Interview with Authors Abroad

• What is Authors Abroad?

The mission of Authors Abroad is to inspire and motivate children to want to read and write. Our team is made up of some of the UK’s leading authors, poets, and educators. They all possess the ability to enhance and support the quality of education provided in schools around the world.

• When was the company started and why?

Company Director, Trevor Wilson, has been coordinating school visits, Festivals, theatre shows and overseas tours over the past five years for some of the most highly respected children’s authors, poets and illustrators in the UK. The reason for establishing Authors Abroad was to provide a much more direct link to schools and libraries by offering top quality educators. We do not simply rely on people to contact us. We go out of our way to contact schools, libraries and Festivals and work very closely with each particular organisation to meet their unique needs. When working with International Schools, we plan all of the flights, accommodation, and shipment of books, which takes a great deal of the strain off the shoulders of local librarians or Englsih Coordinators. Over the past five years Authors Abroad has worked in Brazil, Bangkok, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, S Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Cyprus, Spain, Switzerland and Russia, with visits planned for Kenya and Hong Kong in the near future. In addition to our overseas work, we also plan and coordinate approximately 1000 school visits every year in the UK from Infant to Secondary schools.

• What services do you offer?

In addition to Authors Abroad, we run a publishing arm of our company, called Caboodle Books. We offer an outstanding self-publishing service and work very closely with all of our published authors and poets. Not only do we offer the most competitively priced service in the UK, but we also provide an instant market for the sale of books in schools through our network of contacts. Most authors and poets that we work with benefit from our unique opportunity to work in partnership with Caboodle Books and Authors Abroad - Caboodle Books offers to share in the publication costs as well as take an active share in the sale of the books. Doing this demonstrates our commitment to marketing books effectively and returning a direct profit for the author rather than the normal royalty payments. After a very short time in the self-publishing market, we are fast approaching the publication of our 20th book. More and more authors and poets are contacting us about our publishing service, as the main stream publishers are becoming more reluctant to publish new works.

Please contact us for further information on publishing with us.

Authors Abroad provides:

• Professional people who are highly regarded and experienced
• Presentations/workshops to suit all age groups
• Inspiring interactive presentations for large groups
• Stimulating workshops for smaller groups
• In-service training for staff/parents
• Extended residency work
• Personalised book signing

Key Booking Features

• We plan all school visits working closely with each school.
• We tailor each visit to meet individual schools' needs.
• We take care of all flights, accommodation and shipping of books.
• We take the strain out of planning an author/poet visit.

• We offer the following:

• All the people we work with can offer half day or full day school visits and occasionally weeklong residencies in a school.
• All age groups are catered for from infants to upper secondary.
• Group sizes are not a problem – all of our team are experienced, and enjoy, working with large groups from 100 to 500.
• Costs vary from author to author – please contact us to discuss fees.
• Most special requirements can be met if we are informed well in advance.
• We normally provide letters to go out to parents and lots of background information on each presenter prior to a visit.
• All authors/poets bring books with them on the day and are happy to personalise copies for the children.
• We are happy to provide contact details of previous schools visited – word of mouth is our best form of recommendation!

• Are your services available to international authors or only certain countries?

We work with authors from all over the world but obviously it is far more convenient to work with UK based authors

• What genres do you represent?

We currently represent children’s authors, from primary to upper secondary.

We are now being approached by an increasing number of adult authors of both fiction and non-fiction books. We hope to develop this area in the near future.

• Where can people find out more about your company?

The place to find the most up-to-date information on us is through our website, at:

www.authorsabroad.com

We are also on Facebook and Twitter, both under the name “Authors Abroad.”

• Anything else you'd like to add?

Our company is growing by leaps and bounds, and we’re always looking for new and exciting people to work with. If you have any books that you’d like to publish with us, please contact us. We’d love to hear from you!

We also offer great ways to help schools build up their library collection for free by recommending our authors to other schools. Please contact us for further information if you’d like to participate!