It’s not easy to learn how to write a children’s book. I teach a class on writing picture books for McDaniel College every spring, and we cram a lot into eight weeks. It’s really too short of a time to write a full developed picture book. But once the manuscript is strong and polished (after lots of critiques and revision), what next? What are the next steps to getting published?
I get this question a lot from the authors I work with on Reedsy. I believe this is the first and most important question to consider.
- Do you want to follow traditional publishing or self-publish?
Both of these paths have pros and cons. But before you can choose, you need to know what they mean.
Traditional publishing means you submit your work a publishing house that decides to buy your manuscript, pay you an advance, send you a contract, find an illustrator, pay for the publication work, and market the book. If you’re lucky, the book will sell enough copies that you will earn out the advance and someday you’ll get royalty checks.
Self-publishing means you do all of this on your own. You find the illustrator, you pay the illustrator, you pay for the printing, you pay for the marketing and distribution.
Traditional publishing is slow. And there are more details to understand. Some publishers take manuscripts from writers that don’t have agents, but many don’t. And finding an agent is tough. You need to have more than one manuscript prepared and polished so the agent knows you are someone they can work with long term. The agent only makes money if you sell manuscripts and books, so agents don’t sign clients unless they are viable business partners.
Traditional publishing also means you need to know the rules of the writing game. You need to know how to format your manuscript, how to write a query letter, how to write a synopsis, and how to write a great story. You need to know what is selling in the current market. You have to read lots of books written for the same age group that you plan to write for. You need to understand how illustrations work with your story.
Traditional publishing requires an investment of time and the development of knowledge. But once a publisher decides to work with you, you can be sure you’ll get paired with an incredible team. You’ll have editors, copyeditors, art directors, and marketing and publicity.
Your contract will include an advance. It will be a nice amount of money, but not life-changing. When your book sells, you’ll get something like 8-10% of the cover price. You’ll earn about 1.99 on each book sold. But you won’t get that money for awhile. You need to pay the publisher back for the advance. So if you got a $5000 advance, you need to sell 2,512 books before you have paid back what you owe. Only then do you get royalties. There’s some info online that estimates most books sell less than 2000 copies.
If you decide to self-publish, you have to make all of these decisions about design, editing, illustration, layout, printing, publicity, promotion, marketing, sales, sales tax, events, and more on your own. It’s a LOT. It’s hard. Yes, you get to keep more of the cost of each book sold. But you have to put up all of the initial money, too.
Many people want to only create e-book versions of their children’s book in order to minimize printing costs. This model works for YA, and perhaps some middle grade. But it’s not worth it for picture books. Kids are not reading e-books the way adults do. And adults don’t buy e-book versions of picture books. Especially at young ages, books are an alternative to devices.
If you want to sell a lot of copies of your self-published books, you will need to think about where you can sell. I recommend skipping book festivals and books stores. You’re just competing against every other book there. Look for places that attract customers who are interested in your subject matter. So if you write about dogs, see if you can sell books at a dog daycare or pet store.
This is only a quick overview of the most basic, first question to consider. There are most questions to resolve, and I hope to address them in future posts!