FORWARDING EMAILS TO AUTHORS

Due to the high volume of requests we receive to forward emails to authors, we must charge a $15 handling fee for this service. If the author you wish to email is not on the Balkin Buddies list, please email us first to ascertain that we have contact information for that author or artist. We do know a great number of authors and artists across the country, so feel free to check with us. But please do not send us a check before you know for sure that we have this information. Once you have confirmation of this, you may send us a check. See below for details where to send it.

AUTHOR MAIL AND REQUESTS FOR AUTOGRAPHED BOOKS

We are not really at liberty to give out author addresses for the purposes of sending student letters or fan letters. But we can help. We can forward emails and snail mails to authors for you for a small handling fee of $15 plus stamps to use to forward the letters to the author (be sure to weigh the letters so you send us the appropriate amount in stamps).  If you expect the author to respond, you will also need to send additional stamps -- that is, stamps for the author to use to send his or her response to Balkin Buddies, as well as stamps for Balkin Buddies to forward the author's mail to you. Please be sure to send us your email address so that we can email you a receipt and tell you when the mail was forwarded. The check should be payable to Balkin Buddies and send it, along with the postage stamps, your email address, and, of course, the author letters to:

Catherine Balkin

Balkin Buddies

209 Lincoln Place, Suite 2C

Brooklyn, NY 11217

If what you are looking for is an autograph from the author, please do NOT send us the book. Instead you should buy a bookplate (which you should be able to find in a bookstore) or label (which you can find in any office supply store). Then send us:

(a) the bookplate along with a note including the name of the person you want the author to write the autograph for (he or she will write that on the bookplate as well as provide the autograph)

(b) the $15 handling fee

(c) enough stamps for us to forward these materials on to the author

(d) more stamps equaling enough postage for the author to return the bookplate to Balkin Buddies

(e) and even more stamps equaling enough postage for Balkin Buddies to mail the bookplate back to you

(f) two envelopes large enough to hold the bookplate (one envelope for us to use to mail the bookplate to the author, and the other for the author to use to mail the signed bookplate back to Balkin Buddies)

(g) a self-addressed envelope for us to use to send the bookplate back to you.

Balkin Buddies can forward letters and requests for autographed books to any authors represented on this website, but we can also send them to a huge number of other children's book authors (Preschool through Young Adult). To find out if we have a specific author's address, contact us first and we will be happy to check.

If paying a handling fee is inconvenient, or if you are trying to write to an author of adult books, you can try sending the letters to the author's publisher and ask them to forward the letters for you. To find the author's publisher, look on the spine of the book or the copyright page. The publisher's address can be found in a number of places:  The Children's Book Council (www.cbcbooks.org), the most current Writer's Market which can be found in most bookstores, or The Literary Marketplace which can be found in most libraries.  Please be aware, however, that most publishers receive enormous amounts of mail for all their authors (and most of them publish virtually hundreds of authors), and author mail, by necessity, is not a high priority. It's not unusual for overworked editorial assistants to share this responsibility.  Chances are your mail will not get forwarded for several months, and may be sent long after your students have been promoted to the next grade. If and when the author gets the mail, he or she may be unable to answer due to manuscript deadlines, author travel, etc. It also often depends on how much mail the publisher sends the author all at once. Since they sometimes send it only 2-3 times a year, the author might get an awful lot of old mail all at once and be too busy and/or too overwhelmed to answer all of it. On the other hand, you never know. Maybe some editorial assistant will be ready to mail out author mail just as your letter arrives at the publisher and the author will get it in a surprisingly timely manner.

But if you don't mind spending a little money on this, Balkin Buddies will definitely get your author mail to the author in a timely manner and we'll let you know the date your mail has been forwarded. We have a fairly easy system already set up. All we ask is that, if you wish to send mail to an author who is NOT on our list of authors available for speaking engagements, check with us first.  Just call or email.  We'll be glad to try to help you. And if we believe there will be any delay in sending out author mail, we will warn you in advance and give you an estimate as to when it will go out.

If you have any questions, just let us know.  And thanks, as always, for your interest.