{"id":29102,"date":"2019-03-29T08:00:26","date_gmt":"2019-03-29T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=29102"},"modified":"2019-03-29T08:00:26","modified_gmt":"2019-03-29T12:00:26","slug":"making-school-events-make-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=29102","title":{"rendered":"Making School Events Make Sense"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like my colleague Kenny Brechner, I also find myself thinking about our school events program this week. We help facilitate about 150 author events\u00a0across 6 school districts\u00a0a\u00a0year at this point, and it\u2019s one of the most valuable things we do to get out in the community and build curious, enthusiastic readers. As Kenny wrote this week<\/a>, these events are magical and transformative and important\u2014not only connecting kids with exciting new literature to keep them reading, but engaging\u00a0them in conversations that matter (especially if those conversations are about squirrels…).
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Christian Robinson\u00a0delights the crowd at a recent event.<\/p><\/div>
\nThe reason this\u00a0is bubbling to the surface for me right now is that our wonderful school events coordinator moved on to another opportunity recently, so I\u2019ve taken the events back over for a little while. This isn\u2019t terribly unusual. Bookstores see a lot of turnover, so I think that anyone who has worked in one for a certain period of time feels vaguely prepared to make shifts like this on a moment\u2019s notice.
\nCorralling\u00a0the intricacies of a program in progress always offers challenges (thanks for bearing with me, Austin librarians). But there are actually good things about the cycle of delegating programs and getting them back again. First, other people can bring their own talents and focus and expertise to the table and push things forward in new ways. Several of the best innovations we\u2019ve had have involved technological solutions to old problems. A few years ago Ellen Greene (now our Bookfair Manager) took over the program and helped build a credit card portal for the events that solved a lot of problems, Shannon Brewer recently introduced a Google form that has really streamlined our proposal collection from schools. New perspectives really do add a lot.
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Kids raise their hands to talk to Judd Winick.<\/p><\/div>
\nAnd second, when you\u00a0take programs back, you can gain valuable transparency into what bogs them down. After all, we often make the greatest strides as a business when we question why we do things a certain way. Even before this transition we have been taking a hard look at our P&Ls. This kind of literacy outreach is at the core of our mission as a community store, so we are committed to helping the program continue to grow, but when you take a look at the network of tracking grids, forms, and emails with both publishers and schools that proliferate in a program this size and then add in event hosts\u2019 time, mileage reimbursement, follow-up visits to the school to pick up books, reconciliations, and shipping back returns, you can\u00a0end up with an infrastructure that not every event\u2019s sales can support. We are lucky enough to get a number of powerhouse events every year that help make the whole program profitable, and\u00a0Austin\u00a0schools have been very understanding about the reasons for our\u00a0sales minimums, but efficiency is very much on my mind right now.
\nThe ability to get\u00a0books drop shipped directly to schools the last few years has been a godsend, but I\u2019ve personally started some conversations with our publishing partners about how we can make these events just a little easier. I also am thinking a lot about how to prioritize the success of each event while keeping a handle on the number of steps it takes to get us there. Forms and grids and binders and websites can be transformative when wielded judiciously, but they can also be albatrosses around our necks. I guess that at the end of the day, Kenny, my friend, this is less a blog offering solutions to your problem and more a bit of commiseration and heartfelt\u00a0encouragement to keep fighting the fight. As we both know, the good work is worth it in the end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bookseller talks about the tricky but oh-so-worthwhile quest to meet kids where they are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}