Are you interested in knowing how to publish a children’s book on your own?
If you’re a writer who wants to learn how to self-publish children’s books, you’re in the right place.
But let’s talk about self-publishing first before we get into the details.
There are two main ways to publish your book: traditional publishing and self-publishing.
Traditional publishing is when a well-known press puts out a book.
Self-publishing, on the other hand, is when you publish a book without a publishing company’s help.
This means you have to edit, produce, distribute, and promote your book.
Even though both of these ways have pros and cons, this article will be about self-publishing a children’s book.
Let’s look at all the steps you need to take to become an independent author after you’ve written your first book.
Steps to Making Self-Publishing Children’s Books
Edit Your Manuscript
The first step to publishing your book is fixing your manuscript.
You can find mistakes and fix your writing by rereading your manuscript at different times.
To get the perfect draft, you need to:
- Do as much self-editing as you can. Reread your manuscript while thinking about kids.
- Ask yourself if your story is interesting and if the characters in it are interesting.
- Another trick is to read your work from the point of view of a third person. Think of yourself as someone else and read the document like it’s the first time you’ve seen it.
You will make changes that you wouldn’t have made otherwise.
- If you need to, get help from a professional. Sometimes you need to hear what someone else thinks. Who knows, maybe they’ll give you honest feedback to help you edit your manuscript better.
Get a professional editor on the job, or have some trusted friends and family members read your book and offer critiques.
- If that doesn’t work, you can also get feedback from beta readers. Having other people look over your manuscript is an excellent way to see it differently.
Hire An Illustrator
- A good illustrator is very important for a book for kids.
- Pictures and colors make the text more interesting and catchy. So, finding an illustrator who can give your words wings is important.
- You can ask your family and friends or look for illustrators on Facebook author groups or freelancing websites like Fiverr. Fiverr is a freelancer marketplace where you can find an illustrator based on how much you want to spend.
Design The Cover And Format The Interior
- Text layout—from margin size to typeface—is just as important as photos to keep readers engaged.
- Many formatting tools on the internet can help you set up the inside of your book.
- You can also hire a professional designer to do more flexible work and look more polished.
Purchase An ISBN + Barcode And Copyright Your Book
To self-publish your book, you need to buy an ISBN, which is an International Standard Book Number.
ISBN is a long number with a barcode that you can find on the back of every book.
It would be best if you also made sure that no one else could copy or print your book in the future.
You can get the ISBN through Amazon Services, but Amazon will own your book if you do.
Because of this, buying one on your own is always better.
Self-Publish as an Ebook or a Printed Book
If you’ve finished all the steps above, you’ve done the first half of what it takes to publish your book.
Now you have to choose a way to get the word out. You have three options:
Use Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing to put out your book.
When you use a self-publishing company to get your book out there, most people choose Amazon.
Even better, self-publishing your book on Amazon doesn’t require you to be a professional.
It also lets you reach a global audience.
Using Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing to publish your book is also a simple and easy process.
Print on Demand Self-Publishing Children’s Books
Because there is no restriction and no storage, print-on-demand is the best approach to printing your book. It goes more quickly than other options, like Offset printing.
It’s also cheap, which makes it the best choice for independent authors. Some well-known services that print books on demand are:
eBooks
It’s a great idea to publish a children’s book as an eBook.
Let’s be honest: we live in a technological age where more than half the world uses the internet.
The colorful electronic format of eBooks can get more young people to read them.
It’s easier to buy and read an e-book.
Indie authors can save both time and money by publishing their works as eBooks.
Market Your Book Properly
We can’t say enough about how important it is to market your book well.
How you sell your book can either make or break it.
You need a good plan for marketing your book to reach more people and be read by more people.
Finding out who you want to sell your book to is the first step in marketing it.
Children’s books may be the only kind of book you don’t market to your target audience.
Because kids don’t buy books, you have to market to the people who do: their parents and other relatives.
Secondly, choose a good way to market your business.
You can put ads on social apps like Facebook and others.
Send copies to bloggers, especially book bloggers, and ask them to review them.
You can use these ideas in different ways to market your book.
Make An Excellent Launch Plan
As an independent author, the worst thing you can do is jump on a trend without a plan for how to launch your book.
Even if you have a plan, you might still get into trouble.
But if you have one, it can help you deal with these problems better.
Also, if you have a great launch plan, everything is a hundred times easier to handle than it was before.
Finances: The Cost of Self-Publishing Children’s Books
When you publish on Amazon, what sells is quality. And yes, good things do cost money.
Your overall publishing costs can be affected by many things, such as:
- Format: The format of the book, such as paperback, hardcover, or ebook,
- Printing: The cost of printing can vary depending on the number of books printed, the quality of paper used, and the printing method.
- Design: The cost of design and layout, including cover design,
- Distribution: The cost of distributing the book, such as the cost of listing on online retailers and distribution to bookstores
- Marketing: The cost of marketing and promoting the book
Reedsy says that authors can expect to pay $24 for developmental editing for every 1,000 words, $15–20 for copy editing, and $10–15 for proofreading.
Because of this, self-publishing children’s books can be expensive, but if it’s done right, it can be worth it.
Getting pictures can be the most expensive part of putting out a book for kids.
Depending on several factors, the price of an illustrated book can be anywhere from $1,000 to $20,000.
Conclusion
Self-publishing a children’s book may seem hard, but it will be easy if you plan ahead and follow the steps above.
The best thing about self-publishing is that you can publish your book in any way you like.
At first, it might seem like a lot, but when you hold a copy of your book in your hands, you’ll feel like all your hard work was worth it.
So, if you want to get your story into a book, you should do it.
In the end, it will all be worth it!
