Great points and great read, Abie. A bit like in teaching, there’s a certain currency of goodwill that children’s authors have that some higher-ups are very willing to exploit. We’ve got to know what our line is that we won’t cross.
Agree with this so much. Did you see the writers here have been organising our own reading event, where everyone get paid. We had one on Saturday in London. It's called WRITE UP.
I completely agree with everything you've written here. The time and energy it takes to put on an interactive, memorable event for kids as an author/illustrator is often underestimated and undervalued. Over the years I've learned to value my time a lot more and ask for a fair price for events (the SoA guidelines are helpful for this). I do offer some free events to my local library, NLT and my boy's primary school as I've made a conscious choice to support literacy in my local area but I am strict about limiting it to those.
Great points and great read, Abie. A bit like in teaching, there’s a certain currency of goodwill that children’s authors have that some higher-ups are very willing to exploit. We’ve got to know what our line is that we won’t cross.
As the old saying goes, you can die of exposure but you can't live off it.
Agree with this so much. Did you see the writers here have been organising our own reading event, where everyone get paid. We had one on Saturday in London. It's called WRITE UP.
Oo I just googled that. It looks great!
We had eleven people read. Every one of them got paid. Over 70 people came. We raised £6000 to put on the event. We did it in July as well.
I completely agree with everything you've written here. The time and energy it takes to put on an interactive, memorable event for kids as an author/illustrator is often underestimated and undervalued. Over the years I've learned to value my time a lot more and ask for a fair price for events (the SoA guidelines are helpful for this). I do offer some free events to my local library, NLT and my boy's primary school as I've made a conscious choice to support literacy in my local area but I am strict about limiting it to those.