Want to view a movie in which David Macaulay talks about creating Building Big? Or find out when Suse MacDonald might be available for a school visit? Two innovative, recently launched Internet companies provide these services--and more--to those interested in children's books and their creators.
With several taps of the keyboard and a few clicks of the mouse, Web visitors can find the Macaulay clip on TeachingBooks.net and information about MacDonald's author visit presentation and schedule on visitingauthors.com . In order to learn more about the genesis and operation of these sites, PW talked to the individuals spearheading the respective ventures, Nick Glass and Debbie Hochman Turvey.
TeachingBooks.net founder Glass, who formerly coordinated events at Pooh Corner children's bookstore in Madison, Wis., has for a long time loved bringing authors together with teachers and kids. "Seeing the personality and spirit behind a book changes that work forever for readers," he observed. "At Pooh Corner, I was always trying to expand on that experience, first bringing authors into the store and then working to bring authors to libraries, schools and conferences. I began thinking about all those people who never have the chance to meet an author, and I tried to come up with a way to give teachers, students and families equal access to children's book creators and authoritative teaching materials that they wouldn't otherwise have. It suddenly occurred to me that the Internet was the way to do it."
In the spring of 2000, Glass began the process of, in his words, "playing this idea out--drafting, drawing, designing, talking to authors and publishers." After raising initial funding and landing a grant from the state of Wisconsin, he resigned from Pooh Corner and worked full-time to develop a prototype for the TeachingBooks.net site, which he displayed at ALA last June. "I received great ideas and feedback" at the convention, he recalled.
Now up and running, this site offers author programs consisting of five-minute "Author Up-Close" movies, which interview children's book creators in their own studios (including Macaulay, Arthur Geisert, Phil Hoose, David Wiesner, Jack Gantos and Saxton Freymann), the transcripts for the movies, an in-depth written interview with the author, a teacher's guide and links to additional information about the author.
TeachingBooks.net also features a database with more than 4,000 links, providing access to a range of material and sites, including discussion and activity guides to more than 1,000 children's books; information about some 250 children's book awards; individual authors', publishers' and booksellers' Web sites; educational associations and children's book organizations.
Glass is especially enthusiastic about a feature that provides subscribers with customized e-mails informing them about new information or materials of particular interest to them, based on a profile they provide when first visiting TeachingBooks.net. "Each individual checks off specific interests in terms of grade levels and genres," he explained, "and our computer cross-references these interests and keeps the subscriber informed of new data that matches these interests." Glass is also in the process of building what he termed "a help and training section" on the site that will offer a movie and manual on how to use its various features.
Though reluctant to cite specific figures about his subscriber base, Glass noted that "on any given day, hundreds of pages of the site are viewed and the number of visitors increases each day." Access to the site is currently free, but this will not always be the case; however, Glass anticipates that individuals who have signed up with the company will continue to access it free of charge, "as a benefit to those who were here early and helped me as I learned," he said. He plans to approach educational and trade associations for funding and envisions eventually selling access to TeachingBooks.net as a database service to various states' departments of education.
"My real hope," he explained, "is that states will realize the incredible literary resources that TeachingBooks.net is putting at their disposal and will do their part to make them available to their educators, librarians and students. My mission is to break down geographical barriers and enable all people, at their own convenience, to become acquainted with an author."
Bringing Authors and Students Together
The service that Debbie Hochman Turvey's visitingauthors.com site provides also hooks up children's book creators and their fans--but in person. Formerly director of marketing for Orchard Books, Turvey left that company in January 2000, after the birth of her daughter. She continued to freelance for the house for a year, during which her assignments included scheduling author visits to schools and libraries.
"After I stopped that freelance work, a few of the Orchard authors asked if I would be interested in continuing to handle their visits," Turvey said. "I realized that this would be the perfect online business. Since teachers have limited opportunity to use the phone, it made a lot of sense to let them access in their own time frame information about an author's presentation and availability for a school visit. And it was ideal for me, since I could be at home with my daughter and be available to answer questions--by e-mail or phone--virtually all the time."
Turvey enlisted the aid of her computer-savvy brother-in-law, Kevin Hannon, who designed the visitingauthors.com site; the site features profiles of 17 authors (among them Paul Brett Johnson, Linda Sue Park, Nikki Grimes, Wendy Watson, Tracy Campbell Pearson and Peter Catalanotto), an annotated bibliography of their publications, descriptions of their presentations and honoraria, and tips on planning a successful author visit. There is also an author visit request form, which teachers or librarians can print out and fax to Turvey, as well as forms for ordering books.
To help her schedule school visits, which are not usually part of an author's tour for a new book, Turvey keeps a calendar for the authors, thereby avoiding the need to coordinate their schedules with their publishers' publicists, who are responsible for arranging tours for frontlist titles.
In addition to booking the author visits, for which it receives a flat fee from the author's honorarium, visitingauthors.com also fulfills orders for books, some of which her company purchases from publishers and then warehouses, while others the publishers drop-ship to the site of the visit. Turvey offers a 20% discount off list price and sells the books on a returnable basis. Making the operation even more of a family affair is the fact that Turvey's sister, Betsy Hannon (who lives four houses away), is in charge of the book ordering and fulfillment aspect of the business.
Turvey noted that she plans to be very cautious about growing her roster of authors. In her words, "We want to keep the number fairly limited. It is important to me to have on the site only those authors I could personally recommend and whose presentations I am familiar with. Occasionally we have added an author to the list if we feel that we are lacking in a certain area. But we want to keep the list focused to make sure we have time for everyone."
Visitingauthors.com's business, however, is growing steadily. The number of bookings the company arranged last month alone represented 75% of the number it made in all of 2001, and Turvey reported that 70 author visits are already scheduled for 2002 and 2003.
Turvey mused that she may one day expand the scope of her business: "I think about the possibility of opening a bookstore and having the author bookings be a part of it. But not quite yet. Since my sister and I both have two-year-olds, what we are doing right now fits into our lives very well."
