July E-News from Elizabeth Claire:
Hope your summer is full of fun and rest as well as tooling up for next
school year.
(If you get no juice from these E-News, you can stop receiving it at
any time. Just click here: Unsubscribe.)
I'm working away in the hiatus from publishing our newspaper, getting
books into print, researching materials for Easy English NEWS,
and kayaking around a little lake and then jumping in a pool to escape
the heat here in Virginia.
ESL Mystery at Amazon.com
Amazon.com is one of my favorite places to search for books to buy. I'm
a good customer. But here's a mystery:
I just discovered that Easy English NEWS is available at
Amazon. This is odd, since they never asked to be distributors, and I
don't sell to them. (They generally ask for a 55% discount from publishers,
then undercut the publishers own prices, and are hard to compete with.
Which makes them a great place to buy books, but not to sell books to.)
Amazon states that it will take 6-10 weeks to get the first issue of
Easy English NEWS. Their cost of multiple copies is a multiple
of the $35 for a single subscription, without any discount. Anyone ordering
Easy English NEWS through Amazon will not only wait longer
to get their first copy, but if they order two or more copies, they will
pay a huge mark up. That is, instead of $50 a year for two subscriptions,
the customer is charged $70.
Who will get that mark up that Amazon charges? Not me, that's for sure,
as I only charge the distributor our advertised cost, minus their commission
(15%). If Amazon or any other unauthorized distributor turns around and
charges full freight to the buyer of multiple orders, they get to pocket
quite a bit if schools use them to purchase large quantities. (My price
if the order is 20 copies is $1.35 x 20 = $27 per month, whereas Amazon
will charge $3.50 x 20 or $70 per month.
So beware, especially if your school uses Amazon as the "cheapest
way to get books."
Four of my books have had a good run at Pearson Education, and now I
have those rights back. I won't be selling them through Amazon, as my
prices don't allow 55% leeway. So the four "Kits" are not available
new from Amazon itself. However, Amazon has affiliates who have a few
new copies of the Prentice Hall editions. These affiliates at Amazon and
are charging what the market will bear. ESL Teacher's Activities
Kit, for example, which I will be selling at $35 once it is back
in print (August) is listed at Amazon at $100 new, and The ESL Teacher's
Holiday Activities Kit (which I'll have back in print for $35
later in the fall) is selling new at $174 on Amazon. Buyer beware.
A further search shows that my book What's So Funny? A Foreign
Student's Introduction to American Humor is selling at $26 used
at Amazon.com and new at $143.32 at Buy.com. It will be $15 from me, when
it is revised and back in print. So hold your horses.
Just a few more days! Grand Opening sale ends
June 30, 2010
We ESL teachers love giving things away and we
love a bargain.Our grand opening sale has been successful for all of us.
If you haven't taken advantage, or you need more of anything, there's
a few days left, but hurry.
10% DISCOUNT on all website
book orders. Visa and Mastercard are
accepted for online orders. If you are ordering for your school on an
authorized purchase order, just print out the order form with that number
and a signature, and fax or mail it to us. If you'd rather pay by check,
mail us the order form with your check.
FREE shipping to addresses
in the U.S.!
Shipping prices for outside the U.S. will soon be available (this takes
coordination with the Postal Service to calculate rates after the customer
enters the books desired and the country to send them to (so the PO will
know what weights and zone to charge for.) Then we'll be open for worldwide
business. Non-US orders must be paid by credit card in U.S. funds. We
are not set up for electronic bank transfers.
GIFT! Just a Minute! Game with
any book order of $50 or more. A $16 value! One
to a customer, please) (If you already have this great speaking game,
you'll know it's a great gift for a colleague...or mainstream teacher...or
a deserving student.)
FREE! 22 pages
from my forthcoming book, Easy English Crossword Puzzles that
has step by step instruction for puzzle-shy students as well as pages
of useful crossword puzzle vocabulary, lists of common abbreviations,
states and capitals, lists of contractions, three full practice puzzles,
crossword puzzle history, and much more--all in easy English. Just print
it out and duplicate it for your classes, or let your students each print
out their own copy. The full 96 page book will be out in September at
$14.
If you have been wondering whether to invest in the
ESL Phonics for All Ages for your students with interrupted
education who need to develop literacy skills, you can download and print
out FREE: Sixteen
sample pages from each book to
try with your students. That will let you know directly if these books
will help your nonreaders get a grip on decoding English.
All these GRAND OPENING goodies and freebies
are available until June 30, 2010.
In addition, while you are at the website, you can print out your order
form for
Easy English NEWS to order by June 30, 2010.
Our catalog is in PDF format, so
if you want to print it out to carry around with you while you are making
your selections of books, please do that. Those prices are also good until
June 30, 2010. We'll have an updated catalog July 1, 2010.
NEW: A grammar
column in Easy English NEWS
I'm working on outlining the new column focusing on grammar that so many
teachers and readers have asked for. It will take the place of "Ask
Elizabeth." The content will be taken from the month's news and
I am going to try to be all things to all people. That is, have a
grammar discussion that is not over the heads of newer readers, yet still
challenging for high intermediate readers. The format is not yet written
in stone, so if you have any requests or bright ideas, email me.
New editor for This Is Your Page
Starting in September, Dr. Lynn Corigliano will be taking over the Teacher's
Guide and Quizzes. Lynn has taught English as a Second Language for umpteen
years, is a teacher trainer and was ESL coordinator at Parsippany High
School in New Jersey. Lynn will also be the editor for This Is Your Page,
although I will also get to read all of the stories before she chooses
them.
Teachers have asked for additional types of tests on content and vocabulary
for each issue. These will be posted on the website, and will include
"Odd Man Out" (which word doesn't belong?) vocabulary quizzes,
CLOZE exercises (fill in the blank, either from memory, from a word
list, or from dictation), and sentence completion quizzes. You can access,
download, and print these tests for your classes. It will vastly increase
the value of Easy English NEWS in your classroom.
Free Game: Show Off!
Here's a free downloadable, printable acting-out game that will help
English language learners (and anyone else) become more adept at non-verbal
communication. It can be hilarious fun in your classroom, at parties,
for vocabulary review, and expandable to many ability levels.
ESL Teacher's Activities Kit will be in
print by August 2010, and ESL
Teacher's Holiday Activities Kit will be in print by September.
What's So Funny is temporarily out of print
and will be completely updated and revised in a new edition in the future.
When we have it ready, I'll announce that in this
E-News.
If you order Easy English NEWS by June 30, 2010,
you can get NEXT YEAR'S subscription at THIS
YEAR'S PRICES
Let your school know they can take advantage of this until June 30, 2010.
After that, there will be a modest increase in prices. Easy English
NEWS will still be the best bargain in your classroom, delivering
12 pages of variety, news, and teacher aids at a very low per-student
cost.
Free Stuff!
Reminder:
prices increase starting July 1, 2010.
Take
advantage of this year's prices by ordering before June 30, 2010.
For the free samples of the ESL Phonics for All Ages, CLICK
HERE. Then click on each of the books you want samples from, one
at a time. That will open to a page showing a red PDF icon. (You may
need to scroll down an inch or two.) Click on the red icon and the pages
will open up in PDF format, which you can download and/or print out.
Did you miss any previous E-News? They are
archived for your convenience at our website. Click
here.
Subscribers to our 12-page monthly newspaper, Easy English NEWS
receive a monthly teacher's guide with background information on the stories
and three reproducible quizzes.
Your comments are most welcome. Click
here to send me a message.
Elizabeth
Claire
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