Everything You Want to Know About Publishing A Children’s Book Part Two

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Recently, we talked about what we experienced when publishing Crop Duster Pete. Here is part two of the discussion. In part one, I focused mainly on the writing process, but here I dive in to the marketing, illustrations, and behind the scenes work on getting your book published. Read on to find out everything you want to know about publishing a children’s book.

Build a Social Media Following

I cannot stress this tip enough. I also am very thankful Peter has been able to build his up. Especially if your book is surrounded by a central theme or idea, you want to build up a network or community of likeminded individuals. This gets you to your ideal audience so much faster, and allows you to market your book to the people who will actually want to buy your book.

The sooner you work on building your followers, the better. In today’s day and age, you can utilize multiple platforms and produce content that maximizes your reach. TikTok grows the fastest, so it’s definitely the easiest to get started with.

You can recycle your videos between Instagram, YouTube shorts, and Facebook to make sure your reach is high.

Utilize All Parts of Social Media

I would also recommend joining as many Facebook groups as you can, especially where your niche is. Once the book was published, I posted about the book in local/community Facebook groups, Crop Duster groups, author groups, and pilot groups.

The local groups gave us connections to interviews on radio stations and podcasts; the pilot groups got us in touch with fellow pilots who would be bound to want their children, neices/nephews and others to read the book, and the author groups helped us when we had questions.

An insanely vital step to take even before the book is published is to build a social media following. If you haven’t begun to build a social media presence, now is the time to do it.

Be Insanely Detailed With the Illustrations

I’m telling you, pour over those illustrations. Here, I get to reveal one of the two biggest mistakes we made. By this point in our publishing process, we wanted to get the book out as fast as possible. We were impatient, we were excited, we had already spent a good deal of time on the illustrations, and we were paying on something that hadn’t made us any money yet.

Mostly, we were just excited. When we got the illustrations, it was exactly what we were envisioning for the book. Peter went above and beyond on drawing out scenes, sending multiple photos of planes so that the illustrators could picture it better.

Don’t Miss the Obvious

Peter wanted the book to be as realistic and accurate as possible. He did a fantastic job of that…but, unfortunately, we missed two details. As we looked over each page, it looked great. The color scheme was perfect, the planes were realistic, everything seemed to be just fine.

So, we submitted our approval and went to the next step. It wasn’t until we were in the final stages of the publishing process that we realized our two errors. By this time, it was too late–we could have gone back, but it would have costed more time, and more money.

Thankfully, the mistakes were minor. I don’t think anyone has noticed them yet (I certainly haven’t been told). And with one, we changed the wording of the book a bit to make it fit better with the scene.

Don’t Rush!

Would we have caught it if we spent a bit longer going over the whole pages? Maybe so, maybe not. I certainly would have felt better if we hadn’t, knowing that we at least did a better job of trying. At the least, it’s a lesson learned and a word of advice to other book authors in the making.

I know this sounds like a silly, duh one. But, the truth is, you’re going to get to the illustrations step and get the drawings back and be so excited. The style is exactly what you had envisioned and they fit so well with the story. Everything’s great, let’s approve it in a jiffy and get to the next step of the book publishing process.

Don’t be like us. Take at least 24 hours to pour over the illustrations, take a break, and look at them a second time (at least!) before moving onto the next step.

Expecting Your Publisher To Do the Grunt Work For You

Don’t think that once the book is published, your work is done.

When we got the news that our book was published, we celebrated. Not that we shouldn’t have, accomplishing a published book is no small task.

But, it was almost like we felt like it was over. We made a few posts on social media, shared it with friends and family, and it honestly took off.

The support we got from family and friends and followers really made us feel incredibly special. It’s definitely something we appreciate to this day. But, it’s not enough, and it won’t be enough in your situation too.

Focus on Making a Profit

If you want to publish a book for the simple purpose of publishing a book, then fine. Your work is done. But if you want to make back the money, time, and effort you put into it, and especially if you want to make a profit, keep going.

Once your book is out in the open and able to be purchased, this is when your work begins. I would beg you to have that mentality from the get-go. You will set yourself up for failure if you don’t.

Think: Marathon

While we’re on that subject, something our publisher told us shortly after our book was published (and one of the last conversations that we had with her) has stuck with me. This is a marathon, not a sprint. I’ve learned a few lessons that have applied to this.

For starters, don’t go into short bouts of promoting to everyone, and then let your steam die. Peter calls me his “asset manager” when it comes to Crop Duster Pete. I’m the one who’s kind of been behind the scenes, reaching out to different avenues to promote his book for him while he works his regular job.

So, this mentality is crucial to me. It’s also anti- my personality, to be sure. I work well in short bouts of time and then put it off for days… or weeks. Don’t do that. Keep at it every day. Make a goal to reach out to 5 different promoting avenues (magazines, stores, newspapers, Facebook groups, etc) every day. Your rewards will come so much easier when you do.

One Step At A Time

Also, realize that you are continually planting seeds. Think of it like you would sharing your faith with someone. They are probably not going to accept it the first time they hear the gospel, and probably not even the 50th time. But the more you present it, the easier it is for people to understand.

The same goes for promoting your book. If you have a goal, you have a mission, and there’s a purpose behind why your book is written, continue to push that and plant seeds. You may not get anywhere today. I’ve had people contact us 6 months after an initial conversation. So don’t be discouraged, and look at it as planting seeds.

Spending Money On The Deluxe Digital Marketing Package

I hesitate on sharing this last tip, because what hasn’t worked for us has worked for many others. It was just a waste in our unique situation because we were already doing what they were offering to do. And, we were doing it well. Well, I should say, Peter was doing it.

When we were accepted we were presented with two different packages that gave us different options. Obviously, there’s a basic and a deluxe, this is not uncommon with most publishing services. The deluxe package included a website, YouTube video, social media posts, author interview, things like that.

Look For the Best For Your Situation

At the time, we wanted to promote the book as much as possible and make it worth our time. And it’s not to say that the marketing agency didn’t do a good job. They definitely did everything that was presented to us, and in a timely fashion. This is why I hesitate sharing this last tip.

It’s just that they didn’t do anything that we weren’t already doing ourselves (again, that was mostly Peter). So, if you have a good social media presence, if you are already savvy on different platforms and comfortable with outreach, making videos, and coming up with ideal posts and videos, save your money.

Before You Go,

Publishing a Children’s Book is no small feat. Every situation is different, and your unique story in the hands of thousands of young readers is powerful. You should applaud yourself on a job well done. I hope these tips help you along in your journey and inspire you to explore the publishing process.