About the Selling of Books at an Author's School Visit

Note: I wrote this piece many years ago. It was originally published in the SCBWI Bulletin. After the recent live chat on school visits, I was asked to post it as a blog. It is also available on my website: www.vickicobb.com:

As an author of science books for children, I have been the guest speaker at many schools across the country. Because I was a teacher, I don't do the typical program of discussing how I write. Instead, I do a performance designed to get kids interested in science. Usually my books are sold at my appearances. But there are a few places where they have not been sold and I have come across a negative attitude toward the selling of books at an author's appearance that prompts this article.
There are all sorts of reasons to bring an author to a school both on the part of the children and the author. An author's appearance "makes books come alive." It shows kids that "authors are real people." Authors have enough visibility to pass as "famous" in our celebrity-crazed society, thus making the visit a special event. They are usually articulate and can present an entertaining program that reinforces interest in their books. For authors, school appearances promote their books and have a residual effect, putting their name on the map in a school for many years to come. It also gives them feedback on their readers' reactions. But, in my opinion as an educator, there is only one truly important reason to have an author come to a school: namely, to motivate kids to read. Presumably, meeting an author in person can create a demand for his or books, particularly when the author writes, as I do, on less popular subjects. If an author excites and interests kids, the author is invariably asked, "Where can I get your books? If the books are not at hand, the moment is lost. What baffles me is why a school that has spent some of its limited resources to bring an author to the school, obviously caring about "enrichment," does not understand how to optimize the educational experience it has created.

One argument against selling books is simply school policy: nothing is sold to kids at school, period. Any exception to the rule would somehow open a Pandora's Box of ills. In this kind of thinking, kids are characterized as avid consumers, easily manipulated by the excitement of a performance to spend money they don't have on a frivolous impulse. The schools' role is to protect them from such exploitation. A superintendent recently said to me, "If you were a rock star, the kids would want to buy your CD." I found myself in the ludicrous position of having to point out to the educator that I am not a rock star, and it might do some good in the fight against boredom, video games and drugs to create a demand for science books along with the opportunity to fulfill it.

Another argument is, "We live in a mixed socio-economic district and we don't want to put pressure on poor kids to buy things they can't afford." My most popular books are paperbacks that can be offered in schools at a discount, priced at under $4.00. From what I hear about certain poor districts, kids have money for Nintendo, VCR's, candy bars and sometimes drugs. Why not put pressure on them to buy a book? I once signed a book for a poor child in a small village in Alaska. It was a hard cover and I didn't know he hadn't yet paid for it when I wrote his name in it. When he realized he didn't have enough money to pay for it, he was offered a less expensive book, one he could easily afford. But no. This was the one he wanted. He would bring in the money the next day. The librarian told me that there was no way his parents would give him the money to buy the book. Yet the next day he did, in fact, return for it. It was clear that this book was precious to him. Imagine! A poor child valuing a book! A small event yet one with enormous implications for the thesis that education is a way out of poverty. One reality of society is that often we think things are valuable only when we have to pay for them. And if this is yet another way to instill a value for books in children, we are remiss if we don't offer the opportunity.

Finally, there is the unstated insinuation that we authors are money-grubbers who want the royalties as part of our fee, and the schools will have no part of such greed. Personally, wearing my educator's hat, I don't care if only the $4.00 books are for sale at my appearances. Every book sold frees up the library book for a kid who truly can't afford it. The royalties will hardly amount to anything, let alone make me a rich woman. In fact, a career as a children's book author is hardly a get-rich-quick scheme. On the other hand, children's book authors are often viewed at schools as career models. If we make our living writing books, should we then be put in a position of apologizing for the fact that they are for sale?

In the real world, people earn money selling something of value, whether it's a product or a service. My fee for a day's school appearance pays for three entertaining, highly motivating programs for hundreds of children. If books for sale are not made a part of the day, the library cannot handle the demand. I become simply another entertainer for a passive audience of kids all too accustomed to being entertained. That momentary flicker of interest in reading a book quickly dies for most kids if it is not immediately reinforced. At a time when our educational systems are under fire, when students are turned off and dropping out, we can't afford to waste any opportunity to involve kids as active participants in the learning process.

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Questions for the Author

I want to preface my remarks with a dedication, as if this were a book.

To all the children who have had the courage to ask me a question of any kind, whether in writing or in person. I have learned much from you and I thank you.

