A Conversation with Cassie Baker
When I heard that Cassie Baker ’25 published a book in high school, I was immediately curious to learn more about her experiences writing and working with a publishing company. So few people end up actually publishing their dream book, whether it’s because they never finish the project or because they can’t find the right publisher. I figured why not ask the published author herself for advice? Cassie’s book, “Writing Right,” is about dysgraphia, a condition that causes some children to have difficulty writing. This conversation has been edited for clarity.
COURTESY IMAGE // CASSIE BAKER
Alyssa Slovin: How has your freshman year been treating you so far?
Cassie Baker: So far it’s been good. I really enjoy it. It’s been really weird to be in college — but a good kind of weird. I’m happy to be here. I just had to adjust for the first couple weeks, and now I’m good.
AS: Do you know what you’re intending on majoring/minoring in at this point?
CB: I am thinking of double majoring in the CAMS bio track and either data science or computer science. CAMS has two tracks. There’s an econ track and a biology mathematics track.
AS: So tell me, how did you start writing a children’s book? Did you write it for a class or on your own time?
CB: I wrote the children’s book for Girl Scouts, actually — it’s my Girl Scout Gold Award project. Both of my brothers have dysgraphia, and the children’s book is tailored to children with dysgraphia, and the end section has resources for parents, so it’s supposed to be an educational resource while simultaneously being a cute read for children with dysgraphia to resonate with.
AS: What are other Gold Award projects like?
CB: They’re really vast. The key is they have to be sustainable — that’s the big goal and rule. They have to be sustainable after you’re done with the project — it can’t be an event. An event can be part of the project, but the event has to be about the primary focus of the project. Back where I live, in Chesapeake, [Virginia], there’s a bin outside my high school collecting oyster shells, and there were a bunch of other locations as well. The shells were recycled and disposed of correctly.
AS: Can you summarise “Writing Right” for Flat Hat Magazine readers?
CB: It’s a children’s book with two primary parts — the first is a story about a kid named Noah and his journey with dysgraphia, especially because a lot of people don’t know what dysgraphia is. I remember when I first pitched the book to the council that you had to talk to in order to approve the project, and they said, “We don’t know what that is,” and I said, “It’s like dyslexia, but for writing.” The whole point of the story section is for the kids to read, and hopefully resonate with someone like them in a book. The end section is a lot of information for parents or guardians trying to help their kids. People know what dyslexia is, but they don’t necessarily know what dysgraphia is.
COURTESY IMAGE // CASSIE BAKER AND NOOR MOIZ
AS: Would you have ever considered writing a book — whether on this topic or not — before your Gold Award assignment?
CB: I don’t know, honestly. It was a big thing to do, especially while I was in high school. It was the idea of getting the Gold Award that was driving me. I like the impact that I seem to have had from the book, but I don’t know if I would have ever gotten there if it wasn’t for the Gold Award.
AS: Are you a big reader?
CB: I’m really not, actually. It’s weird. I do like to write, but I’m not usually a writer. I’m more mathy, sciencey, which is why this was more out of my comfort zone — it was definitely a challenge.
AS: How did you choose your topic and medium? What made you feel like a children’s book was the best format to tell this story?
CB: The people who are really affected by [dysgraphia] are kids. On the topic of dysgraphia itself, when I was a kid, I watched my brothers struggle through the earlier years of education. For example, when they had a project where they had to cut out shapes, they couldn’t do that. When one of my brothers was in early middle school, he had to write his essays by hand. I remember my mom reaching out to the teacher and asking her if he could type his essay. They weren’t supposed to, because early on, that’s when you write everything by hand. The teacher said “Sure,” and after she received the essay, she came back to my mom and asked if my brother wrote it because it was so much better. I saw it made the biggest difference for them when they were younger, so I knew a children’s book would be a good medium for this project.
COURTESY IMAGE // CASSIE BAKER AND NOOR MOIZ
AS: How did you know it was ready to pitch to publishers?
CB: It took me quite a while to get to the point where I was ready to actually publish it. I had a lot of mental blocks when I was working on this project. I was hoping that it would take about a year, and it took me three and a half because it became very difficult at times. I relied heavily on feedback, whether from my family or the rest of my Girl Scout troop. My dad has written and published books before, so he was definitely a great resource for me — I would go to him to ask about copyright information and getting an ISBN number, all those little things that you don’t think about. There were things I never even thought I’d have to include. I’m not a doctor, so in the beginning, in the front cover, there’s a disclaimer saying that this is not medical information — this is a project, and it’s hopefully a guiding hand. I link to a lot of resources, but I still had to put in that disclaimer.
AS: What was the hardest part of sending your story to publishers? Do you know what made you and your work stand out to Watertree Press?
CB: My dad owns Watertree Press, which is why this whole project worked. My work could have been rejected, but there’s not a whole board of people — it’s my dad. It definitely would have been a lot harder without him. The key is that he knew what the book needed in order for him to be able to publish it. A very important factor in choosing his publishing company was the fact that they print on-demand instead of printing in bulk. Looking at past Gold Award Projects that involved writing books, one girl ended up with a whole stack of books in her garage that she would just give away. If that works for you, great, but I did not want to do that. What on-demand printing does is that once a book is ordered, that order is printed. So many companies make you purchase a large order to get the book printed at all — that was the reason I chose this method, and I knew Watertree Press could do that for me. I’m not the primary distributor; it’s on Amazon and Kindle. If I want to acquire a book, I have to order one myself. Also, I’m not allowed to get any of the profit because that’s how the Girl Scouts work. You also can’t sell anything on Amazon for free — I tried, they didn’t like it. You can either set a price where you get some profit and they’ll get some profit, or you can set it as low as you can make it and they still get their profit. I was just looking at the sales statistics, which is another reason why I’m glad to be working with Watertree, and between hard copies and Kindle copies, we’ve sold around 2,000 books. I also have an online PDF on my website writingright.org that is 100 per cent free. All the options where it can be free, it’s free.
