The Day We Became Published Authors!

Have you heard of Studentreasures Publishing?  Have you used it?  I used it the year before last and was very impressed with the results.  I stumbled on the website through a comment on facebook, and when I found out they would ship to Canada, I just had to try it.  It was kind of late in the year when I signed up, so it was a bit rushed at the end of the year.  We decided to do a poetry book, and each student wrote and illustrated a poem.  The good news was, because it was the end of the year, the students already had impressive writing portfolios, so they chose a poem they had already written through the year.  We were SO excited when our books came in - a huge box full of our published writing!!!  Talk about making the writing process authentic for the students!

I definitely plan to do this again next year (in fact, I'm going to book our publishing date as soon as I finish this post).  I will change a few things though.  First, I'll pick a date after Christmas so we already have polished writing pieces to pick from, but I don't want it too late in the year (we only received our books 2 days before school finished for the year).  Second, the website recommends making pictures with washable markers, but I found these would "bleed" and leave marks on other pages.  Although it's more work (and printer ink), I think I will take the pictures the kids have drawn, scan them onto my computer, and then print them onto the publishing paper.  Lastly, I think we will have a bake sale to help reduce the cost of the books for the students.  I think the price of the book was around $18.00 (teachers got one book for free, and a coupon for another 3 at $10.00).  I did have a few students in the class whose families couldn't afford to buy one, so I purchased books for them out of my own pocket.  It was worth it, though - everyone just HAD to have their own copy.  We autographed the books and gave one to our school library, and sent one to our Board of Education.  It was such a worthwhile experience, and I can't wait to do it again this year!