Just to be clear, you do NOT have to have books for sale for me to come do an event:>) I know some schools embrace book sales, and others are uncomfortable with them. If I’m coming to your school or event and you’d LIKE to have books available for sale, you have three basic options:
1. Work With a Bookseller
Work with a local independent bookseller (like Red Balloon Bookshop) to order books to sell (the day of or in advance) to your students. You will get a discount, which you can pass along to families or charge the cover price and use the difference to offset the cost of the event.
2. I Can Bring a Small Box of Books to Sell
For Minnesota events, I can bring a small box of books to sell after the event. In order to do this, I would need an adult volunteer from your organization to actually sell the books and collect the money while I sign books. These are not discounted, as I buy the books from a bookshop.
3. Order Directly From My Publishers
You can order my five most popular books directly from two publishers, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Lerner Books. You will get a great discount and can either pass that discount along to your students or you can charge the normal price and use any profits to offset the cost of my visit.
Lerner Books (Lion of the Sky, Meet My Family, If You Were the Moon, A Leaf Can Be…, Water Can Be…, and A Rock Can Be…)
800-328-4929
Discount: 44% off for author visit + 7% shipping
School pays return shipping
Houghton Mifflin (BookSpeak! Poems About Books)
800-225-3362
Discount: 40% discount + free shipping
School pays return shipping
Boyds Mills Press/Wordsong (In the Middle of the Night) and Charlesbridge (Snowman-Cold=Puddle)
Distributed by Penguin Random House
Discount: 40% discount + free outbound shipping
School pays return shipping
csorders@penguinrandomhouse.com or 800-733-3000
If you choose option 3 (or option 1 but you limit it to these 5 books), here is a book order form you can use. Just download it, fill in the appropriate information where needed (cost, due date, etc.), and run copies for your students. Note that you might want to think about ordering a few extra copies of each title if you do advance orders only, because there are always some students who don’t care about getting a book until the author presents and the kids get all excited about having their own copy!