AS: Since “Writing Right” is a children’s book, did you go into the project already having someone to illustrate it, or did your publisher match you with an illustrator? Can you tell me about the process of working side by side with someone illustrating your ideas?
CB: The biggest limitation I had was with illustrations because I’m not an artist. I was initially going to have a family friend do the pictures — she’s in art school and a wonderful artist, and I loved her work. Unfortunately, she was in college, and it just got to be too much, so she had to pull back, which is totally understandable. But it did leave me wondering, “Oh no, what do I do?” I am not artistically inclined. I ended up finding a woman who would do the illustrations. I would chat back and forth with her online, she would send me proofs, I could give feedback, and she would edit them. I had all the images in my book done by her — her name is on the book, too: Noor Moiz. I went through Fivver — I looked at a bunch of different children’s image artists, and I found that I really liked her art, and it ended up being the art for the book. I was really happy with it. The best thing is that when I first started, I drew little proofs of what was in my head. I sent them to her to use for reference, and actually, almost every single picture ended up in there — she turned my stuff into her stuff. It was actually really cool; I was like, “Wow, that’s what I had in mind!” I had told her that if she had other ideas to go for it, and I’d probably be fine with it, but it was amazing to see that most of my lower-level creations made it in there.
COURTESY IMAGE // CASSIE BAKER AND NOOR MOIZ
AS: Do you aspire to write more in the future, or did you write this book with the idea that it would be your only one? Would you work with Watertree Press again, or work on a book with another publisher in the future?
CB: I honestly don’t know. As I said, the driving force of this was my Gold Award Project. I struggled a lot with the process, but I really enjoyed seeing what happened afterwards. I have a number of reviews on Amazon with people saying that their kid really resonated with the book, and that’s been my favourite part. If I wrote something new, I’d want it to also have some sort of impact on people. It’s not really in the field of things I’m used to, or the path I plan to take, but if I found the right thing to write about, I would do it.
AS: What was the response like, whether that’s an in-person response or online reviews on Amazon or Goodreads? Has anyone reached out to you about the impact your story had on them or their loved ones?
CB: If you look in the Amazon reviews, there’s one that’s structured really differently, and it’s really long. She contacted me — she runs a book review blog — and asked if she had permission to talk to me about the project, online, of course, due to COVID-19. She asked me questions about the book and the process and then published the whole thing as a book review, which was so cool.
AS: Did you expect to have a readership beyond those who knew you?
CB: No, not at all. I expected it to be something that I knew existed. I was astonished we sold 10 books, but we’ve sold roughly 2,000. I know that in the realm of book sales, that’s not actually a lot, but that’s really cool to me. 2,000 people have gotten this, and I’m not openly promoting it. I even have a “Frequently Bought Together” section on Amazon, which is such a random thing to have — there’s a professional medical book about dysgraphia. I haven’t really tried looking at what happens if you search dysgraphia on Amazon, but there really aren’t many resources tailored to younger audiences. There are all types of children’s books about dyslexia and other common issues that children face so they can feel more heard, but I searched really hard, and I could only find one children’s book about dysgraphia. That’s what solidified my decision to choose this book as my project. I didn’t want to write one if there was already a saturated market and just repeat what everyone else was doing, but I realised that there’s really not. And the fact that it was so hard to find children’s resources is what made me really want to take it on.
AS: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors here at the College? Especially in terms of children’s literature?
CB: For one, I never, ever envisioned myself writing a book. So, if you’re someone who wants to write a book or someone who wants to do something along that path but you’re thinking that it’s not your strength, it’s not mine either. I was so out of my comfort zone. But now, it’s one of my biggest accomplishments. The best part is seeing that it’s actually been able to reach people. If you’re looking for writing advice, I’m probably not the person to come to. I’m here for emotional support. Writing is just not my strength; I had a lot of people proofread. That’s the other thing — I’m not a person who’s all that great at receiving criticism. It stresses me out at times, and one of the things I absolutely had to get okay with was receiving criticism. It’s never malicious. But when you’re writing something that is actually going to go to print, that’s different from printing an essay for school. You can print that for free or pay the $.10 that William and Mary charges. [Publishing] is not free, and it’s not simple. Obviously, it’s different if someone is actually trying to knock you down, but most of the time, that’s not it. You can think things are perfect, and honestly, they could be perfect grammatically and stylistically, but maybe a kid wouldn’t understand it — that’s something I had to do. I read through children’s books to see what types of vocabulary was right for my audience — I’m used to writing papers for class, and I don’t talk like a third-grader in those essays, so that was a big change. You have to think of the perspectives of the people or things you’re writing about and what fits it stylistically. You have to be okay with criticism, because if not, you’ll end up with something half-baked, or it’ll never get done.
COURTESY IMAGE // CASSIE BAKER
