No, not the ones I write. They're going fine, fine-ish, anyhow, after a somewhat difficult quarantine year. (All the writers I know had some degree of a difficult quarantine year.) I have a completed draft of a novel sitting in my editor's hands: she was supposed to get back to me about it three weeks ago, and hasn't, and now it's December 1. Publishing absolutely entirely shuts down for two weeks leading up to the New Year--they lock the offices, everyone goes home--of course, this year they might already be home--but in truth they mostly shut down as soon as Thanksgiving rolls around. I won't likely hear anything until January. Years ago this used to frustrate me, but now I just embrace the holiday spirit. Why not? I can't change it so I might as well enjoy.
I am working on the start of a new book, but it's too new to talk about yet.
Today I'm going to talk about the books from Appalachian Literacy Initiative. Phew. We're nearly halfway into our fourth year of operation. (We follow the school calendar.) We've grown so much and we're doing so well, and there's so much more to be done. I know I've talked in this space quite a lot about how important it is that kids have access to books. Today I'm going to talk nuts and bolts.
This year we were graciously granted permanent office space in a building owned by another local nonprofit. It's a largish room, and we've filled it with industrial book shelves (bought cheap at Sam's Club, they hold several hundred pounds per shelf, which is good because we need them to). When you walk in the door, there's a shelf immediately to your left, where until yesterday UPS put unopened boxes of books that we'd ordered. (We had a stack of boxes obscured the door, so we've changed plans.) After that, running clockwise around the outside of the room, two desks crammed beneath the one window. One desk has some office supplies on top, the other holds our laptop and printer. The office supply desk is used for all sorts of things. The printer desk is the order and shipping hub.
Now we're on the wall across from the door. Four sets of bookshelves. The first set is office supplies--paper, stickers, tape, folders--some boxes of books we've set aside for various reasons, including ones that arrive damaged, and, on the top shelves, some YA books we were donated that we haven't yet found homes for.
The next three sets of shelves are the third-grade choices for this school year. Twenty-four books, and each gets half a shelf. We put stickers inside all of the books we give away: they say Appalachian Literacy Initiative and have a space for the child to put their name. That way, when 14 kids in the same class get the same title, they can tell the books apart. We also have stickers for some of the organizations that have sponsored entire schools: "A Gift from Ballad Health." "A Gift from the Bill Gatton Foundation."
Now. The number of copies of each book that can fit in the designated space depends entirely upon the size of the books. All books are different. Alien Ocean Animals is probably our smallest, space-wise; Magnus Chase, in hardcover, is the largest. We don't put any books on the grade shelves until they're properly stickered. Sometimes we store extra boxes of stickered books on the tip-top shelves.
Turn the corner, and the next wall is fourth grade. Turn it again, and the shelves for the fifth grade books fit neatly along the wall with the door.
In the center of the room, three more sets of bookshelves, crammed together, and two more work tables for packing books. The shelves are full--crammed full--of extra books, ones that aren't part of the lists for the three grades we're doing this year. Sometimes that's because we couldn't get enough copies or a title even if we wanted to. Sometimes these books are donations direct from writers or publishers. When we order through Scholastic's nonprofit arm, Scholastic Literacy Partnerships, they send us boxes of random free books, and we put those on these shelves as well. If the local teachers enrolled in our program come to pick their books up, instead of having us mail them, we let them pick out a couple of extra books for their classrooms. We also give them out to different community organizations--a hundred earlier this fall for a local after-school group in a federal housing project, a couple hundred to Girls Inc, a couple hundred soon to be sent to a school system's holiday gift program.
In all the corners of the room we've stuffed flattened cardboard boxes. Books come out of the boxes, we save the boxes, we put books back into the boxes and we ship them out.
This year Tuesdays are our big ship-out days. We welcome any and all volunteers any and all Tuesday afternoons. If you'd like to come by, please do: at the very least there are always books to sticker.
We ship our teachers sets of six titles four times a year. We sent the second teacher sets a few weeks ago--six books each to 185 teachers. It was a helluva day. They first teacher sets we shipped out over several weeks, because we got some last-minute funding that allowed us to add several additional schools. That was fabulous but has also created chaos, as it meant we no longer had enough books for the year.
We get our books cheaply through First Book, Scholastic Literacy Partners, and publisher donations (big shouts out to Thorndike and Penguin Random House). This means that the money people donate goes a lot farther than it otherwise would, but it also means we have to stay on top of our game. A title available last week might not be available again for six months, or ever. Last summer I'd figured we needed at least 200 copies of any one title to have it in our program, but that was a serious underestimation. We ended up enrolling 1200 students per grade. Each student picks one book from every set of six. That would suggest that 200 copies might be just enough--except that the teachers get classroom sets. We need 60 to 65 copies of each title, depending on the grade, just for the classroom sets. Also we are very firm about kids getting to choose whichever books they want--and we can't always predict which titles will be popular. We're realizing that 275 is the absolute minimum for any title this year--we'll need 350 or more for many. That's fun math to be doing in December--and I mean that absolutely. We are DELIGHTED to be in this position. We are loving giving away this many books. It's the best damn thing in the world.
