Lesson Planner

Home > Patron Toolbox > Lesson Planner

Lesson Planner turns your book into a lesson a teacher can run, which is what turns one classroom into thirty sales.

Teachers Buy Class Sets, and They Need a Lesson First

A teacher who loves your book still has to justify it. Their week is planned around standards, their budget needs a reason, and a novel with no teaching materials is a novel they will recommend to one student instead of assigning to thirty.

Publishers supply that material for their lead titles. If you are independent or midlist, nobody supplies it for you, and building a lesson plan from scratch is a job most authors are not trained to do.

Lesson Planner builds it. Upload the manuscript, choose a grade, and say what the lesson should accomplish.

You get back:

• A full lesson plan with objectives, activities, and timing
• Discussion questions pitched at the grade you chose
• Activities tied to specific passages in your book, not generic exercises
• A structure a teacher can follow without adapting it first
• Assessment ideas for teachers who need to grade the unit
• Content shaped by the goal you set, whether comprehension, theme, or craft

Use It To

• Give teachers a reason to assign your book instead of recommending it
• Put an educator resources page on your website that brings in search traffic
• Arrive at a school visit with material the teacher can use after you leave
• Pitch your book to a district or a homeschool co-op with something concrete
• Build the back matter that makes a novel adoption-friendly
• Support a librarian running a book club for young readers
• Give a homeschool parent a week of work built around your story
• Turn one enthusiastic teacher into a repeat annual order

Why It Works

Classroom adoption is the most durable sales channel in children's and young adult publishing. A teacher who adopts your book teaches it again next year, and the year after, and tells the teacher next door. One adoption can outlast a launch by a decade.

Teachers do not adopt on quality alone. They adopt what fits the constraints they work under, and a book with ready materials clears those constraints while a better book without them does not.

Grade level does most of the work here. The questions that open up a sixth-grade discussion fall flat with tenth graders, and a plan pitched wrong is worse than none, because it signals the author does not know the audience.

Spend a moment on the goal field. A lesson aimed at theme looks nothing like one aimed at reading comprehension, and telling the tool which one you want is the difference between a usable plan and a generic one.

Related Tools

Explore more Patron Toolbox tools that pair well with this one:

• Classroom Activity Planner - Build the individual activities inside the lesson.
• Quiz Maker - Create the assessment that goes with the unit.
• Discussion Guide Builder - Draft a discussion guide for classes and book clubs.
• Coloring Page Maker - Add a printable activity for younger grades.
• Timothy Finder - Profile the reader your book is written for.

FAQ

• What is Lesson Planner? A Patron Toolbox tool that builds a complete lesson plan around your book. It reads your manuscript, takes a grade level and a teaching goal, and returns objectives, activities, and assessment ideas.
• Do I need to be a teacher to use it? No. The plan arrives in the format teachers expect, which is the part most authors cannot produce on their own.
• Will it match my state's standards? It builds a plan around your book and your stated goal rather than a specific standards framework. Teachers usually map materials to their own standards, and many will do that themselves if the plan is good.
• What if my book is for adults? University and adult education courses use the same shape. Choose the highest grade option and set a goal that matches the level you are aiming at.
• Can I get more than one lesson? Yes. Run it again with a different goal or grade, or continue the conversation and ask for a multi-day unit.
• How much does it cost? Lesson Planner is available to all Novel Marketing patrons at the $10/month level and above. You can become a patron at patreon.com/novelmarketing.