8 Suggested Step by Step to Self-Publish Your Own Children’s Book
#1 Research
The first step you have to do when it comes to self-publish a children’s book is to do research on the topic you’re going to write. Even if you’re writing a fiction story, there must be some actual fact that happens in the story. For example, if you’re writing a fiction story about a rabbit, you need to put some actual facts about a rabbit’s behavior, how they eat, how they jump, how they survive, and so on.
The other research you have to do is who you are writing for, how old your readers are going to be, the reader’s interest, genre, or even what language you are going to write in. These researches will be beneficial for you to do the planning and come up with great marketing strategies. You can also research children’s book topics that haven’t been written much before. Or just write from your concerns that you wanted children to know and learn from it. For instance, if you’re concern about the environment nowadays, you could write about it in an interesting way and make children know and understand how important it is to put rubbish in its place and save the environment.
Also, you need to do some research about the illustration styles that are available out there for children’s books. Whether it is whimsical, cartoon, realistic, stylized, or sketches. You can also use your favorite children’s book and use that as the reference for the illustrations in the book.
#2 Plan
The next step after did some research, you must have come up with some planning, either a plan of the story that you’re going to write from who are the main characters are going to be in your children’s book, how the settings are in the story, how the story plot goes and how the problem-solving goes. Planning goes until you figure out every detail that you’re going to write for your children’s book manuscript.
Other than planning on the story, you must have come up with an idea of how the illustrations will look for your book later on. We advise you to do some research on the illustration styles that are available out there or perhaps use your favorite children’s book as the reference. This will help and ease the illustrator to illustrate your writings and shorten its process.
#3 Write
After did planning on the details you’re going to write, now you need to put it in words and make a great story out of it. Note that you must use words that are suitable for your targeted readers you’ve planned before. Apart from that, the words that are used in children’s books need to be understandable, easily pronounce for children so they could easily remember and easy to understand the point of the story.
We suggest you take your time and enjoy while in this step of writing, but need to make a progress each day. After all of this step is done, you’re ready to do some editing.
#4 Edit
Take a break for a little while after you finish writing your manuscript. Then come back again to edit. You need to check the punctuation marks, correct grammar, and the story plot. If it’s necessary, you can hire an editor to read your manuscript and edit it for some improvements on the story plot. It’s a great way to invest in professional help to improve in the making of your children’s book. Also, some say mentioning the editor’s name, illustrator’s name or any other professional help you’ve hired in your book will help the sale of your children’s book.
Hiring a professional proofreader to recheck your writing structures, pronunciations, punctuation marks, and grammar is another option you can do to make sure your writing is correct and ready to go to the next step.
5 A. Illustrate
Now the researches you’ve done on illustration styles will help you get through this process. You’re in the step of getting your manuscript illustrated as the description you’ve written. Interesting illustrations are also the most important aspect indie authors need to pay attention to because interesting illustrations could engage children to read the story until the end. Therefore, you must choose an experienced illustrator that has lots of portfolios in being a children’s book illustrator.
Finding an experienced illustrator can get a bit tricky because you just don’t want those who are good at drawing but also an illustrator that is communicative. Now, many websites provide you with lots of freelance illustrators that you can choose based on experienced, payment budget, styles, and lots more. TullipStudio is among those experienced and well-communicative children’s book illustrators that will provide you with many styles of illustrations for you to choose from. We have been in this field for almost 10 years and had many finished and ongoing children’s books. Also, we provide in creating children’s book front and back cover and book formatting so you’ll be ready to get your book published. For more information about TullipStudio and other tips about children’s book publishing, you can visit tips for writer.
#5 B. Research & Plan again
In this step, you’ll be needed to do some research again, but this time you’ll need to research which publisher is suitable to publish your children’s book according to your budget, distribution, and marketing strategies. There are many publishers that allow indie authors to self-publish their books and get them organized on their own. Many publishers also will provide the book distributions straight to customers, libraries, and brick-and-mortar bookstores. The tricky part is when it comes to royalties, the different publishers will divide different amounts of royalties to the author. Royalties also will be varies depending on your book costs, the distribution fee, and publishing cost.
For publishers, there are plenty to choose from, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, IngramSpark Publisher, Lulu Press, Barnes and Nobles Press, Apple Books and so much more. Some of the publishers allow you to publish the printed book and also create eBooks at the same time, provide you with free ISBN, give high royalties rate, wide distribution areas, and so much more beneficial features.
#6 Evaluate
By entering this phase, you must have your illustrations finished and ready to publish. Try to get your closest friends and relatives to read your finished format and ask them for their opinions. Or you can evaluate the illustrations per page so it’ll be quicker and easier for you and the illustrator to finish the job. Note that your book must be interesting by illustrations and also the text, when you think you got all of them done there’s no need to make a revision.
#7 Publish
In this step, you must already decide which publisher is suitable to print your books and turn them into a printed piece or eBook format. The tricky bit in this step is that you’ll be given several trim sizes for your printed children’s book and you just have to calculate it on your own or ask for the publisher’s advice for which one is the best choice. The cost will vary on the different trim sizes you chose, type of paper you choose, type of lamination for your book cover, distribution fee, and much more.
Early tips, you’ll be asked to fill in the description and keywords for your children’s book. You must write the description as attractive as possible and choose the right keywords. Keywords are important because your book will be the potential to come up when the shopper searched for the same keyword as what you’ve filled in.
#8 The Marketing Journey Begins
You can have a head start doing this phase while your book being published by doing book reveal perhaps. Many authors utilize the feature of the internet to do marketing strategies for instance doing a book promotion on their personal Social Media account, creating their personal websites that will lead shoppers to purchase the book. Make sure you’re connected with other children’s book authors and have a mutual support system. You can try to join Facebook Groups, asking to follow for follow on Instagram, and so on.
Advertising is another way to increase your book sales. In the digital era, advertising has gotten so easy where you can directly sell your products to those who have the same interest as what you’re selling, directly show up when shopper type in the same keywords as your products and so many other options. This advertising program has been created by many companies for instance Facebook ads, Google Ads, Amazon Marketing Service (AMS), and lots more. Of course, you’ll need lots of budgets to be using these advertising services but it’s quite useful though.