Soon after the publication of my first book, How Much Is a Million?, I started to receive fan mail replete with questions. A short time later, I began visiting schools for author presentations and I heard many more questions. I began to realize that I could benefit by listening closely to the questions and thinking about what was behind them. I also realized that children could benefit from learning what makes a good question!

Students are over-assessed these days, but it is always their answers that get assessed. I think questions are at least as important as answers, yet only rarely have I seen a teacher provide guidance in the art of asking questions. The ability to ask good questions is a skill of paramount importance in many human endeavors and it opens the mind to countless wonders. In this post I am going to turn the tables and “grade” (well, comment upon) the questions that kids ask.

In the 15 years that I have been visiting about 50 schools per year, three top questions have emerged.

1) How old are you?
2) How much money do you make?
3) Where do you get your ideas?

Teachers are aghast when their students ask 1) or 2), but I answer both. After joshing “Less than a million” in response to the first question, I simply tell them how old I am. (Actually, I tell kids in the intermediate grades that I was born in 1951 and let them do the math – which sometimes results in my being over a hundred years old!) For the second question, I tell them how much (i.e., how little) money I make on the sale of a single book, and everyone is shocked.

Before I get to the third question, let me assess the first two. I think the age question is natural for children to wonder about, but if they had done research in their school library, they probably would have found my date of birth in a reference book such as Something About the Author. That’s OK—I don’t really expect everyone to do a research project before I get there, but I believe that well-prepared students (who have done research on the author and his/her books) make the best audience and ask the best questions. The other thing that makes this a mediocre question is that it doesn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t lead to follow-up questions, which are usually the best ones, or teach them anything that can propel them to further learning. What can they say after learning my age (other than, “Oh my God, he’s older than my grandfather!”) Perhaps a rule of thumb is that if a question is bound to be answered with one word, it’s probably not the world’s best question.

Despite teacher objections, I actually think the question about how much money an author makes could lead to an interesting answer, but for it to be meaningful I would have to spend a long time putting it in perspective by discussing how much various authors earn, and how those earnings compare with typical salaries in other careers (and the huge incomes of well-known celebrities). This discussion could go in many directions – for instance, why do a very few authors rake in enormous sums while the majority earn so much less? How is an author’s income determined? Here’s a “math guy” direction: given that a picture book author (who is not also the illustrator) usually earns a royalty of about 5% on a hardcover book, calculate the income on one book and determine how many books would have to be sold for the author to make a million dollars.

The third of the “Top Three” questions always gets the Teacher Seal of Approval, and for good reason. It can lead to discussions and thought-processes likely to go in many directions. The author’s answer can be applied to students’ own experiences and the students might be able to use the answer to improve their own writing. In most cases, the answer is not one that can be looked up in a reference book.

My answer to that question usually begins like this: “Ideas are everywhere. If you keep your eyes open, your ears open and your mind open you’ll find lots of good ideas. If you also wonder about the world, you’ll find lots of great ideas.” And then I talk about where the ideas for specific books of mine came from. Very often my books go back to when I was the age of the questioners. I tell them how, as a child, I wondered about things that came in big numbers. “How many hairs do I have on top of my head?” “How many blades of grass are on the baseball field?” “How many grains of sand are on the beach?” I drove my teachers crazy, but years later I turned those musings into How Much Is a Million?

When a child queried the origin of a machine that fills an entire school with popcorn in On Beyond a Million, I explained that I sometimes get ideas from other books. “My favorite book in third grade was Homer Price by Robert McCloskey. In that book, a donut machine goes out of control and fills a lunchroom with donuts. Well, I took the out-of-control donut machine and morphed it into a popcorn machine. The two books are completely different but I wouldn’t have thought of the popcorn machine if I hadn’t remembered the donut machine from Homer Price.” And then I try to bring it home: “You can do the same thing,” I tell the children. “Take something you have read, change it so it becomes your own idea, then use it in your stories.”

Look at all the mileage I got out of one simple question!

A few other things for the proactive teacher to think about in a class devoted to questioning.

* Children often ask questions that are way too vague. “What’s it like to be an author?” is a classic. How about reshaping it to, “What’s the most enjoyable (or frustrating) aspect of being an author?”

