[ePub] MeeGenius

Children's picture books, whether self-pubbed or not, are hard to write. Every word must have a reason for being on the page.

This ^^^^

Short =/= Easy.

___Mag said:

Hi Kellion,

Selling a lot of children's books is hard. The rest is doable.

You can hire an illustrator or find someone you know who can draw. You can learn how to do the layout for a print book, learn how to prepare an epub for iBookstore, a MOBI for Kindle, and learn how to upload it to POD sites.

Or, you can hire someone who has moderate prices to do the print book and ebook preparations for you. They likely also have illustrators on hand.

Click to expand...

Just to clarify, you are admitting that it's hard to sell a lot of children's ebooks, and then you are suggesting that the solution is to hire people to do it for you or spend hours learning.

A) Many people don't have the time to learn a skill like this. To do it well (on a professional level) certainly requires more time than most people can manage. Sure, an amateur might be able to make something that looks okay, but when you're trying to compete against professional books that are also being released, looking okay often isn't good enough (at least not to sell a lot of copies).

B) The time and cost of learning aside, if a person can't do it themselves, they must pay someone, as you said.

C) How on earth is this person expected to earn back all that money they've spent when selling well is "hard"?

Unless it's money that can be used without causing problems (most of us don't have thousands laying around to play with), this isn't going to be a particularly good investment.

So basically it comes down, for the majority, to being a matter of spending a lot and probably not earning it back because selling children's books electronically is still tough, or doing everything on their own to save money and then still not selling many copies because it's not professional. Compared to the option of being published by a legit publisher where at least you aren't spending squat and you have a chance to make more money at it.

This is especially true considering the fact that the good ebooks I've seen for children also have added features. Touch this object, answer questions, etc. Those would be even harder for the average writer to work in.

I'm sure it can be done and I'm sure there is someone out there who has made money selling picture books online after self-publishing. But one thing I can guarantee it isn't is "easy."

Their site looks great. Has anyone worked with them outside of the contest? I wanted some info on publishing with them.

oryfan, read the first page of this thread. Pay particular attention to the discussion of the legalities of their terms and conditions, and their contract. If you submit your work to them you automatically give them the rights to publish it: you don't get to negotiate any of the contract, the royalties are low, and they get those rights for ever. Do you really want to do this when there are other publishers which don't grab those rights, which will pay you better royalties, and which will almost certainly sell more copies of your books?