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- Laurie Miller, Tonya Duncan Ellis, Silvia Acevedo & Michael Hale
Laurie Miller, Tonya Duncan Ellis, Silvia Acevedo & Michael Hale
Marketing an Independently Published Children’s Book (and How SCBWI Can Help)
Audience: All Levels
Book marketing is a challenge for every self-publisher, but for children's book authors there are extra hurdles. Laurie MIller of SCBWI (the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) interviews three successful authors to discuss creative ways to get books into the hands of young readers through parents, teachers, librarians, and more.
Laurie Miller
Laurie Miller is the Manager of Events and Special Projects for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). She organizes SCBWI’s national conferences and webinars. She is also a writer-at-large for SCBW’s publications. In addition, Laurie helms the organization’s benefits for members who self-publish. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Essential Guild to Self-Publishing a Children’s Book and the SCBWI liaison with the Alliance of Independent Authors. Laurie is also an editor of SCBWI’s new book, The Haunted States of America (Laura Godwin Books/Henry Holt). Laurie comes to the SCBWI family with a background in screenwriting, particularly documentary films. She has written documentary scripts on everything from stolen inventions to reincarnation – topics that seem to find their way into her own writing.
Tonya Duncan Ellis
Tonya Duncan Ellis has had her nose in a book since she learned to read, so it’s no surprise that she’d one day become a writer. She is author of the bestselling Sophie Washington children’s book series, a former journalist, and a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), the Authors Guild, Black Creators in KidLit, and the Brown Bookshelf’s Highlights Foundation-sponsored, Amplify Black Stories storyteller cohort. She’s a 2022 winner of SCBWI’s Independently Published Book Launch Marketing Grant. In 2021, she won the Austin SCBWI Cynthia Leitich Smith Writing Mentor Award. Tonya loves learning about other cultures and has traveled to 49 states and 20 countries. Represented by Sara Megibow of KT Literary she lives in Houston, Texas and is married with three children.
Silvia Acevedo
Silvia Acevedo is a children’s book author and winner of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’s Spark Award for GOD AWFUL REBEL, the final book in her mythological trilogy. She’s also co-founder of Fantasy Art Workshop’s Illustration Intensive, a week-long workshop for aspiring and professional illustrators. Silvia most recently worked at Scholastic, where she assisted the president of trade publishing. Before that, she guided programming at Inkluded, a non-profit championing diversity within publishing. She launched her own publishing career at New York literary agency Writers House, focusing on editorial and agenting. Simultaneously, she led the Wisconsin chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Previously, Silvia enjoyed 25+ years in news reporting, covering everything from presidential candidates to state-fair-food-on-a-stick. She reported national and international stories for CNN, local TV, radio, and newspapers, in English and Spanish. Some of her favorite times were guest hosting a television morning talk show for Milwaukee’s NBC station.
Michael Hale
Michael Hale has over 30 years of creative experience as a designer, writer and illustrator. He started writing and illustrating children’s picture books full time in 2016. He loves his work. Michael has illustrated twelve books and designed many others. Some were traditionally published, some were “work for hire”, and three, he wrote, illustrated and self-published. His first self-published book as an author/illustrator, Bad Monkey Business, won a Spark Honor from SCBWI in 2018. Michael also teaches drawing at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona.
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