Authors Read to Help Stop Domestic Violence-- Promote It and RA Opportunities

[Editors Note: The Call to Action posts are on hiatus for the Halloween season, they will return in November]

Read for Pixels is an amazing charity event that uses live author chats to raise awareness and money to help stop violence against women.  From their page:

About Read For PixelsThe Read For Pixels campaign featuring live Google Hangout Readings with award-winning bestselling authors in support of the Celebrity Male Role Model Pixel Reveal campaign which aims to raise US$1 million in aid of The Pixel Project and the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence . “Read For Pixels” runs twice a year:

• Our International Women’s Day Edition in March putting female authors in the spotlight.

• Our annual standard edition in September featuring a mix of male and female authors.

Every campaign features live “Read For Pixels” Google Hangout sessions which will take place on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays throughout September at the rate of 1 session per day. Each session will feature an author reading from one of their books and discussing why they support ending violence against women, their writing, and women in the media and popular culture. Each session also includes a live moderated Q&A session for fans and book lovers. 

Our upcoming Fall 2016 Edition in September will feature Christopher Golden, Dan Wells, Gregg Hurwitz, Josephine Angelini, Martha Wells, Max Gladstone, Steven Erikson, Susan Dennard, Tami Hoag, Victoria (V.E.) Schwab, and Veronica Rossi.Learn more about current/upcoming Read For Pixels authors here. 

Read For Pixels alumni include Andrea Cremer, Alexandra Monir, Alexandra Sokoloff, Alyson Noel, Charlaine Harris, Christina Lauren, Chuck Wendig, Cinda Williams Chima, Claudia Gray, Colleen Houck, Colleen Gleason, Cornelia Funke, Darynda Jones, Delilah S. Dawson, Diane Chamberlain, Ellen Hopkins,Elizabeth Bear, Guy Gavriel Kay, Isaac Marion, Jacqueline Carey, Jane Green, Jasper Fforde, Jaye Wells, Jennifer L. Armentrout, Jim C. Hines, Joe Hill,Jonathan Maberry, Kami Garcia, Kate Elliott, Kelley Armstrong, Keri Arthur, Kevin Hearne, Kimberly Derting, Lauren Beukes, Laurie R. King, Leigh Bardugo, Martina Boone, Meg Cabot, Nalini Singh, Rachel Vincent, Rick Yancey, Robert J. Sawyer, Sarah J. Maas, Scott Sigler, Seanan McGuire, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Tad Williams, Tamora Pierce, and Yasmine Galenorn. 

Learn more about them via our Read For Pixels Author Alumni page here.
Google Hangout dates and times are released approximately 4 weeks ahead of each campaign. 

We also run special standalone online events and fundraisers in collaboration with authors. For example: in May 2014, we held a 2-week Drabble fundraiser together with Guy Gavriel Kay. 

Exclusive Author Goodies for a Great CauseAll participating authors have generously donated a range of goodies to help raise funds for the Pixel Reveal campaign including exclusive 1-to-1 Skype chats for fans and book clubs, signed first editions or special editions of their books, exclusive stories and poems, a critique session for work submitted by budding authors, special Read For Pixels swag packs, a chance to be a minor character in the author’s next novel, and more. Additional goodies come courtesy of various publishers and bestselling authors who are unable to attend a live Google Hangout with us. 

Fans, book lovers, and supporters are encouraged to donate to the Pixel Reveal campaign to collectively reveal the first Celebrity Male Role Model in the Celebrity Male Role Model Pixel Reveal campaign. Donations begin at as low as US$5 and all donors will receive one of the author goodies as a “Thank You” gift. The type of “Thank You” gift received by the donor depends on the donation amount. 

The fundraising pages are open for 6 weeks during the campaign. 

Updates for upcoming Read For Pixels fundraisers are released periodically during the month leading up to the kick-off of the campaign. To follow updates about the goodies and fundraising pages, go to: http://reveal.thepixelproject.net/voices-and-videos/read-for-pixels/fundraising-with-authors/

The campaign is almost over for this year, but you can still participate.  This weekend bestselling author Christopher Golden will be doing a live chat. You can click here to have him tell you exactly what he has planned.

Not only is this a good cause that has been linked to books and reading for many years, but it provides a couple of outside of the box RA opportunities.  Let me explain.

You can use the Read for Pixels marketing materials to make a sign advertising the charity and the live author events. They have great graphics of author photos and book covers that you can simply print and use.  But then, as you saw above, there are many authors in adult and YA  (and the links to even more) who have worked with charity before. You can easily make a quick display of the books by these authors.  What I love most about this idea is that the authors span all genres. This is an awesome way to have a wide ranging display with male and female authors of diverse backgrounds from all over the fiction map-- in one unified display! You can draw just about any reader with this display, and all of the work is done for you [sans pulling the books].

While I really like this idea, it is the multimedia nature of this campaign that provides even more RA opportunities. You could screen the Project for Pixels author chats for patrons. Now you only have this upcoming weekend left to do the live hangouts, but if you have a computer training room, you could put the live hangout up on the screen and let people participate in the chat at the library. They would LOVE that.

Now these are in the evenings over the weekend, so not every library is open. But even without being able to do this live, you could use the archived chats from this year and previous years on your website and allow patrons to watch a hangout with their favorite authors.  If you have a catalog that allows you to add links to the record, you could even link to these chats from the catalog.

Readers love a chance to see their favorite authors speak, and of course, we cannot afford to bring every author to all of our libraries, but that doesn’t mean we just give up on the idea. Use these recorded events as a proxy. The charity does not mind and neither do the authors because it is all to promote stopping violence against women.  They more people who see them, the more exposure the charity gets.

And the good news is, it is a charity no one [sane] could have a problem with you promoting at the library.