Ah, there is so much potential with creating a writer and illustrator’s platform that we’ve got several more posts to dedicate to it. Last post we discussed how your website is one way to work on your “platform.” (Refresher: a platform is a form of author branding. It means how/where/when you present yourself to the public, and how you are viewed by readers, agents, editors, fellow writers or illustrators, and anyone else paying attention. It’s a way of showing your unique qualities that “brand” you as a person, as writer or artist.)

This month we are going to look at author (or illustrator) visits. The same basic ideas also apply to any variation of book signings and other public forums where you present about your book. 

With apologies to illustrators, for simplicity’s sake I am going to refer to them as author visits. But please know I am talking to you, too, I just don’t feel like typing “author or illustrator visits” every time.

When you create your author visit presentation, keep in mind that how it’s presented will be remembered far longer than what was presented. The bottom line is you want people to leave with a happy impression of you and your work, even if they forget very word you said. A year from now, when your next book is out, you want them to noodle back, thinking “Oh, yeah, I remember. I like her.”

When I wrote my syndicated column about using the computer with your family, I encouraged parents to let toddlers play around with laptops or pcs instead of yelling NO! and ripping the device out of their sticky little hands (this was before today’s bulletproof, water- and kid-proof devices). It’s not because I was encouraging babies to learn how to program apps or design their own website. It was because I wanted to create a positive relationship between the child and the device. Parents were afraid of the child deleting files or ruining programs or what have you, when the kid just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

In a similar way, I don’t expect parents or kids to memorize your book after they see/hear you reading it at a library or bookstore. They probably won’t remember the title, or they’ll remember the title but not the topic. What I want them to walk away with is THEY LIKED IT. They like you. Positive association.

Being remembered might sell another book. But more importantly, it will open more doors for more potential future sales. One visit can turn into five more, which will turn into five or ten more, etc. Just like Tupperware parties! The Tupperware agent is there to sell Tupperware, sure. But she’s really there to book more Tupperware parties where a whole new set of potential customers will be ripe for the taking!

You want to stand out in the minds of not only the people in attendance, but the people who booked you. They’re going to be booking more at some point, right? Treat whoever is in charge of scheduling with utmost respect; they are the ones that will be telling their thinking-about-booking-you friends what it’s like to work with you.

The next time a teacher asks her teacher friends for ideas on who to invite to Author Night, I want your name to jump to their lips. The next time a library hosts a book signing, I want your name at the top of the list. When a Girl Scout leader needs someone to help their girls earn a new patch, I want you there (uniform optional).

Dress in costume, toss out candy, sing a song, have some fun! Leave people with a bounce in their step and a smile in their hearts.

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NOTE: Bitsy will be speaking and presenting marketing workshops at the RMC SCBWI "Letters and Lines" writer's conference in Denver, CO next weekend (Sept 28-29, 2013). Come say hi!

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Bitsy Kemper is author of six picture books and one YA nonfiction, her own website, three Facebook pages and two Twitter accounts. You may have seen Bitsy on CNN, heard her on national radio, noticed her quoted in anything from Parenting Magazine to Writing Children's Books For Dummies, or seen her work in countless newspapers, radio and TV stations across the U.S. Maybe you drove past her on the freeway and didn't even know it... Busy with three kids (four if you count her husband), she finds time to present at writer conferences and author visits from L.A. to N.Y. Wander over to www.BitsyKemper.com or follow her on Twitter (under, understandably, BitsyKemper).

I am about to embark on another illustrating adventure. Right now the art director is being set up. Text is being finalized. I’ll be doing sketches soon, based on the thumbnails and roughs I have already sent the publisher. It won’t be long before I’ll be painting. That’s funny. I just got a chill up my back and an old familiar feeling in my chest. It is an adventure. I am in it now. I can feel it.

Creating a book is always a journey. Always something learned. Always an understory that layers into the art. This next book, which I wrote and will illustrate is LOADED with personal understory already. I can only imagine what all will have occurred by the time I have it in my hands in its final form. When I look back at all my books I can recall how I felt while I was creating each of them, what was going on in my life at the time. I can see how the art reflects that, whether I intended it to or not. I can see what was important to me and what compelled me.

What I notice the most is how I illustrated many books based on what I needed in the classroom to teach art. Hilariously, in those days, I saw completed books more as tools, than as things unto themselves. I was focused on creating book art that kids could look at up close and figure out how to do, either with my help when visiting them, or on their own, like I would have done as a kid.  I wanted to create techniques that were accessible, fun and familiar that a kid could successfully do and feel good about.

Attending to book art in this way was F*U*N! I learned TONS and played like a maniac. I would just come up with a concept and decide that was it! Sometimes I was quite stretched to learn things fast enough to keep up with my own vision, but it kept me on my feet and always reminded me of how kids feel all the time—always in the unknown, always on an adventure learning fast as you gogogo. And now I know tons of cool, weird techniques that I just made up.

One of the first books I did like this was My Very Own Room by Amada Irma Perez. I LOVE introducing kids to oil pastels in the classroom, so of course, I had to do a book with them. But MY MY it was tricky business and fabulously messy!  All the more reason to do it I guess! I still love the look of the rich textures and the originals I have continue to look fresh. Shipping them and storing them is delicate business however. But I highly recommend playing with them for illustrating. It was a good adventure. EVERYONE should play with oil pastels! If you’re getting dirty you know you’re making art I always say.

Then there were things I heard in the classroom, conversations about someone “cheating” when making art. I was intrigued by this whole cheating concept and how incensed the kids would get about it. So I decided that I would try to cheat as much as possible in a book.

 In Angel’s Ride Bikes and Other Fall Poems by Francisco Alarcon I decided that I would take photographs of all the humans and put those into my spreads instead of drawing them myself and only draw the environments around them.  Then I painted across the whole spread. I even made a point of leaving visible paper edges where I glued the copied photos onto the larger paper so I could point out and say to kids, see here is where I glued it down. I have had some great conversations about cheating when I share this book. And I have watched a lot of kids feel easier about creating art when they know that even “an artist like me” makes art anyway she can and that’s a good thing. Art is art. No cheating possible.

Making books with the classroom in mind has taught me well. Sometimes messy, sometimes deep. It’s good to know why we make books and that it is a journey, an adventure and many things big and small and mundane and profound are bound to be learned.

I love the unknown. I love the surrender to a big, juicy project. I love the color and the smell of art materials and the prayers whispered between the layers to children I will never meet. Be strong. Belong. Be song.

I love making books. We are a lucky crowd.