the students ask me questions from a list provided by the teacher. They range from “What training do you need?” to “How much do you earn?”

I pretend that I’ve never heard any of the questions before and do my best to answer at an age-appropriate level. (Meaning, I don’t answer “Not enough” to the question about earnings.)

I always enjoy the back and forth with students, but I really do it just for the thank you notes. I love the handmade cards that arrive in a big manilla envelope a few weeks later — even those that say, “Now I know that I never want to be a writer!”

At least I helped a student get clarity, right?

Author school visits done right

Now, thanks to author Kim Norman, I’ll do a much better job the next time I’m invited to present at a middle school.

I’ve just finished reading Norman’s new 262-page book, Sell Books and Get Paid Doing Author School Visits.

Let me cut right to the most essential information you need about this book: I love it.

It’s detailed, specific, and comprehensive. I particularly like the homework assignments — “action steps” — at the end of each chapter. They will help you start getting organized so you can make things happen.

All of your school visit questions answered in one place

If you have a question about doing author school visits, it’s covered in this book.

• What should you charge? There’s a whole chapter on that.
• Should you waive your fee if you can sell books? The answer is in there.
• What do you need to include in your contract? You’ll find that in the book.
• How do you handle waving hands in the middle of your presentation? Got it covered.
• Do schools expect a PowerPoint presentation? That’s covered, too.

Unfortunately, the table of contents (visible in the “look inside” feature on Amazon), doesn’t do the book justice. I wish Norman had included her subheads in the chapter list so you could get more of a feel for what’s covered.

You’ll have to take my word for it that the book covers just about everything you need to know on this topic.

Advice from the experts

Norman is a successful, traditionally published children’s book author who’s an old pro at doing school visits.

She’s written 20 children’s books published by Sterling, Scholastic/Orchard, Penguin/Random House, and forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Macmillan Publishers) and Candlewick. She has spoken to hundreds of thousands of students around the U.S.

Not surprisingly, then, the book is based on her experience.

For a book like this, many times authors will weave their colleagues’ experiences into the manuscript, often within the text or as anecdotal sidebars. Norman handled this a little differently by including an “Advice from the Experts” chapter at the end. Their voices help round out one author’s perspective.

My rating: five stars

If your fiction or nonfiction book targets youngsters in grades K through 12 and you want to speak to them in school settings, I highly recommend Sell Books and Get Paid Doing Author School Visits.

This isn’t a high-level overview that offers the what and why but not the how.

You get very specific “how” information, whether it relates to handling expenses while traveling to your event or why you always want to clean up your laptop’s “desktop” before using it for presentations.

Any writer interested in doing author school visits — novice or  veteran — will appreciate the wisdom and experience packed into this book.

Are you doing school visits already? What’s your best tip for other authors? 

Vivian Kirkfield is my poster child for what’s possible for self-published authors. In 2010, she self-published an award-winning parent-teacher resource book, Show Me How! Build Your Child’s Self-Esteem Through Reading, Crafting and Cooking; in 2016, she signed a contract with a traditional publisher for her first children’s picture book. That didn’t just “happen.” Vivian worked hard to make it happen. She is passionate about helping kids become lovers of books and reading and hopes that the stories she writes will have kids saying to their parents, “Read this one again, please!” Learn more about Vivian on her blog, Picture Books Help Kids Soar; follow her on Twitter, and connect with her on Facebook.

4 children’s book author blogging ideas

By Vivian Kirkfield

At the end of 2010, I jumped into blogging. I had just published a resource guide for parents and teachers. And I planned to write picture books for children.

I figured I should start a blog, but I knew nothing about blogging. Fortunately, I took Sandra Beckwith’s Book Marketing 101 for Nonfiction: How to Build Book Buzz e-course and I learned a lot. Sandy and the other experts I spoke to had the same advice: Blogging is a great way to connect with your audience.

But who would that audience be?

• Blogging as a children’s writer, you want to appeal to parents, teachers, and librarians . . . if you write for older kids, you might want to think about connecting with them . . . for younger kids, you can provide activities or printables (like coloring pages) that parents can download.
• You also want to connect with other writers. Writing is a solitary occupation and blogging can offer a writer the support and encouragement of a community of like-minded people.

So knowing this, what should you blog about? Here are four children’s book author blogging ideas:

1. Book reviews

Depending on the genre you write, review a book on a regular basis. Your recommendation will help parents, teachers and librarians. And reading books in your genre will help you become a better writer.

Some bloggers organize blog hops with link ups that help them connect with other bloggers while they gain new visitors to their blog. What type of blog hop would be fun for you to do?

2. Author/illustrator interviews

Who doesn’t want to get a peek inside the life of a favorite author or illustrator?

Parents, teachers, librarians, as well as fellow writers, will appreciate finding out how an author or illustrator went from idea to published book. I’ve had a series called “Will Write for Cookies” for the past several years. I reach out to friends who are published authors or illustrators.

I also connect with authors of books I love and authors I meet at conferences. I develop a relationship by leaving comments on their blog or Facebook page.

You’d be surprised at how happy authors are to appear in an interview on your blog—it’s a win-win situation because they are getting some exposure for their books.

What spin could you put on a series?

3. Writing prompts, contests, and challenges

If you are looking to connect with other writers, most of them can’t resist a writing challenge or a contest.

