Self publishing??

The big problem with self-publishing is distribution.

I've seen several people publish their own childrens books, mostly PB's. The advantage that children's authors have over adult authors is that children's authors can do school visits, and sell books there. Especially if you have a book with a message, or if you write historical fiction.

But, like UJ said, distribution is the problem. If you don't have the time or money to promote it yourself, then not many people will see it.

Hi!

I am seriously considering self publishing a picture book geared toward the same audience as Robert Munsch's Love You Forever.

A few questions:

1. How do you structure payment with the illustrator you hire?
2. How do you marketing the book?
3. Ballpark, how much goes into taking this on financially?

I figure that should get me started. I appreciate your experience and your time.

Take care!

I know of some people who have self-published children's books and made a reasonable success of it, usually at a local level. Probably they haven't made a great deal of money, and have spent a tremendous amount of time and energy (to say nothing of cash) promoting their book at bookshops etc. Quite often I get sent self-published books and we did in fact acquire the rights to one some years back.

If you want to try to get your books into a bookshop, you will have to look at having them professionally printed and bound, then go round with copies and sell them to buyers. Be careful, though - it's probably going to be expensive, and if your book is good enough for a bookshop's buyer to want to buy it you should be able to interest a publisher. That way they have to do all the legwork, and you end up getting paid!

Most...MOST...as in almost all...self-published children's books don't make money. The standard tends to be how much money you lose. Anyone who breaks even on a self-published book is considered to have done quite well. It's incredibly expensive to do a quality self-published book.

I've reviewed a handful of self-published picture books and a few self-published novels. In all but one of the cases I've read, the authors would have been better served to save their money and simply improve their writing. Most of them had a sale-able concept and sometimes even a workable plot -- it just wasn't written very well. If they had put their self-publishing money into learning to improve their craft, they could have sold to a publisher in a few years. The ONLY self-published book I've read that didn't fall in this group was written by a professional writer retelling a family story and publishers felt it had too much of an ethnic niche -- but that was spelled out on all her rejection letters so she knew EXACTLY why she wasn't selling to a publisher.

If you've submitted your manuscript to publishers and haven't gotten rejections filled with praise but naming some element of market limitations, then chances are HUGE that what you need to do is improve, not self-publish. So many of the self-published books I've read could have suceeded if the author had worked to make it a really good book. Then the books could have reached so many more children/teens than they did. Instead of a handful of readers gained at the expense of time they could have been spending improving their craft, they could have had thousands of readers AND been better writers.

I often feel like begging children's writers -- don't give up and go self-publishing (or even worse *shudder* PA or other vanity presses where you double your problem by have a product that can't compete in cost.) You're almost certainly short changing yourself and your career.

gran