Fresh Writers Books

History

Bill Jelen of Hold Macro! Books was a Junior Achievement volunteer at Lake High School, where he told students about the ins and outs of publishing. He soon realized that the average student was spending the summer with a minimum-wage job; he pitched the idea of a book proposal contest where the student would be given a grant to spend the summer writing a novel. He joined with Journalism teacher Rick Friedline, and soon the English department helped Jelen review eight book proposals by high school students.

Jelen signed four young authors to spend the summer working on their novels. This internship included weekly meetings to learn about different aspects of the publishing world, visiting Border's to view competitive titles and narrow down their cover design choices, meeting with authors to learn about editing, meeting with newspaper writers to learn about publicity, and weighing the costs of bookstore co-ops vs. guerilla marketing. By the end of the summer, the students had a firm knowledge of the publishing industry.

Fresh Writers soon joined forces with local student artists, who submitted art for cover designs, which ultimately were weighed against professional cover illustrators. Jelen again enlisted the high school for help as he gave Suzanne Arnold and the vocational marketing department an $8,000 grant to figure out how to best market these four books.

Key Elements

The deadline for consideration for the 2005 contest was March 31 to the Uniontown, Ohio office.

Sophomore or juniors in high school had the greatest benefit for this project, due to the lengthy nature of the process; although, it is open to freshman and seniors as well.

Guidelines for the book were that it was 150 pages or more.

The proposal should be 1-2 typed pages, including a possible title, subject overview, intended audience, what the reader will take away from the book, competitor books on the topic, proposed table of contents, contestant's name, address, telephone, and email, and a letter of reference from an English teacher at the contestant's high school, discussing work habits and ability to commit.

The $1,200 advance is paid in weekly installments.

Annual Budget

The cost of a book in a year is $8,000, so the budget depends on the number of winners. A second round of editing adds $8,000 to each book, but it has been a necessary and very helpful addition.

Staffing Needs

One staff person could handle up to 10 students in the program.

Areas of Improvement

This program needs to improve its exposure in two ways. First, more students must be aware of the program in order to have more quality entries. Second, it is a struggle to get the published books into the hands of teenagers.