How I’ve Built Opportunities for Paid School & Library Visits, So Far, as a Picture Book Author

Initially for this blog post, I was planning to write about experiencing my first ever WRAD (World Read Aloud Day) earlier this year. After some more mulling though, I thought it would be fun to share how I’ve built up opportunities for my various paid school and library visits since my debut picture book TRICKY CHOPSTICKS released in March 2024. Since this happened pretty organically, I’ll recap using a rough timeline which I think may be helpful (or at least interesting!) for fellow picture book creators. Note: Planning for each of these events started at least a month or many more before the event took place.

Early March 2024

As I awaited my mid-March launch date, I noticed that my son’s elementary school had an upcoming Literacy Night in early March. Given the timing, I offered a “Sneak Peek Read” of TRICKY CHOPSTICKS for students attending the event and the school happily agreed! They also very kindly offered to use their district printing center to print my activity sheets, which included an invite to the upcoming launch party for TRICKY CHOPSTICKS at my then-local bookstore. The sneak peek readings went well, and the school gave me the extra activity sheets left over at the end of the night. Since these were printed on nice, thick paper, I thought it would be a shame for them to go to waste. So I decided to go to seven local libraries to see if they wanted these free activity sheets. Most were open to putting these in their community areas, especially since the launch party was free for the invite shown. As I made the rounds, I got to meet the children’s librarians at three libraries who expressed interest in my library event programming.
Ultimate Takeaway: Volunteering a sneak peek reading for this school literacy night ended up leading to three paid library events.

Mid-April 2024

I was still excitedly anticipating my launch party at the local bookstore, and had already worked with them closely on my pre-order campaign. So when a local elementary school librarian talked with them in early March about her needs for an upcoming author visit, one of the bookstore owners very kindly suggested that she reach out to me! She did through my author website contact form, and we arranged an author visit for grades K-3. We split the visit over two days to accommodate both their scheduling and mine, and set it up to work within their budget (generously paid for by their PTSA). I felt so fortunate this school visit materialized in such a lovely way, especially since the school librarian was very communicative, coordinated with the bookstore for signed book orders, prepped students well before I visited, and even gave a testimonial and helpful feedback too!
Ultimate Takeaway: Building a great relationship with my local bookstore turned into a wonderful referral for my first paid school visit!

Early May 2024

I had stayed in touch with my sons’ previous elementary school, and had offered to do casual storytimes with their teachers’ classes to thank them. Due to timing and logistics, we decided to instead do a short school-wide K-5 assembly. This also made sense since I was waiving the fee as part of the widespread thank you. Otherwise, my school assembly programming has grouped levels so that students can have better viewing experiences and so I can run the assemblies more effectively for younger versus older grades. While this wasn’t paid, we took a fantastic picture which helps to show how I can successfully provide school assemblies.
Ultimate Takeaway: Even if you provide a free author visit under your own terms, you can still leverage it to support your future paid author visits! Plus, it’s great practice if you want to get more comfortable running new programming (especially if you’re a debut author).

Late January 2025

My family moved from West Coast to East Coast (USA) in July, so over summer and fall 2024, I visited bookstores and libraries to introduce myself since we were new to the area. The Morristown Festival of Books also warmly welcomed me for their KidFest in October 2024 when I asked to join as a new local author. It was such an amazing book festival with many parents encouraging their kids to buy books! While signing, I met a local school librarian and mentioned that I did school visits. I gave her my business card and didn’t hear back right away, so I figured perhaps she got busy or made other plans. But then she reached out in early January and we planned a multi-assembly visit right in time for their school’s Lunar New Year celebration! I’m so grateful their PTO graciously funded the visit, and we even arranged post-visit signed book orders to support a local bookstore. She provided an incredible testimonial too. A little later, another local school librarian contacted me saying she heard about the awesome visit. We’re awaiting potential grant funding to cover my visits to her school plus another neighboring school, so fingers crossed!
Ultimate Takeaway: Participating in a book festival can take a lot of time and effort, but putting yourself out there can also help to make unexpected opportunities possible.

Here is the incredible testimonial the school librarian shared—I still get the feels seeing it!

“I have hosted many authors visits over the years, and I have to thank Sylvia for giving one of the most engaging and energetic presentations I’ve ever seen. She had the students hooked from the beginning, connecting with them immediately. By the time we began the chopstick competition, they were all in! The excitement rose with laughter and cheers. Inviting students to sing along with rewritten lyrics was the perfect ending. Students and faculty stopped me in the hallway to comment on what a fun experience they had with Sylvia!”
—Jill Mills, School Librarian, Franklin Elementary, Summit, NJ

Early February 2025

By around mid-November 2024, I felt like I was still not too well-known as a newly local author, but got a message through my author website from a nearby library wondering if I could join their upcoming Lunar New Year event. This was so personally exciting, and it turned out to be an absolutely wonderful experience for us all! Their Friends of the Library group openly sponsored my visit (including raffle giveaways for three signed copies of TRICKY CHOPSTICKS!). The library also referred me to their sister location for a fun summer event, so I’m looking forward to returning for that too. I never quite found out how exactly they heard about me (it seems one of their librarians used to focus on children’s books and somehow knew I was now local). So maybe my social media posts helped in this case.
Ultimate Takeaway: Do what you can to connect with your community both in-person and online, since you never know what chance request for an event may come your way, including through local word-of-mouth.

So there you have it! These are personal accounts of how I’ve so far been able to build up author visit opportunities from where I used to live on West Coast to where I now live on East Coast. It was definitely a challenge starting out as a debut picture book author and then a new-to-town local author, but I’m so thankful for everyone who took a huge chance on me to visit their schools and libraries—and with honorarium coverage too!

If you’re working on your own plan for doing author visits, I hope you found this writeup useful. And if you have any additional tips to share, please do! I feel like I’m constantly learning as I navigate these different circumstances, and I think we can all gain so much insight just by sharing with each other in our kidlit community. Thanks for reading through this post!

Born and raised in Queens, New York, Sylvia Chen has also lived and worked in Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Paris, and Tokyo, and now resides in Essex County, New Jersey. As the author of TRICKY CHOPSTICKS (illus. Fanny Liem; Atheneum/Simon & Schuster) and forthcoming picture book SPARKLES FOR SUNNY: A Lunar New Year Story (illus. Thai My Phuong; Flamingo Books/Penguin Random House), Sylvia is also the creator of #PBStudyBuddy, which features amazing picture books on social media for fellow creators, teachers, and librarians. Sylvia loves crafting picture books that spark kids’ interest in STEAM and creative thinking. To connect more, visit her at sylviaichen.com or follow her @SylviaiChen.