How to use this Page

Shannon Bowers’ son Alex loves Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go.

Shannon gets teary-eyed when they read it together. Someday Alex will grow up, go to college and live out his dreams. Alex gets teary-eyed when Shannon reads too many of the pages. He’s five now. That’s his job.

Recently, Alex and his classmates, students from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, all picked out brand-new books from First Book to take home. They chose stories about history, princesses and sharks. Their excitement was overflowing; many of them had no books at home.

Books have always been an important part of Shannon’s life. Her parents read to her as a child, and she and her husband Paul entered parenthood sharing the belief that education creates opportunities. They have always made an effort to fill their home with books.

Since Alex was born, Shannon and Paul have made reading as a family part of their nightly routine. Alex picks out a book; they all pile into his bed and share the story together. These days, Alex really likes to read to one-year-old Michael. He gets frustrated if mom or dad interrupts.

Shannon hopes reading will help take Alex and Michael all the places they want to go – in their imaginations and in life. She hopes financial issues won’t stand in their way. She hopes the same can be true for all kids.

“Our kids, they’re five years old,” she said. “None of them are thinking about [the future] right now. But we are. We think about that kind of thing… I want all of these kids to know if they make good enough grades, and they do what they need to do, then it’s there. They can do whatever they want.”

Together we can prepare kids for brighter future. Please consider making a gift to First Book today.

The post Oh, the Places You’ll Go appeared first on First Book Blog.

Add a Comment

New homes, a birthday party and a seaplane … what do these have in common?

These are all ways that First Book volunteers got books to kids in need this year. First Book has a network of dedicated and passionate volunteers in hundreds of communities in the U.S. and Canada who support our efforts to provide books and educational resources in fun and innovative ways.

Just last year, First Book volunteers distributed over 613,000 books all across the United States! Here are a few of our favorite First Book volunteer stories:<!--[if gte mso 9]>

Normal
0




false
false
false

EN-US
X-NONE
X-NONE













MicrosoftInternetExplorer4













<![endif]-->

Tess Reiman, a 9th grader who raised funds for First Book to support Habitat for Humanity in Atlantic Beach, Florida.  While her brother volunteered building houses with Habitat, Tess saw that many of the children moving into new homes did not have any books to fill their newly constructed rooms.

Tess created “Project Storybook” and raised the money needed to help get new books into these children’s hands. She then purchased books from the First Book Marketplace and donated baskets of new books to for their new Habitat homes.  In her first year, she donated over 200 new books to 40 families.

Seven year old Maguire Brooke loves to read.  This year he didn’t want birthday presents.  He wanted his friends and family to help him get books to kids in need. With the support of First Book-Seattle he created a virtual book drive, raised $500, donated 200 books to two second-grade classrooms and provided a starter library of six books to each child. Titles included some of Maguire’s favorites, including the Magic Treehouse series and The Diary of A Wimpy Kid.

“It was awesome,” Maguire said. “I’m the proudest person on earth.”

Books by dog sled, boat, ATV and seaplane!  Many remote areas in the Alaskan Bush are only accessible via these modes of transportation.  That didn’t stop First Book-Anchorage from distributing 47,000 books to schools in over 55 rural Alaskan communities.  They also distributed approximately 33,000 books in Anchorage.

Every child from pre-school to 12th grade received 3 to 5 books each.  To secure these books, the volunteers fundraised, received in-kind support and connected First Book to local programs and classrooms. There are over 85 K-12 schools located throughout rural Alaska that are not meeting their Academic Yearly Progress (AYP) in more than 4+ years in the area of literacy.

We’ve put tons of new books into the hands of a lot of children in need in the last twenty-plus years and we couldn’t have done it without our volunteers. Thank you!

Click here to learn more about volunteering with First Book.

The post Just How Many Books Can Volunteers Get to Kids in One Year? appeared first on First Book Blog.

Add a Comment

The world is looking for solutions. At Schiel & Denver Book Publishers, one of the reasons we invest so deeply in sustainable publishing methods, and cherish our independent authors and talented writers so much, is that you have taken the time to make the changes needed to achieve a more shared, secure and sustainable future through your work. Whether you’re a children’s author giving a child that first love of learning to read, a poet, thriller writer or Christian author; we pledge our support to your continued literary brilliance in the fantastic independent books that you pen, and on your admirable personal commitment to your writing.

The fact is that world needs more writers. The literary output of the U.S. can never be too prolific. Sustainable development is a global imperative: over one billion people lack access to food, electricity and drinking water; a majority of our ecosystems are in decline; and there is an enormous deficit in decent jobs, especially for youth globally. Climate change will only compound these challenges – and threatens progress, peace and stability in societies and global markets – including books and publishing.

The book publishing industry is changing beyond all recognition, and for the independent author, getting your book into the hands of reachers in a timely fashion with expert speed to market, has become an increasingly dominant critical factor – where once publishers and authors could rely on long-tail sales and word of mouth. Schiel & Denver Book Publishers is therefore committed to professional book distribution into all markets, on behalf of our authors, and we are pleased to be opening up new channels in Australasia, Asia, China, Africa and Brazil, (outside our main infrastructure in North America and Europe) as a means to set our authors apart in the market with greater numbers of books printed, more sales and more royalties generated per ISBN title.

