in this video i'm going to go over some
of the powerful ways that you can market
your children's book as well as some of
the strategies that i implemented when i
first published my children's book
welcome to my channel my name is
caroline and in november last year so in
november 2021 i wrote i illustrated and
i created and published my own
children's book i had had an idea for a
children's story in my head but that was
as far as it went i really had no idea
about how to go about actually creating
the book and getting it illustrated i
just thought it would be
a very expensive
very long process that i had no clue
whatsoever about any of it but i ended
up completing a course called the
children's book creator course run by
the lovely nuria over at the home boss
youtube channel if you have seen any of
my previous videos where i talk about
publishing a children's book i talk
about how much i loved that course and
that was really what got this book
published i don't think i would ever
have published my book without
doing that course because her course
shows you
how to
create the book and illustrate the book
yourself without needing to be an
illustrator without needing to have any
kind of graphic design experience and
without needing to spend a lot of money
and so once i had finished the course my
book was created and published but from
here
the real work begins and i think for
most of us we create these books
for people to buy them and this is where
we get stuck how do we get people to buy
our books how do we get people to find
our listings on amazon the hard thing
with children's books is that you need
to appeal to two different audiences you
need to appeal to the adult the parent
that's going to be buying the book as
well as the child who the book is for
and that's exactly what i'm going to go
over today what you can do pre and post
launch of your children's book to try to
boost sales and actually make money from
your books but before we do get into the
video i would like to thank skillshare
for partnering with me on this video
skillshare is an online learning
community with thousands of online
classes and members from all around the
world it's a place to get inspired learn
new skills
and put them to work in impactful ways i
love that skillshare has such a massive
range of classes available across all
different topics i say this all the time
i'm a huge advocate for self-education
and always improving your skills or
learning new skills and self-improvement
should be a lifelong journey we should
never stop learning new things a class
that i've taken recently was run by cat
cocalette and it's social media
marketing top tips for growing your
followers and going viral i think in a
majority of my videos i talk about the
importance of building a brand around
your books and promoting those books
through channels such as email lists and
social media so because of that i always
want to be learning new things about
social media and just knowing what i can
because with anything social media and
with anything digital really it changes
so fast and it's always good to stay on
top of what's working and what trends
there are and things like that and every
time i watch a class like this i learn
something new because skillshare is
curated specifically for learning it is
ad-free which is great for anybody who
is easily distracted like me and new
premium classes are always being added
skillshare has a great offer for the
first 1000 of my subscribers who use the
link in the description below you will
get a one month free trial of skillshare
the trial gives you access to the
complete library of classes so you can
learn something new right now today the
first few things that you are going to
do to market your book are going to be
done pre-launch so before your book is
even available for sale on amazon if you
can plan and organize a launch a few
months before your book is going to be
available for sale on amazon if you
can't give it that much time it will
still be a benefit to you and to your
book to even do some pre-launch
marketing in
the few weeks before your book is going
to be available for sale when publishing
on amazon it does wonders for your book
if you can get immediate sales and
immediate reviews as soon as your book
is published it helps your book get
picked up by the amazon algorithm and it
shows the algorithm that people are
liking your book that they're buying it
that they're leaving good reviews for it
this in turn usually means that amazon
will push your book up in the search
results
as well which will give you organic
sales
organic sales meaning
sales that you didn't have to pay for in
some way so in that pre-launch phase you
can give away free copies of your book
to people so that when your book does
become available on amazon you already
have people ready and waiting to go on
and leave reviews you can do this by
reaching out to people in your books
demographic yourself and ask them if
they would like to
receive a free copy of your book and
leave a review through facebook groups
or through websites like book sprout
just as a little side note because i i
know that a lot of people have the
thought that you are not allowed to ask
for reviews for any products on amazon
and that it is against their terms and
conditions but that is not actually
correct you are allowed to ask for
reviews amazon has no problem with that
but you cannot ask for a specific review
so you could not say to somebody go and
leave me a five star review or please
leave me a positive review or anything
like that all you can ask for is an
honest review and that is totally fine
by the amazon terms and conditions at
this point pre-launch you should also be
thinking about booking in some
promotions with websites and newsletters
who promote books to their lists or to
their followers so that you can begin
notifying people of free or discounted
promos that you plan on having when the
book launches on amazon you need to do
this usually a month or so sometimes
more in advance because these promo
newsletters and groups get booked out
and it's important to book them on dates
that are in relation to the days that
you're going to be having free books or
discounted books available and don't
stress i know that it sounds crazy to be
giving your book away for free you've
worked hard on it and you want to be
paid for all that hard work that you put
