It can be argued that authors choosing to self-publish children’s books have the toughest market to crack. This is due to the simple fact that you cannot market directly to the audience, you instead have to target their Mums and Dads and convince them that your book is right for them to read or give to their kids.
Another reason that self-publishing children’s books are difficult – particularly young children’s picture books – is that they are more expensive to create because of having to hire illustrators or – if you are also the illustrator – the time and resources it takes to complete the artwork for your book and prepare it for publication.
It isn’t all doom and gloom though. Far from it in fact, with new services such as Lulu Jr. and Epic! hitting the market, the self-publishing marketplace is opening up for digital eBooks to be made accessible and affordable for authors and readers alike.
If you have the budget, and want to self-publish your children’s book, there are still plenty of opportunities out there for you to find an audience for your book and generate solid sales for it. Here are a few tips that can help you reach those little readers:
Knowing Your Market
Regardless of whether you have written and produced a picture book for toddlers or written a YA novel, you need to do your research so that you fully understand your market and can therefore target your readers more accurately and effectively. To do this, you need to keep a close eye on the market and make a list of the following:
- \The bestsellers in your genre and age range on Amazon, B&N and other marketplaces.
- \The artwork and cover designs – Are there patterns in the kind of designs that are leading the way and generating more sales? What can you learn about your own book cover based on the marketplace?
- \The price range – This is always important, as you don’t want to undercharge and make no money from your book sales, but you also don’t want to lose sales by massively overcharging. Look at books similar to yours in the same genre and see what they are selling for. This will give you a guide as to how much you can charge for your kid’s book.
Once you understand which market your book should be targeting, you will be able to make a maximum impact on the genre and age group when you release your book onto the marketplace.
Targeting Your Audience
It can be tricky to target your audience specifically, due to the fact that toddlers and younger children can’t be marketed to on Facebook and Twitter, don’t spend too much time on the web searching for great books to read and aren’t known to subscribe to blogs and newsletters of self-published authors…
But their Mums and Dads do, and that is who you will have to target in order to market your works and sell more copies of your novel. There are a wide range of ways to target potential readers, including:
- Social Media Marketing – including Facebook and Twitter. You can use Hashtags for genres and use your posts and Tweets to detail the kind of children’s book you are putting out into the world. You can also use sponsored posts on Facebook in order to target a specific audience with advertising
- PR – Press releases are a great way of informing parents that an exciting new book is soon to be released and it will blow the minds of their kids. Send a press release to your local paper, radio station and communities and try to create some buzz with a few images and blurbs from your book
- Create a book trailer for YouTube and showcase the beautiful illustrations your book is going to have. Here is a stunning example for The Adventures of Lucy Snigglefritz
- Blogging – Use your writing skills to write copy and blog posts for your website that optimises keywords that are likely to improve your search rankings for terms that potential readers will search for on Google and co. You should also share your blog posts on your social media accounts, using titles and Hashtags that will target your market readers.
Give Your Book the Right Look
Depending on your viewpoint, the process of designing your book cover and/or the illustrations within is one of the greatest advantages of being a self-published author or one of the greatest challenges. Not everyone has an eye for detail for what should feature on the cover of a book and make it sale, but if you do your research, you can get an idea of what works and what doesn’t.
The good news is, many self-publishing marketplaces are now offering book covering services, including CreateSpace, Lulu and others, and there are hundreds of graphic designers out there who specialise in book cover design and illustrations. You’ve just got to be prepared to hit Google and social media and hunt these guys down.
Try some of the following Google searches to find book cover artists and illustrators, and add your location to the query if you would rather meet those people in person rather than do business over the web:
Children’s Book Cover Services
Children’s book illustration services
You can also use Twitter to search for illustrators using this search and then clicking on ‘People’ on the left-sidebar, or by using broader terms like book cover services and repeating this trick. If you choose to search ‘Everything’, you might find services that provide book covers and illustration and be able to contact them directly.
Further research:
- Listen to this fascinating and insightful podcast from Karen Inglis and Joanna Penn that focusses on many aspects of self-publishing and marketing children’s books
- Read this article on Lulu’s blog that looks at marketing your children’s book
- Blurb.co.uk has a wonderful selection of great examples of children’s books, as well as interviews with self-published children’s authors Wade Alger and Jim Wegerbaur.
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