School Visits as a Marketing Strategy for MG Novels

Diesel, my first Brittany, in August 2011, a month before his unexpected death at age 9.
I had the idea for my dog novel a few months before.

I’ve been dipping my toe into the world of marketing middle grade novels by googling “how to market middle grade fiction.”

A helpful article in Publishers Weekly popped up from Sept. 13, 2019: “Author-Tested Middle Grade Marketing Tips.” Several of these authors talked about school visits.

I’ve heard a lot of published authors speak at writers conferences about school visits, but much of what they said floated right past me because I wasn’t ready to hear it. It seemed like something that might, maybe, possibly happen in the distant future.

That future may be closer now and I want to be ready for it.

School visits and library visits are a way to interact with our intended readers and get them excited about reading our books. An author’s visit should be entertaining but also offer something more.

Kate Messner advises authors to “think about what else you can offer teachers, librarians, and families.” Like “writing tips” or “a look at the research process” because a school visit “should always be about more than selling books.”

That perspective resonates with meg.

Yes, I’d love to be entertaining, but I want to offer something more too. I expect figuring out what that something more will be will take some time.

Nathan Hale has done lots of school visits: “My presentation a decade ago was a standard PowerPoint: here’s where I work, here’s a picture of my pet, here is a diagram about how books are made—it was awful.”

It was probably an easy presentation to put together.

Hale’s advice: “Prepare your school visit like you have been booked for an hour-long comedy special. A gym full of eighth graders at 2:30 p.m. on a Friday is as tough as any drunken late-night comedy crowd. Would you show that crowd a PowerPoint of your desk?”

Treating kids like they’re a comedy audience sounds slightly terrifying. I expect there’s a way to balance entertaining, interactive, and authentic—even for an introvert.

I have a little experience to draw on. My first job after college was as a high school French teacher, which also included teaching French to kids in third through eighth grade. Teaching a foreign language to young kids was highly interactive.

Once I figure out what I want to say and do with my kid audience during school visits (my lesson plan), I’ll have a better idea of what kinds of resources I could make available for them.

Russell Ginns has lots of ideas for that, including “amazing factoids about your subject” and “a cheat sheet about the characters and their world.”

Assuming I actually get my dog novel published one day, I’ve been thinking about a presentation that includes photos of some of the real dogs who inspired characters in my novel.

I’d also love to take my dog Joanie with me. That would probably make the visit memorable no matter what I said.

And maybe a short writing activity to help kids think about characters for their own stories.

Do you see yourself doing school visits? Or have you done them already?