* Some questions are overly specific and basically trivial. I particularly dislike “favorites”: “What’s your favorite food/color/number?” I realize the kids are trying to get to know me as a person, and I like that, but does it matter that my favorite color is purple? Sometimes it’s blue. And I also like red! The truth is, I don’t have favorites. How about hobbies? I don’t mind being asked about my pastimes, but a good way to give it some importance might be to reshape the boring old “What are your hobbies?” question into “Do your hobbies relate to the books you write? How?”

“What was your first book?” and “How many books have you written?” are popular questions after my assemblies but they are absolutely terrible questions. Why? Because I have already answered both of them in the assembly! Perhaps the questioners weren’t listening. Perhaps they composed their questions before the assembly. Possibly both.

Which leads to my plea to teachers: Don’t encourage children to write out questions before the author comes to school. It locks the children into their questions, and they will mentally rehearse asking them instead of listening to the author and composing a question based on what has been said. Instead, practice asking meaningful questions as a response to something you tell them or read to them.

I will close with my all-time favorite question, which was asked by a second grader years ago. “Do you regret anything you’ve ever written?” What a fascinating question. I’ve always wondered what possessed her to ask it.

I told the audience I regretted a mathematical mistake I had made in my second book, If You Made a Million. Four hundred eyes riveted onto me. “What’s the mistake?”

“See if you can find it,” I replied.

I then realized that the silver lining in the cloud of the mistake is that kids get to do great math to find the error of my ways. And when they find it, they are triumphant. “Feels good to know we did right,” wrote a pair of students who found it together, “and the book has a boo-boo.”

Nonfiction and Nonfiction Authors in Schools

Nonfiction and Nonfiction Authors in Schools

School visits play an indispensable role in the lives of many professional authors. I began doing school visits when my first book came out fifteen years ago and, honestly, I wouldn’t have a career without the many schools around the country that value bringing in authors every year. When I began doing visits, however, I was one of the few nonfiction authors active on the circuit. Not surprising. Schools viewed nonfiction as an aberration or specialty, to be featured as something different from their usual fiction fare.

For many schools, this is still true today. Especially in the past four or five years, however, I’ve seen a wonderful evolution in attitudes toward nonfiction. Teachers and librarians are beginning to recognize that nonfiction is not a special case of literature—it is the main case. After all, what are kids going to spend most of their lives reading and writing? Nonfiction, of course, whether it is in the form newspapers, company reports, business letters, or email messages. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of a few far-sighted university professors, librarians, and teachers, the message is starting to sink in. With ever-increasing frequency, I am meeting educators who are both passionate and knowledgeable about a huge variety of nonfiction books and authors.

To point out how the role of nonfiction is changing, I’d like to share my current experiences at schools in Buffalo, New York. Four schools got together to bring me in for a week, and I’ve been blown away by the preparation of librarians, teachers, and students. Every single school has “done” its author visit right. What do I mean? Well, many schools raise money to bring in an author and then use her/him for entertainment. Sure, the actual visit goes fine, but that’s the end of it. Smart schools, however, use their author to springboard into extensive learning before and after the visit.

At these Buffalo schools, librarians got my books months ahead of time. The teachers grabbed them up and began developing all kinds of projects around them: poetry, art, music, essays, book-writing. In one of my favorite projects, a teacher went to the local grocery and got it to donate about twenty-five plastic cake boxes. The kids turned each cake box into an aquarium mirroring an ecosystem from my book Our Wet World or other aquatic titles. The kids made little reproductions of fish, jellies, algae, and other organisms and set them up inside. Then, they wrote detailed descriptions of each ecosystem and its organisms.

One of my favorite projects was when kids wrote reviews of my books. A humbling experience—but also extremely clever. These teachers used books to get their kids to think critically and write their own nonfiction. One class even commandeered an empty closet and created a whole deep-sea world complete with bioluminescent organisms! All of these projects proved that I was only a spark for learning—which is exactly what my role should be. The main show was the kids and teachers themselves, and I left each school satisfied that enthusiastic learning about science will continue long after I am gone.
I hope that other teachers and librarians who bring in authors take note. For an author visit to be worthwhile, the entire school needs to be engaged through the entire planning process. I find that author visits which most often fail are those planned by principals or outside groups. In these visits, the teachers and librarians are not invested in the visit and it shows by the dearth of preparation. Whenever I visit a school like this, I think “They should have spent this money on books for the library.” Fortunately, many schools do plan ahead. For those who don’t, I hope my Buffalo experiences might demonstrate how to get more bang for your author buck. Perhaps some other authors on the blog could share some of their favorite “author exercises” they’ve observed in schools?