Publishing in the realm of children’s picture books is a whole different ball game than chapter books

Plenty of authors want to break into the world of children’s books but often aren’t sure how to do so or how to format the book.

This was unfortunately me until a short time ago.

For about two years now, I had this idea for Dandelion, a flower that just wants to be picked from the garden. I spent time creating illustrations with watercolor and managed to gain glowing reviews from all the beta readers who read it. And that was when I began querying agents and small publishers.

And after just one month of querying, I was 20 rejections from agents in.

However, I did receive a yes from a small publisher!

I went to meet with them and felt as if my eyes were opened in the face of all the information I gained from the meeting. The only major change I needed to make was that they wanted me to redo my illustrations with better colors and on larger paper.

Better yet, they even offered me a contract. For more about my meeting with the small publisher, see What I’ve learned about becoming an author-illustrator in the realm of children’s picture books.

Unfortunately, after we began to negotiate, they ghosted me.

So I moved on from the meeting with the tips and tricks that I’d gained and recreated my illustrations, making them look better than before.

After my illustrations were completed, I jumped back into the querying realm, submitting to agents and small publishers.

I happened to have a small publisher get back to me and offer me a contract quickly. They offered me a fair contract and I was nearly ready to sign, however, I had two things to consider.

1. They were more focused on selling audiobooks and ebooks than paperbacks (which was kind of important to kids.)

2. The margins for profit they offered me were small.

So, I talked it over with my husband and he asked me why I hadn’t decided to self-publish it as I had with all of my other books.

My explanation was simple…formatting.

After giving it a lot of thought, I declined the contract offer and set forth to try to format it myself. It was possible because I could see a lot of other children’s authors doing it. But even if I formatted it, I was going to need to figure out a plan for marketing.

This was when I sat down, dug into my research, and really formulated a plan.

Based on the topic of the book, flowers, I decided to choose my release date to be February of 2023. This way children would already be learning about spring and when flowers grow, banking on their interests in the environment.

When researching, I found these resources useful for formatting:

Picture book basics: Talks about how many pages and page proportions.

Book Design Made Simple: Talks about trim sizing, full-page illustrations vs single-page illustrations, colors, fonts, and design.

How to Create a Children’s Book with Canva: This website was very useful in helping me create a visual of the full-page spread, premade templates, and more.

After all of this research and lots of adjustments, I finally formatted and received a polished proof I was proud of.

One of the hardest things after this step was to figure out how I was going to market this book. I wasn’t going to be able to use my typical marketing techniques because I was targeting children. So, I needed to figure out how I was going to get the book to them.

Since Dandelion is a STEM and social-emotional book, I could use this as a learning opportunity.

So here is what I decided:

Create learning activities to go along with the book. (Social emotional activities, lifecycle cards, matching games, posters with facts about flowers to hang in the classroom).

Create a call to action for preschool classrooms, where I ask 10 classrooms to participate. In addition to participating, I would also ask them to post about the activities as they went through them on social media.

Start building my list of reviewers and possible businesses to work with before the book's release.

Book Reviewers

Business I could work with

The businesses I chose are going to be businesses that sell books or have a gardening section where my book could be placed in.

The point of all of this is, that many authors aren’t sure what they are capable of.

Even if you are entering a market that you aren’t typically well versed in, doing the research to see if it’s possible to do it on your own is important.

If you formulate a plan of action before publishing, you are going to be able to start your book launch with a huge advantage.