It's our new state of the art website!
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| The new home page at scbwi.org |
And when I say our - it's ours - yours, mine, everyone who is part of the community that is SCBWI.
Go ahead - you can Ohh and Ahh! over the cleaner, easier-to-navigate design!
What else is new?
All SCBWI events will now appear on a central searchable calendar, which means you have access to information about SCBWI events around the world. The new website also now hosts all the regional websites, so connecting with your local activities is just a click away.
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| The world of SCBWI is just a click away! |
Nine other shiny new features that we have to tell you more about:
The Discussion Boards + Verla Kay's Blue Boards = An Awesome Community-Wide Discussion!
Those of you who use our Discussion Boards are probably already aware that we have merged with Verla Kay’s Blue Boards and brought aboard her team of knowledgeable moderators and the large community that is part of the Blue Boards. If you have not visited the Boards in a while, we think you will be pleasantly surprised with the active, vocal, helpful community that exists there. You’ll want to join in the conversation.
The Online Bookstore!
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| A bookstore! |
New to the site is an online bookstore where both PAL and FULL (i.e., independently published) members can post their books for sale, including synopses, book trailers and reviews. The store will be linked directly for sales to Indie Bound, Barnes and Noble, Amazon or to your own website. The SCBWI will heavily promote our bookstore to drive traffic to the site, so that it will become an important option for anyone looking to buy children’s books. For those of you who are independently published and have sought alternative means of selling your books, our online bookstore will meet your needs. And for those who are traditionally published and distributed, it will provide one more place where both your in-print and out-of-print work can be discovered.
Book Launches!
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| Book Launch Parties! |
Four times a year, beginning in March 2014, members with books (both those published traditionally and independently) debuting during the calendar year will be able to host a virtual Launch Party. Members will have access to attractive, professionally designed templates from us to help you design and build your Launch Party page—or go wild and design your own. It’s your party! There will be room for visuals, videos, reviews, a guestbook, and a message from the author. We will publicize the book launch party date both with our membership and with the community at large, reaching out to publishers, educational institutions and organizations, and the general book buying public. In these times when drawing attention to your work is so challenging, the SCBWI Book Launch Party will become a quarterly special event. Your book launch page will stay posted until the next launch party, and then will be archived for one year. Launches will require a $25 charge to cover design and promotion.
The Speakers Bureau!
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| There's a Speakers Bureau! |
Our new and improved Speakers Bureau is now open to all members (both PAL members and Full members) who have published a book for children. Members can post information about speaking, along with a sample video if you desire, and teachers, librarians and organizations will now be able to search for speakers in a variety of ways including by book title, zip code, Skype availability, and grade level. We are planning several new outreach programs to publicize the Speakers Bureau, to help people find you.
Blog Listings!
New and Improved Illustrator Gallery!
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| The New Illustrator Gallery! |
We drew on a panel of art directors, agents, and illustrators to make our Illustrator Gallery entirely searchable and user friendly. Illustrators who list in our gallery can be searched based on genre, style, keyword, name, or region. Make sure to tag your images with keywords and genre descriptions to take advantage of the new search capabilities. Many illustrators find work through our Illustrator Gallery, and the opportunities for your work to be discovered are now tremendously improved.
The Bulletin Archive!
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| The Bulletin Archive! |
After years of work, the Bulletin Archive has been completed after a comprehensive scanning. Two hundred and fifty issues of SCBWI’s bi-monthly Bulletin, representing forty-two years of articles and advice, are now easily searchable by keyword. We doubt there is any other resource currently on the web that contains this much information on the field of children’s books.
Podcasts!
SCBWI is in production on regular thirty to forty-five minute podcasts, with interviews from leaders in our field—from editors and art directors to authors and illustrators. The first four podcasts are currently being released, and will be available for free download to SCBWI members. One podcast per month will follow. This is an amazing and free benefit to being an SCBWI member.
Video Intensives!
SCBWI will be producing three video intensives per year, with more to follow. These intensives will focus on timely and much needed topics and will be available to all members, especially those of you who are not able to travel to conferences that feature intensives. We want to make the best instruction and information available to all our members.
So go check out the new scbwi.org, update your profile, and make it your connection to the worldwide community that is the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. Your tribe.
Huge cheers of thanks to Sarah Baker, Chelsea Confalone, Sally Crock and Josh Smith at the SCBWI Main Office for making this new website - that's been nearly two years in the making - the sparkling reality it is today!
Illustrate and Write On,
Lee
5 comments:
It was utterly worth the wait. Thank-you to everyone who makes this both possible and available.
Congratulations from us here in the British Isles to Chelsea Mooser, Joshua Smith and everyone else who worked on that massive website! It's fantastic!
Although the site looks great and they have added many new features, there are a few bugs that they need to work out. I waited a long time for the opportunity to join SCBWI, and as a brand new member, I went through the joining procedures including posting my book and a few gallery images. While adding the book it would not accept any author or illustrator information, and while adding the gallery images it would not allow a topic. Those fields just go blank. When trying to go back and edit the book entry, it would not take me to edit the book information, it only took me to the bookstore search page. I found several other link problems and also searching for a member caused the page to show php code (not good.) In all, the features and facelift are very good, and I'm sure that these issues will be taken care of as they come in, I kind of miss the color a bit, and before all this, I could search for a member artwork by alphabet, which allowed me to just check out the artwork without having to know exactly who or what I was looking for in order to just enjoy the artwork.
Sorry for the frustrations with the new website! Unfortunately there are definitely some glitches with the gallery, bookstore and member profiles--I can assure you that our developers are working hard to get them fixed as soon as possible. Despite these problems we are very excited about the new benefits the website will offer our members as soon as we can get it all smoothed out! If you have any other specific problems you want to report to us please email: webmaster@scbwi.org.
The website looks great. It seems very straightforward and simple to navigate. I think that that is my biggest frustration. Sometimes people will make websites that are impossible to you. It looks pretty and fancy on the outside but as soon as you dive in a little bit, it just comes out with nonsense that does not help at all.
Raleigh @ Octane Web Group
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