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5 Essential Tips to Publish a Child Book
To publish a child book requires effort and money. Nowadays, you don't need that much money but you still need to maximize your efforts by making the right choices.
1. Avoid Vanity Publishers
A Vanity Publisher is a publisher that offers to produce a certain number of books for you once you pay their production costs. To make a profit, Vanity Publishers charge fees to publish an author's work. This doesn't include the costs of proofreading or illustrations. Also, a minimum run of books must be produced at a time (at least 100 copies).
Usually with no book promotion or publicity you get stuck with hundreds of books in your garage gathering dust! They make a large profit by exploiting the vanity of authors. hence the name.
2. Use Print On Demand Publishers
Print On Demand is a low-cost process that can produce your trade paperback book using an ebook as its template. POD publishers produce your paperbacks only as customers order them, reducing your costs for this service.
For more information, check out this site's section on ebooks. For our immediate purposes, keep in mind that you have to start with a finished ebook to take advantage of POD.
3. Know Your Costs
Free ebook creator software is fine for most tasks. But for full-scale publishing, the professional versions of the software provide more flexibility. Prices vary, but expect to pay no more than $300 for any product.
Many POD publishers prefer your template ebook to be in Adobe's PDF format. This is produced by Adobe's Acrobat software (not to be confused with Adobe's Acrobat Reader, which only displays the PDFs).
Another favorite way to publish a child book is the LIT format, used by the Microsoft Reader program. eBooks of this format can be created using Overdrive's ReaderWorks Publisher software.
4. Publish to More Than eBook Format
Don't publish a child book only to ebook format. Handheld ebook readers are currently too expensive and fragile to be given to your target audience (usually young children). However, if you are determined to publish a child book only to ebook, here are two additional options for you:
Check out Palm Studio (for the PalmReader), and Mobipocket Publisher (for the Mobipocket Reader). eBooks created on either of these programs can be read on PCs, Palm and PocketPC devices, smart phones and other handheld devices.
5. Create a Website for Your Book
You can sell your ebooks via your own web site. If you don't know the first thing about setting up a website, don't worry. One of the easiest ways to get a website up and running with zero knowledge and no computer experience use SiteSell.com.
Another option is to use an online publisher (especially if you're taking the POD route). But don't stop there. Amazon.com and other online bookstores will allow you to sell your books right next to offerings from the major publishing houses. However, this can take a big chunk out of your profits or royalties (make sure you understand and follow the store's guidelines).
A Great Author Never Gives Up!
Self-publishing is easier and less expensive than ever before. But to make your work a success, you still have to perfect your writing craft, and be on top of marketing and promotion of your work.
Do a good job and someone else might ask you to publish a child book. At which point, you would no longer be a self-publisher. How does the title of Independent Publisher sound to you?
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