Right now I’m preparing for an upcoming literary festival and related school visits. After, I’m traveling to New York for more author visits. The New York trip is perfectly timed to highlight a story that takes place on Passover and I’ve made sure to be home in time for my daughter’s birthday.
Since ALONE TOGETHER is my debut, some of this is new to me. I’ve been warned that I need to think about things like technology requirements and presentation slides, pricing and age groups. A friend recommended Kate Messner‘s videos and resources and I’m eager to find other helpful tools.
Writing a book is hard, but also the hard work (and joy) doesn’t end with the final publisher edits. Authors must be prepared, for the most part, their own publicists, social media gurus, marketers, graphic designers, and presenters.
In all fairness, this is definitely not my first time preparing school presentations. I’ve been offering synagogue tours and talks about Jewish practice and Jewish history to schools for many years. Additionally, I’ve led school visits to exhibitions that I helped to coordinate on Jewish history in Hong Kong, China, and India. Presenting my own material though somehow feels different. Also, typically the school presentations were held in spaces that I curated or work in rather than me coming to them. Additionally, I wasn’t working off of slides. Nothing could malfunction. I was explaining materials that we could interact with.
There are many unknown variables in giving presentations, but I’m excited to showcase what I’ve developed. I’ve even submitted my first Literary Festival presentation (proposal):
How We Talk About the Pandemic: A look at Alone Together on Dan Street and other pandemic picture
books to see what can be learned about empathy, building community, and finding a silver lining.
Happy writing (or marketing, presenting, pitching, querying…)!
School visit (yes, we’re still masked here)