WELL. This is amazing. Thank you, Sarah! Happy New Year and thanks for all of the very helpful advice and links. Also: congrats on the new book(s) and I love your drawing AND singing! So talented.
Well thank YOU so so much!! You're very kind. I'm glad this was at least a little helpful! And lol thanks, I definitely don't feel like I'm any good at drawing and singing, but I enjoy it and can manage to do what I wanna do, at least somewhat, so I'm having fun with it! Basically I think drawing and singing are worth doing badly!
This is the typical advice from people outside children’s lit - do school and library visits. But that doesn’t scale up. There are only so many school days. It requires your physical presence. And these days, it’s harder and harder to get paid to do this.
It’s exhausting. It IS one way to sell children’s books, but not one I recommend.
There are many other ways to market to kids, parents, teachers, and other educators besides a physical visit to a school.
It definietly IS exhausting and hard to scale. That's so true. What I loved about this funnels and flywheels idea, though, is that it got me brainstorming ways that I maybe *could* make it scaleable if I thought out of the box. It got me wondering if there are ways of making that teacher/librarian connection without having to rely on those limited number of visits--things like creating activity sheets, videos, even songs. (Have you seen Hopscotch Songs on YouTube? Or Jarrett Lerner's activities on his website?) And then using those things as a passive but useful source of bringing in those connections, in addition to the school visits.
Sure, all of that will help. But one important point is that we don't just sell on Amazon and Ingram. We sell to many, many places, and should consider how to market to each of them.
Absolutely, that's for sure. This is definitely just a look at only one specific avenue. I'll have to get you interviewed here soon for some additional strategies and ideas!
WELL. This is amazing. Thank you, Sarah! Happy New Year and thanks for all of the very helpful advice and links. Also: congrats on the new book(s) and I love your drawing AND singing! So talented.
Well thank YOU so so much!! You're very kind. I'm glad this was at least a little helpful! And lol thanks, I definitely don't feel like I'm any good at drawing and singing, but I enjoy it and can manage to do what I wanna do, at least somewhat, so I'm having fun with it! Basically I think drawing and singing are worth doing badly!
This is the typical advice from people outside children’s lit - do school and library visits. But that doesn’t scale up. There are only so many school days. It requires your physical presence. And these days, it’s harder and harder to get paid to do this.
It’s exhausting. It IS one way to sell children’s books, but not one I recommend.
There are many other ways to market to kids, parents, teachers, and other educators besides a physical visit to a school.
It definietly IS exhausting and hard to scale. That's so true. What I loved about this funnels and flywheels idea, though, is that it got me brainstorming ways that I maybe *could* make it scaleable if I thought out of the box. It got me wondering if there are ways of making that teacher/librarian connection without having to rely on those limited number of visits--things like creating activity sheets, videos, even songs. (Have you seen Hopscotch Songs on YouTube? Or Jarrett Lerner's activities on his website?) And then using those things as a passive but useful source of bringing in those connections, in addition to the school visits.
Sure, all of that will help. But one important point is that we don't just sell on Amazon and Ingram. We sell to many, many places, and should consider how to market to each of them.
Absolutely, that's for sure. This is definitely just a look at only one specific avenue. I'll have to get you interviewed here soon for some additional strategies and ideas!