Anyone Indie publish their MG? (Self or Small Press)

Jaegur

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Just curious what things look like if you go this route, as I've always thought that most book sales for kids come from buying physical copies in stores or grabbing them from libraries.
 

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I think it's very difficult to self publish anything younger than YA personally, though people have done it. Self publishing in general can become a full time job, but with kidlit I think it's even more so as you are 100% correct: kidlit requires physical copies and needs to get in the hands of librarians, teachers and on the shelves of bookstores. Anything of course is possible if you put in the work yourself, but I do think it's a much harder slog to self publish kidlit over YA and Adult. If you are considering self publishing I highly recommend school visits as a way to self promote, which again is a far more time consuming and costly way to promote than, say, a blog tour. (Fun Fact: All the usual avenues for promotion tend not to work for MG. Yes there are some librarian specific blogs and stuff, but all the wonderful opportunities offered YA books just don't exist for MG. That's another challenge. As someone who has done both YA and MG it is stunning how much easier it is to promote YA etc.)
 

Jaegur

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I think it's very difficult to self publish anything younger than YA personally, though people have done it. Self publishing in general can become a full time job, but with kidlit I think it's even more so as you are 100% correct: kidlit requires physical copies and needs to get in the hands of librarians, teachers and on the shelves of bookstores. Anything of course is possible if you put in the work yourself, but I do think it's a much harder slog to self publish kidlit over YA and Adult. If you are considering self publishing I highly recommend school visits as a way to self promote, which again is a far more time consuming and costly way to promote than, say, a blog tour. (Fun Fact: All the usual avenues for promotion tend not to work for MG. Yes there are some librarian specific blogs and stuff, but all the wonderful opportunities offered YA books just don't exist for MG. That's another challenge. As someone who has done both YA and MG it is stunning how much easier it is to promote YA etc.)


This is basically what I was thinking. I have a MG out right now with several major publishers (Tor/Harper/Scholastic, etc.) but my agent and I are about to part ways, I believe, so this book will be effectively dead for those publishers and I'm not sure if another agent will want to touch it since it's been 'shopped,' though there are still other smaller houses. I had an offer on it from a small press last year who emailed me recently to say they are still interested if anything changes, but I'm worried about the non-physical copy aspect of small press.
 

Marissa D

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Another issue with self-publishing kidlit (including YA) that ties into the library sales issue is that libraries tend to make their buying decisions based on book reviews in places like Booklist and VOYA and Kirkus etc., and it's close to impossible to get a self-published book reviewed in those outlets. I like being a hybrid author with feet in both trade and self-publishing, but I keep my adult books for the self-publishing side and let my agent submit my YA.

However, one correction--small press can and certainly do produce physical, paper books--but they're POD, not off-set print and warehoused. And some stores are squeamish about ordering POD books from CreateSpace, which is an Amazon company, so it's best to make a print book available through Ingram...which is another set of hoops to jump through that many small pubs might not have the bandwidth for. And yes, I like mixing metaphors. ;)

Good luck with whatever you decide.
 

Jaegur

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Another issue with self-publishing kidlit (including YA) that ties into the library sales issue is that libraries tend to make their buying decisions based on book reviews in places like Booklist and VOYA and Kirkus etc., and it's close to impossible to get a self-published book reviewed in those outlets. I like being a hybrid author with feet in both trade and self-publishing, but I keep my adult books for the self-publishing side and let my agent submit my YA.

However, one correction--small press can and certainly do produce physical, paper books--but they're POD, not off-set print and warehoused. And some stores are squeamish about ordering POD books from CreateSpace, which is an Amazon company, so it's best to make a print book available through Ingram...which is another set of hoops to jump through that many small pubs might not have the bandwidth for. And yes, I like mixing metaphors. ;)

Good luck with whatever you decide.


I -think- the small press I've talked to may go through Ingram, if I'm not mistaken. Does that make it a little better in terms of going with the small press versus self?
 

Marissa D

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Well, it makes it more attractive to some booksellers and librarians, but still doesn't overcome the review hurdle. And you can make self-published books available through Ingram--you don't need to be a publisher to do it.
 

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Note that there's a huge amount of difference between books which are available through Ingrams, and books which have sales teams actively selling them into bookshops.
 

Elenitsa

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I am writing YA books and Indie publishing them, and my best friend (who isn't here because she doesn't speak English) Indie published all her children stories (7 books single author, 5 under a collective of authors), meant for children 6-10 years old (not sure how it spreads in English terms, if MG or not, for us it's primary school). Her publisher has physical copies available to order online and also in a couple of bookstores.

For her latest one, I wrote on the 4-th cover. She isn't the type to do much advertising (except radio and TV shows and showing the books on FB, with the link to the online request), but the publisher had sold 1,000 copies or more of each of her books (except the barely launched latest one).

Notes: in our country having book launching in schools is prohibited by School Inspectorate order, and also there are no agents - an American agent's job is done by the publisher.
 
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