In a time when reaching agreement on critical issues is proving difficult and divisive — whether at home domestically in America or on the international platform — Schiel & Denver‘s comprehensive book publishing strategies will continue to give independent authors a voice, with dedicated marketing to the retail buying units of stores like Barnes & Noble, Amazon and Books-A-Million, to ensure your voice is heard.

Our corporate sustainability is charging ahead as a collaborative and innovative space for action based on the risks and opportunities at hand. After more than a decade of building up principles and partnerships, we stand on the brink of unleashing global business action as a main-stream, independent book publisher championing author’s intellectual output on a massive scale.

Schiel & Denver only succeeds when our authors thrive with successful book sales derived from worldwide market access and expert distribution to major bookstores. Making this happen is our enduring commitment: more engagement, more innovation, more collaboration.

Book publisher and Self Publishing Information provided by S&D book publishers and christian book publishers as a courtesy.

Add a Comment

Once Upon a time…

First Book travelled to the faraway land of Buffalo. Upon our arrival at the warehouse, we were astonished to find a field of presorted pallets, lined up in rows and labeled with fancy signs. They were the most beautiful pallets we had ever seen! 

Before we could blink an eye, we were escorted to a table of sweets and coffee. While choosing which donut to eat first, volunteers flocked around us, begging to be put to work.

Over the next three days, 300,000 books went to 65 local organizations and 333 nationwide, via 118 volunteers fed by about a million donuts. 

As the last books rode off into the sunset, in a poof of volunteer magic (aided by 5 brooms and 3 dustpans) all the evidence of the distribution disappeared. As we frolicked off, the only evidence of our adventure is now scattered throughout the land, as children receive books of their own and live happily ever after.

The End.

 

Add a Comment

One of the discussion forums I’m on asks why authors would continue to try to go the traditional publishing route now that there are e-books and self publishing? First off, self-publishing has always been an option. The difference today is that e-books provide an easier, much more pervasive vehicle for self-publishing than what print-only offered in the past. So one of the questions that really needs to be asked is what value does traditional publishing provide over self-publishing?

Some of the values that self-publishing delivers, includes:

• No barriers to entry (This is also a negative, since it opens the floodgates to low quality stories)
• Faster time to market
• More control
• Higher royalty percentage (However, this doesn’t necessarily promise higher actual revenue)

Some of the values that traditional publishing delivers, includes:

• Built-in distribution sales channel and marketing for both print and electronic versions
• Team of seasoned experts that contribute to all aspects of the book publishing journey, such as story editors, line editors, cover artists, layout designers, PR people, salespeople, production team, and more.
• Inherent stamp of approval for major book chains and distribution channel in terms of book quality
• Inherent stamp of approval for readers in general (While this might eventually become less of a factor as ebooks evolve, with some exceptions I believe for the present most readers will choose traditionally published books over self-published)
• Higher chance of success (While I don’t have numbers to back this up, I would predict that on average traditionally published books have a higher per-book sell-through rate than self-published books. Please feel free to provide numbers that confirm or dispute this)

Of course there are cons to both options too. Self-publishing typically requires an upfront investment by the author as well as increased marketing effort by the author. Even though traditional publishing is requiring more from its authors in terms of marketing, it’s hasn’t yet reach the level required by the self-publisher for success. Traditional publishing also has cons, the foremost of these being that it has a very high barrier to entry. Some feel that barrier is too high. For me there is actually value in that barrier and it’s worth it to me to spend years and significant effort breaking through it. I also place significant value on having a team of experts backing me up. I look at that as a key ingredient to my long-term success as an author.

So, the question really comes down to, what do you want as an author? If you’re a great marketer yourself, if you don’t think you need the expertise that publishers provide or you just simply want to have a book published, then self-publishing might be your best publication path. If you want a team of experts to contribute to your success and you’re willing to put the effort in to join their team, traditional publishing might be the best route.

While to some, this post might seem like a contradiction to my post of the other day, it’s really not. Both publishing routes deliver a set of values, but the importance of each those values will change based on individual author perspective and as the publishing landscape continues to evolve and change in the wake of the digital revolution.

Also, I know that the above is just a short list of the values of both routes offer. Feel free to add to the list in your comments below.

Display Comments Add a Comment

Last week, I travelled with the First Book team to Romeoville, Illinois to distribute over 400,000 books to children across the nation. I was very excited to get my first on-the-ground look at a book distribution from start to finish. The books donated by Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing included approximately seventy different titles, ranging from bath books to bilingual books.

First Book was able to house the books and then prepare them for shipment or pickup to serve groups benefitting children from low-income families thanks to warehouse space donated by Hub One Logistics. An extra special thanks goes out to Manny at the Hub One warehouse who helped ensure that these books ended up in the right hands in a timely fashion.

In addition, I’d like to thank KPMG for supplying volunteers to assist in this large undertaking. Their hard work and enthusiasm made this distribution run with ease and efficiency.

Vehicles of all sizes rolled up to the warehouse where groups received anywhere from four to over two hundred boxes of books. While many recipient groups had books shipped to them, some groups were able to pick up their boxes of books on Tuesday and Wednesday during the distribution at no cost. It was so rewarding to see a recipient’s face light up at the sight of so many boxes of books, knowing how much they would improve the lives of the children they so admirably serve.

Add a Comment