In Part 2 about how to get schools to buy your book—culled from a plan of action created for my friend, client, and associate, Morri Stewart, and her fantasy novel Faltofar—curriculum developer turned creativity coach, Deborah Allen, explains how budgets are determined in schools, which you’ll need to know when convincing schools to buy your book:
Money comes to schools in a variety of formats. However, most of the monies come from three sources: federal, state, and local. The amount of money given to each district and school is calculated by a price per student. Student enrollment numbers are the variable.
Student enrollment numbers determine the following academic year’s budget. Student enrollment numbers are counted on the 44th day of the new school year. How many students (butts in seats) in each school are then totaled for each school district. The state adds these numbers and sends them to the feds. Depending on federal tax formulas that are static year-to-year, the feds issue the state monies in August.
State and local monies are collected through taxes and are doled to each district and school based on the previous year’s enrollment number. Translation: there is an opportunity to sell curriculum to communities that are growing by more than 5 percent because of the tipping point principle where the cost per student to educate doesn’t match the funds received per student. Some schools will have a surplus of funds (not much–remember, this is education), but with research, you can target growing districts, like Bend-La Pine.
Depending on the book, you might be able to apply for supplemental grant monies. Perhaps, you could get a grant to fund your creative endeavor to create curriculum and/or sell the created curriculum to districts. Oregon Arts Commission, for example, has a grant program for artists to support travel or to create and launch a creative project. You wouldn’t get a lot of money—maybe up to $5-7K from both programs. But that’s something.
Back to Linden:
Convincing schools to buy your book starts with approaching the school gatekeepers. We’ll talk about that next week.
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