Virtual Author Visits Now a Reality
By John Sellers, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 3/20/2008
 Clements speaking at Ball State. |
“Usually when you book authors, you have one author going to one school, and you’ll have a bunch of people from the surrounding area [turn out],” says Jodie Cohen, associate marketing manager for education and library at S&S Children’s Publishing, who accompanied Clements to the Muncie, Ind., university. “This spanned the whole country and even the world, with a couple of schools in Canada and one in Germany. It’s a lot more far-reaching [than a traditional school visit] and it’s great for the author.”
During the broadcast, Clements discussed his books and answered children’s questions (a classroom of children was present at the recording, and students at participating schools could submit questions). Ball State records and broadcasts the sessions, which are available as streaming video online, on certain PBS stations and via satellite. According to Cohen, Clements’s appearance had the largest audience of any of the university’s broadcasts to date (the technology is also used for Ball State’s electronic field trips program, but this marked the first time it had been used for an author).
“One of the reasons that Simon & Schuster decided to do the Electronic Author Visits,” Cohen says, “is that we have a number of authors who, because of their writing schedules and other obligations, are not necessarily able to do as many visits as they would like. This gives them a way to connect with students without having to spend as much time on the road.” The evening preceding Tuesday’s broadcast, Clements signed books and spoke with fans during an on-campus community event for 250 people; and on Wednesday, Clements participated in a second video conference, to a smaller group of schools.
Simon & Schuster plans three or four such Electronic Author Visits each school year; the next, scheduled for April 29, will feature D.J. MacHale, author of the Pendragon series. Teachers can sign up via the program’s Web site. “We definitely felt it was very successful,” says Cohen. “We’re excited going forward, knowing that this was [the response] the first time. So the number can only go up, hopefully.”
Related Content
Related Content
There are no other articles related to this article.
