I will be explaining my job--and publishing--to my son's second-grade class Monday afternoon. Once a year, his school invites parents to come in and speak to the class about their jobs, and this is the second year in a row that I have volunteered to do so.
Last year, I brought Aliki's How a Book is Made and a magnifying glass for show and tell: the former to show some colorful visuals of printing presses and how colors combine; the latter to let them see for themselves that everything printed is made up of dots. The class enjoyed the show-and-tell and had several questions about publishing. Although I mentioned online trends, it was an addendum at the end of my "presentation."
Since publishing has changed that much in a year, I was going to focus on that change and how its evolved from a print-only industry to one where print is only one of the many platforms offered. But my son told me he had been looking forward to my show-and-tell, and I don't want to disappoint him, so I now need to figure out how to present all of that in fifteen minutes or less.
Even though I've been aware of the changes going on in the industry, and reading about them, it honestly still surprised me that last year when I spoke to my son's class, e-books was not a major part of my discussion--nor did I feel it necessary to make it so. This year, I would feel remiss not to mention it, and may even pull out my BlackBerry with its Fictionwise e-reader application as part of the show-and-tell.
How would you define and explain publishing to a child...or even an adult who was not familiar with the process? How do you define it to authors?
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