Several writers I know run challenges that grew out of their own needs. One writer wanted to generate more story ideas so about eight years ago, she organized Picture Book Idea Month. PiBoIdMo encourages writers to come up with a story idea (or title or character name) every day in the month of November.

Each day, she has incredible authors, illustrators, agents, and editors who write a guest post with inspiring thoughts and great writing tips. And at the end of the month, she awards prizes.

Another friend did that challenge and wanted a way to motivate herself to turn those ideas into stories. So she organized her own challenge to encourage writers to write a picture book draft every month. She started it in 2012 and called it 12×12 and now she has hundreds and hundreds of followers who register every year to participate.

What challenge could you start?

4. Book content and teasers

Most picture book writers I know don’t post their stories on their blogs because of intellectual property issues. But if you have a book coming out, you might want to post a trailer for it.

If you connect with other bloggers, you might arrange a virtual book tour, where other bloggers showcase you and your book or where you host them on your site. This helps widen your audience.

If you are a nonfiction writer, you could write about the topic of your latest story. This would appeal to other writers as well as parents and teachers. My debut picture book is about a former slave who received the first U.S. patent awarded to a black woman.

I plan to highlight an invention every month that would appeal to kids—Silly Putty, Slinky, Playdoh—the stories behind these inventions are fascinating and would appeal to parents and teachers as well.

What content are you comfortable writing about?

I think children’s writers make the best bloggers. Just keep your content fresh. Leave comments on other blogs. And most important of all, have fun.

What do you blog about on your site?

So . . . there’s a special place in my heart for children’s books and the people who create them. I do as much as I can to help them get the word out about their books through my newsletter, this blog, and my participation in a group on LinkedIn for authors of children’s books. I’m happy to say that I can do a little more today by reviewing a new training program offered by one of my favorite sources of excellent book marketing information, Dana Lynn Smith of the Savvy Book Marketer site.

“How to Sell More Children’s Books” recorded training

Originally presented as a live Webinar, Dana’s new “How to Sell More Children’s Books” training program is now offered in a recorded version, which is what I used.

It is, as my older daughter’s cheerleading squad used to chant, A-W-E-S-O-M-E! (Spell it out loud, pausing after the E, and clap a few times.)

Here’s what I like about it: While Dana starts the program saying that it’s about the strategy behind promoting children’s books rather than instruction on how to execute tactics, she shares a huge amount of “here’s how you do it” information for her recommended tactics.  In fact, she gets very specific — for example, telling you what she thinks most children’s book authors are doing wrong when promoting their books and how they can fix it, or explaining how to get booked as a speaker at schools.

The program starts out slowly as Dana eases us into it. The information covered in the first few minutes about the importance of a quality product and knowing your target audience might be information you know already. But it doesn’t take long for her to get into a rhythm and start doing what she’s really good at — giving you the shortcuts and insider tips. I particularly enjoyed Dana’s advice on maximizing your presence on Amazon.com and her review of the many elements of an online book launch.

Top 10 promotional tactics

I listened carefully as she reviewed each of her top 10 promotional tactics for children’s books because I wondered where she thought social networking fit into that list. Like me, she worries that authors put too much of their effort into social networking. To make sure that time is well spent, she offers recommendations about which networks to use and shares the names of two that are specific to children’s books (make sure you’re using them — they seem pretty important).

Throughout the webinar, Dana refers to the 47-page resource guide that’s part of the program. By the end of the almost one-and-a-half-hour program, I couldn’t wait to open that PDF file and click through it to see which resources she recommends for e-mail list management (I’ll add one: iContact) and postcard printing (and another from me: Vistaprint).

The Children’s Book Marketing Resource Guide is worth the price of the program by itself. It has links to resources (including two of my books, I’m proud to say) as well as articles where children’s book authors can get more detailed information about topics ranging from who’s buying teen books to how to write great author blog posts. It includes samples of relevant materials, too — websites, bookmarks, a speaker flyer, and more.

A few tips

Here are just a couple of things to note if you’re interested in this program:

• There are a few different ways you can learn. You can watch a recording of the original presentation online (you listen to Dana as she moves through the PowerPoint presentation), listen to just the audio file, or listen to the audio file while you click through a PDF of the PowerPoint slides. I listened to the audio file on the treadmill while clicking through the slides on my iPhone.
• Right now, when you download the audio file, it indicates that the program is 2.5 hours long. It’s not. It’s 1.5 hours — which I only discovered after I thought, “There’s no way I’ll be on the treadmill for two-and-a-half hours!” As it turns out, a glitch in the recording system added an hour of “hold” music after the end of the presentation. Dana is working on editing that file, but in the meantime, don’t let that scare you. Plan on spending about 1.5 hours watching or listening.
• Take Dana’s advice and create a folder just for the materials in this training program. There’s the audio file, the PowerPoint PDF, an article, a sample speaker flyer plus a template for that tool, and the resource guide. Downloading all of it into a dedicated file makes it easier to find and use all of the information offered.

By the way, Dana also has similar training programs for fiction and nonfiction. I haven’t watched them so I’m not reviewing them here, but if you know people who might be interested, send them to this link for fiction: http://bit.ly/WloqTt and this one for nonfiction: http://bit.ly/WpBmmU.

Finally, I want you to know that I am one of Dana’s affiliates, which means that if you purchase her program based on my recommendation, she will give me a small commission. I only recommend products and programs that I have used — which is probably pretty clear in this review. My goal is to share information that will help you. This program does that.

What has been your most successful strategy or tactic when promoting your children’s book?