So yesterday: I showed up at what I love to call World Headquarters early, because the local news channel wanted to interview me. (The resulting spot turned out ghastly, with the anchor mangling ALI's name and it all going downhill from there--what possessed me to wear that shirt?--so no link, thank you.) UPS delivered some books shortly afterward: "Hi, Ma'am, just add them to the pile?" It was a huge pile, causing problems. Happily we've just been given a bit more space in the back of the building, and when a couple of college kids showed up (we give out official volunteer hours!) the first thing I had them do was move all the unopened boxes of books out of the main room. Then they stickered some of the free Scholastic books, since we'll be giving those away next week. I sat down at the computer and started printing out student orders from our teachers. The other board members grabbed the order sheets, and started packing boxes.
We had at least a dozen orders. Some were for one class, some for an entire school. Here's a sample, from one of our largest enrolled schools:
Fifth grade: Best Friends 12; The Crossover 3; The Girl Who Drank the Moon 1; The Player King 4; 100 Things to Be 11; Be Prepared 42; Black Panther 34; Flora & Ulyssess 4; From the Desk of Zoe Washington 16; The War I Finally Won 5.
You'll notice that it's more than six titles. That's because students are always allowed to order from previous lists.
What I noticed: Be Prepared 42. Shoot.
Be Prepared is a graphic novel. It's funny, and quirky, and I love it. I scored 200 hardcover copies last summer at an unbelievable discount, something like $1 for a $23 book. A few weeks ago I managed to get another 40 copies, in paperback, through First Book, but that was all they had. I bought them out. They'll get more eventually, probably, but it could take months.
I didn't think this would be a problem. Be Prepared really is quirky. It's not nearly as well known as some of the other graphic novels on our list.
I was wrong. We started filling orders, and it was clear that Be Prepared was in high demand. I started the day with 175 copies and ended the day with 20, and we hadn't filled all the orders that had come in, and there are still a bunch more orders to come.
Anyhow, I want to tell you about the process: it's this. We take the printed order, take the books off the shelves, find a box or boxes to put them in. We tape the box, weigh it, print postage, copy the postage label onto a copy of the order form, so we know we've filled it, put the postage on the box, stack the boxes in the lobby of the building for the postman. Check off the schools/grades on our master list. Subtract the copies from our inventory.
We did that all afternoon. This morning I sat at my home computer with the inventory list and spent a moment being very very grateful for donations we've recently received. Then I went on First Book. First I looked for Be Prepared. I'd looked for it the day before, as soon as I saw we didn't have enough, and it wasn't in stock, but sometimes restocking miracles happen. Nope. Then I scanned the rest of the graphic novels for sale. It's a tough time of year, they're out of everything. Got 14 copies of Pea, Bee, & Jay when I'd have happily bought 150. ($3.50 for a $7.99 retail price). Went on to get 100 copies of Ghose ($3.75 each), 75 of Animal Smackdown--a real victory, that, as we've given out 363 copies so far this year. The price has gone up, from $4.95 a copy to $5.85, but this is a glossy full-color book with a retail price of $14.99. I got one lonely copy of The One and Only Ivan, 18 of Power Forward, 96 of Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer ($3.25/copy). I looked at the Book Bank, where the huge bargains are--it's there I got the hardcover Be Prepareds, back last summer. Bought one carton of Percy Jackson's Demigod Collection, 12 books for a total of $8.40. It might be brilliant but it might be too bulky to ship, hard to tell so we'll try a few first. Ghetto Cowboy, another favorite 120 copies. One copy of Hello Universe. I look in vain for Front Desk, which I've been trying to get more of for months, along with Guinness Animal Records, How to Steal a Dog, and Love That Dog. Love That Dog is particularly worrisome--we're running out. Oooh--the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid, #16! Three hundred copies. That, along with the 200 copies we have on hand of #15, should get us through the school year.
I log into Scholastic Literary Partnerships, and am overjoyed to find both Narwhal and Jelly ($3.96, rp $8.99) and Love That Dog ($4.53, rp $7.99). I buy 100 copies of each. They've got Captain Underpants ($3.41, rp $5.99) back in stock, so I grab 100 of that and 100 of I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic. ($1.50, rp $4.95) This order qualifies us for 160 additional free books--I can't chose the titles, but I choose the age ranges. It'll be enough to ensure we have plenty for the school Christmas program.
This does not solve my Be Prepared problem. We have new orders in and we can't fill them. We can buy the book through an independent bookstore, which will give us a hefty discount (though not as good as FB or SLP), but shipping comes direct from the publisher and will take a few weeks. I don't have an in with the publisher, First Second--I've been known to beg unashamedly from publishers where I do.
Sighing, I go on Amazon. I can get the paperback of Be Prepared (rp $14.99) for $10.49, which is steep, but I'm desperate.
Amazon will only let me buy 30 copies. I don't know why, they've got quotas now of most titles. I once bought 80 copies of How to Steal a Dog from them, and now I can't buy anymore ever. I buy 30 copies, then call one of the other board members and have her buy 30 copies from her home computer too. It's not enough, but it'll buy us a bit of time.
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