How do I ACTUALLY do a school visit?
From getting them to doing them
How do I get a school visit?
If you haven’t done a school visit, start by watching some author/illustrator events.
There are lots of online events you can see for free eg the brilliant Pamela Butchard here.
Or go to your local bookshop and watch authors or illustrators eg the amazing Sophy Henn who does very funny draw-alongs.
Approach your local schools. Offer them a free, or discount visit so you can practise. When you’re ready, here are some possible ways you can get paid visits:
Ask your publisher if they have a contact list of schools you can use
Tell your local independent bookshop you want to do them
Email schools – I do an email sendout every year setting out my workshops - age groups, fees - and listing how my books link to the curriculum or enhance reading/writing. Sell yourself: what is special or unusual about your book? Add references (see below).
Join an agency eg Authors Aloud, Authors Abroad
Do lit fests or library fests – often teachers or school librarians come to your event
Repeat custom – librarians talk. If you are good at what you do, word will spread.
What should I charge?
This is a tricky one. It depends what you do, how much experience you have and how well-known your book is. It’s a bit of a ladder in that you might start at the lower end eg £350 a day but the more word gets around that you’re good, the more you’ll be able to charge. If your book is a big hit, you’ll be able to charge a lot more, perhaps up to £1000 a day.
Think laterally. You can give discounts if the school pre-orders your book. You could suggest that two schools join up to reduce your travel fee or you could even do both schools at once if one of them has a big hall.
Always add on expenses – travel, hotel where required. You can itemise this, or set a ‘travel fee’ that you apply to every school.
How many workshops should I do in a day?
That’s a balance of your energy levels, and making sure you are good value for a school. Think about how many kids you’ll see in a day and what kind of sessions you do eg small class sessions or big whole year groups sessions.
I do four workshops per day across primary school, from EYFS to Year 6 in the big hall. I know people who do three workshops per day, and some who do five small classroom sessions.
Should I sell books?
Different authors deal with this in different ways. Some bring books with them to sell, some send a list of books so kids can buy in advance. I tend to work with a bookshop local to the school, and ask for pre-orders that I’ll sign on the day.
What kind of workshops could I do?
My advice is to be yourself. Be honest, do you like juggling and playing the ukulele? No? Then don’t do that. You will be exhausted if you do something too far outside your comfort zone.
Start by thinking about what part of the writing process you like best…
Do you like detailed character exploration and deep thinking? If so, you could do small classroom sessions where you explore types of characters and lead the children in writing or designing a character. You could set them tasks and give them time to write or draw.
Or
Do you prefer mad-cap plotting? You could get them to pick a place, character, problem out of a hat then talk in groups about a possible story.
I like brainstorming so I do large sessions in the hall where kids shout out ideas and I help them imagine a story. I don’t make any of them write; they call out and I scribe on a flipchart. I love them feeling free to think up any world, because that’s my favourite part of writing.
OK so what do I actually DO in the session?
For all age ranges, use CHUNKING – divide your session into segments – that way if the kids get wriggly you can move to the next segment or skip one. Here is a sample chunked session that I do all through a primary school. I adjust the contents of each chunk to suit the relevant age:
Tell them about how you started writing (funny stories and pic from your childhood)
Tell them about your book eg read an extract, show different covers, language editions or illustrations, talk about your influences, your favourite elements or which bits were hard to write
Get them to do some fun creative stuff: writing/brainstorming/drawing/acting/workshopping
Describe your writing process – be honest that it’s tough and that you make lots of mistakes. Kids won’t be encouraged to keep writing if they think we are perfect and that books just appear with little effort
Q&A (Little kids won’t have proper questions. It’ll be things they want to tell you like ‘I have a cat’. Beware of responding to this too enthusiastically or 30 hands will shoot up to tell you about their own pet.)
Signing
Here are some workshops you could try for the creative segment. Again, these potentially suit all ages in primary school, if tweaked:
Map-making – the kids all draw a map. They can add features like mountains, desert, sea, lakes, frozen tundra, caves, forests. Then tell them a magic object is hidden in this world. Where is it? What is it? Who wants to find it? Who wants to stop them? Then tell the kids to imagine the journey the main character takes and the trouble they’ll have and hey presto, they’ll have plotted a ‘quest story’.
Descriptive writing – kids each pick an animal from a hat. Without writing the name of creature, they describe how it looks, moves, sounds, feels when you touch it. They read out the description and others guess what the animal was. Then make the writing deeper: How would the animal feel meeting you? How would you feel? If it were a human being, what sort of person would it be? Write a human with those characteristics - a goodie or a baddie.
Opening questions – kids pick from a list of intriguing questions and brainstorm in groups, or write (if the kids are older) eg
Why does the new neighbour never come out during the day?
Why is there a light in the window of the abandoned factory?
You have a magic pencil, what does it draw?
What did the storm bring to shore that night?
What is in the wooden chest? How did it get in there? Who wants it and why?
Imagination workshop linked to your book - get the kids to think up a monster/dragon/mermaid/alien/superhero – draw and brainstorm.
Make it FUN and engaging. My greatest compliment was a little boy who peed on the floor of the hall and later said ‘I was so excited about writing the story that I didn’t want to go out and miss anything.’ Ahh the glamorous life of an author.
How do I control the kids?
Speak to staff and ask them what their usual method is. It could be the ‘magic clap’ (clap…clap..clapclapclap) or fingers on lips or, for little ones, ‘one, two, three eyes on me’.
I have a squeaky chicken (a dog toy) that I call ‘Mr Annoying Chicken’. If the hall is noisy I tell the kids that when Mr Annoying Chicken squeaks, it’s a game to be quiet AS FAST AS THEY CAN - and it works.
And remember - it’s not just you - it’s hard for ALL of us to entertain 200 kids in a hall - with squished mashed potato on the floor - at 2pm on a rainy Friday. Even the incredible Sarah Crossan (who is fantastic at events - watch her adult event at the Hay Festival here) once had a nightmare doing an interactive event to 200 Year 12 kids. Nobody put their hand up so she lay down on the hall floor and said ‘I am dead and I won’t get up until someone volunteers’ and a sweet boy finally came forward and said ‘I feel so sorry for you. Please get up.’ That’s a BRILLIANT tactic.
Follow-on work/publicity
Always leave the school with some follow-on work they can do. Catch the children’s interest and give them a final question they can think about.
Inspire them to make a cover, a blurb, a synopsis, a comic for their story. Remember we are there to spark ideas, to encourage future writers, to build a reading culture.
Encourage the school to take photos, and ask them to include your event in their newsletter or round-up. Hand out any swag eg bookmarks/postcards/activity sheets so the kids remember your visit. Sometimes your publisher can be persuaded to pay for this swag, other times you might want to fork out for it (don’t spend too much).
After the Event
Do a follow-up email to the school thanking them and asking for any words you could use as a reference. Collect their best comments and quote them in your next email sendout.
I hope this helps. Ask me anything!
Saving this - my first picture book comes out in July and I'm so excited/terrified to do school visits!
This is brilliant, Abie - as always. So much great advice here!