Finding Great Children's Books Online With Toppsta

One of the hardest things about being an independent author is getting people to see your books, especially if they are to be found amongst the thousands online. 

Amazon is the biggest online retailer of children's books by far, But it really only works well if you know what you are looking for. If you are looking for something new, you are unlikely to discover the best books, rather the books that sell really well. This means books that have been published for a long time, or books that have been put out by celebrity authors, or those that are already bestsellers. Because Amazon promotes books that already sell well on Amazon, it is only easy to find books that are already successful.

So where do you go if you want to discover new books for children? Where can you find ones that are written well and enjoyed by kids no matter who has published them, or how famous the author is?

This is where Toppsta comes in, by collecting reviews and ranking books accordingly. The Toppsta website says,

“We collect reviews from children and parents (and grandparents and librarians..) and ... you’ll find the top books for each year from babies to teenagers and every age in between!

We hope you’ll discover new books, new authors and new series and we’d love it if you’d join our community and write reviews of children’s books you’ve enjoyed. It takes less than 5 minutes to write a book review and you’ll be helping other children (and parents) find the very best books to read.”

I'd recommend you head over to Toppsta and review some books you've read and discover some you haven't. And a giveaway of FAB Club is running in the month of September 2018. Click the image below to head to Toppsta and enter.

click to find FAB Club on Toppsta

Bullying is Still a Big Problem in NZ Schools

I was bullied at school and I remember it vividly. It was one of the reasons I wrote FAB (Friends Against Bullying) Club. .

The Press in Christchurch (now calling itself Stuff, unfortunately) is doing a series this week about bullying and it makes disturbing reading. There are ways to prevent bullying, but it seems those methods are not being implemented across New Zealand schools.

“One in four Kiwi kids are bullied at school – a rate that’s barely improved in the last 15 years and is more than double the OECD average. ”

And:

“New Zealand has the second worst rate of school bullying in the developed world after Latvia – and more than double the OECD average, according to a 2015 survey by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Depending on the global studies consulted, between 20 and 50 per cent of Kiwi schoolchildren are bullied.

Government data suggests rates of bullying have only decreased 3 per cent since 2013, and a 30-year study indicates bullied children are four times more likely to contemplate suicide as adults. Bullies are twice as likely.”

I hope this spurs more action, but I feel newspapers aren't as influential as they once were.