Your book and promotion in schools: PR Tips

Well, surprise, surprise, Blues Day Tuesday has turned into Blue Thursday this week as a one off. I suppose I can be forgiven as the delay was because I was out getting your Christmas present on Tuesday. Yes that's right, just for you! Pearls of wisdom from my Cultural Enterprise session. So the phrase of the day is:

BE PREPARED (Boy scouts need not apply)

You want your book to attract sales/attention, right? With the recession, we've all heard over and over again how publishers just don't have the money to promote us like they used to. So where does that leave us? It leaves us pounding the pavement, looking for interest in our books. Here are some tips to think about: 

How to get into schools (and be invited back to speak again):

A good first start is to look into what the kids in your book's age group are learning. This can be found on various sites depending on where you live. For me it's

·     http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/understandingthecurriculum/whatiscurriculumforexcellence/index.asp

You can also cheat by talking to teachers about what exactly the national curriculum is for that age group and what they are focusing on for the year in their classroom. The tricky thing about this is that Scotland and England have different standards (as well as Ireland, the USA, etc), so make sure you know which is which and adapt your material to fit it.

The second step is to outline what you want to speak about (competely or indirectly related to your book) and come up with some usable resources to take with you, or send to the teacher ahead of time. Coming up with ideas that are flexible is the key.

A friend of mine, Victoria Campbell, author of 'Viking Gold', told me that one school she was to visit said that they were studying medieval times. Obviously vikings are of a different era, but she adapted her session to the curriculum, by starting with vikings and working her way up to the middle ages and then comparing and contrasting how things were different. I thought this was a brilliant idea, and apparently it went over really well with the students and teachers.

Find parallels in your subject with the curriculum, no matter how abstract, and then move forward from there, ie: vikings made swords, in medieval times they made swords - whatever, just find some similarities and have them ready, bring in props, and come at it from a different angle than may have already been discussed in the classroom. Most importantly though, make it fun!

Please comment below with other suggestions or questions.