It is entirely possible I have gone just a little bit overboard with my author packets. Each one will have 23 pieces of paper inside! Yowza.
I’ve got: a letter, a letter of agreement, a biography, an annotated bibliography of all my books, info on how to order my books, miscellaneous teacher’s guides, puzzles and activities I’ve made up to go along with all my books, a sheet of bookmarks I made/autographed, and coloring sheets (thank you, Joan Waites, Illustrator of F is for Fire Fighting…I certainly couldn’t have done that!). I’ve got stuff in here for EVERY grade K-8.
A lot of it is teacher guide/activity sorts of things, so I kind of hate to leave them out (plus they were kind of fun to make). But 23 sheets of paper??? I’m KILLING them with paper! How many trees will die because of me and my author packets?
BTW, if you happen to be one of the people waiting for one of these famed author packets, you’re going to have to wait just a LITTLE bit longer. I’m STILL waiting for one tiny piece of information…the contact info for the school visit person at one of my publishers. (I have never been told who this is at this particular house.) Why is this information so hard to come by? I’ve asked TWICE in the last week, to no avail. Yes, people are busy…EVERYONE’S busy. But come on! Isn’t the goal at most publishing houses to SELL BOOKS? So wouldn’t getting this information to me in a timely manner be just a little bit of a priority?
I have told the schools that are waiting for these author packets that this is a brand new idea…something new I’m trying. Maybe I’ll ask them for some feedback (Hello? Have I killed you with paper? Is there anything in here that could go…is there anything that should be in there that’s not?).
packets
Are you printing double-sided?
Also, make it available as a pdf download on your website. Create a separate pdf from each grade level. Then put them all in a zip folder and upload that. Be sure to warn people that it’s a pdf download and tell them the size of the download. I’ve had about 50 downloads of mine since summer. And it’s a pretty big download, b/c it has lesson plans for each of my books.
Another thing: Use the word Lesson Plan on your website to describe this, because Teacher’s Guide won’t get many hits in a search engine. Lesson Plans, or better yet, Free Lesson Plans will attract lots more interest.
dP
Re: packets
Actually, I’m not printing double-sided. I wouldn’t want to double up the single sheets…I’d be afraid something would get overlooked. But there’s no reason I couldn’t print the 3+ page handouts double-sided. It would help.
I do have PDFs of some of my teacher’s guides on my website. I’ve got a PDF of my brochure, too, but don’t look at it because it’s old. My husband just helped me make a new one this weekend and we haven’t uploaded it yet.
Good point on the “lesson plans.” You and I had this conversation…I will indeed change that wording when we update my website (which badly needs to happen!)
Wow! I’m impressed. I don’t even do paper packets anymore. Just send out emails about my author visits. Do you think that the results are better with a mailed packet?
We’ll see. The whole reason I did a packet at all was to bring all the information on ordering books from my different publishers together in one place. Then I got a little carried away.
I will be curious what the reaction is…and whether or not schools actually use some of this stuff that I send them.
Of course, another option is to simply put all the handouts up on my website where EVERYONE can use them and have the author packet consist of just the book order info, bookmarks, and letter of agreement.