in and get paid for giving it to people
to read but there is a strategy here
that can pay off in the long run and
it's a very simple process to give away
free copies of your book you just give
away the pdf version of it if you are
sending it to people
away from the amazon
marketplace it is also a good idea to
create
at the time of creating
your paperback version of your book it's
a good idea to also create a moby
version of your book which is amazon's
file format when someone downloads a
book from amazon and you do this by
using amazon's free software called
kindle kids book creator this converts
your picture book into a format suitable
for viewing and reading on a kindle
reader the reason for this is it's a
good idea to run a free
promo period when your book goes live on
amazon so the promotions i just talked
about a little earlier with some of the
newsletter services and groups who will
send your book out to their lists those
are paid and they aren't expensive in my
opinion and if you can afford to put a
hundred or two hundred dollars into
doing some of those promos they can
really pay off but if that is not going
to be suitable for you to pay for any
pre-launch promotions then running a
free promo on amazon when your book goes
live is free it doesn't cost you
anything to do that to run a free
promotion on amazon when your book goes
live you do need to enroll your book
into kindle unlimited once you enroll
your book into kindle unlimited you are
agreeing
to amazon that you will not publish your
book anywhere else for a little while i
think it's something like 90 days after
that 90 days if you do want to publish
your book somewhere else that's fine you
can take your book out of kindle
unlimited and then you're free to
publish anywhere so from here you've
joined or enrolled your book into kindle
unlimited and you can set your book to
run free for a few days and this is
where those promos that you booked a
month or two ago with the newsletters or
the groups come in so the days or the
day that your book goes free in the
amazon marketplace you would have booked
one of the newsletter promos for example
to go out that very same day which is a
newsletter list that has lists of
thousands of people who want to know
about free children's books on amazon
and it's a good idea to book a different
promo newsletter each day so you're
reaching a broader or to maximize the
amount of people that you're reaching to
let them know about your book being free
then after those free days have finished
you can set your book to be available
for another few days for a discounted
price now just to clarify here i'm not
talking about the paperback version of
the book you will have your paperback
version uploaded onto amazon and you
will also have a kindle version so when
i'm talking about giving your book away
for free i am not talking about the
paperback that will be set to whatever
price you want to sell it for i'm
talking about giving away the digital
kindle version of the book for free and
for discounted prices for a certain
period of time so when your book goes to
its discounted price you will have some
more promos set up for newsletters who
have thousands of lists of people who
want to know when there are discounted
children's books available on amazon and
again if you can book a different promo
each day that you've got your discounted
price running so run your book at a
discounted price for a few days and then
when that discount period ends your book
will automatically go to
its proper price whatever price you
decide that you want your kindle book to
be sold for and these are some of the
things that i did to generate some sales
but mostly generate some reviews right
off the bat when my book went live on
amazon because when you're an unknown
author you need to give people a reason
to choose your book over others why
would they choose
mine who they've never heard of me my
book has no reviews as opposed to a
well-known author or an author who
already has some books established on
amazon has reviews and things like that
people like to know what they're getting
before they buy it and so that's why we
want those reviews as early on as
possible to build up trust with the
customer that they're getting something
good so hopefully you get reviews and
hopefully they are good reviews so that
will entice people
to purchase your book i just put my book
on booksprout it is free to put your
books on booksprout it is a website
dedicated to people who want free books
in return for giving reviews on amazon
so i just put my book on there and i
generated a few reviews from that when
my book went live i do feel like book
sprout is more suited to more
sort of like adult fiction books novel
types of books but it still gave me a
few reviews in the beginning that i
wouldn't have had otherwise and it
didn't cost me anything to do it i also
ran a total of five newsletter promos
for the days that my book was free on
amazon and for the couple of days that
it was discounted on amazon and i ended
up with around 500 free downloads of the
book during that launch period or that
promo period when it first went live on
amazon now beyond that i didn't actually
have plans to keep the kindle version of
the book
on amazon or keep it enrolled in kindle
unlimited i had planned to take the
digital version of the book away and
just have the paperback version selling
but i didn't get around to it straight
away and then i started to notice some
things i get kn ep reads
on my book every day so what that is
that is the way that amazon describes
people who read your book who are
enrolled in kindle unlimited people who
have access to books in kindred
unlimited don't pay for them as such
because they can read as many books as
they want in their membership and so how
do we get paid for people reading our
book because they're not technically
buying the book we get paid by page
reads now it's not much obviously
because i only have a 41 page book and
obviously when you compare that to a
novel someone who creates a book that
has
300 pages they're going to get a lot
more page reads than someone like us who
are just creating very small children's
books but i'm getting consistent page
reads and i think it is helping my book
stay fairly okay in the amazon search
results in terms of a bestseller rank my
book sits with a consistent bestseller
rank in the range of 10 000 to 25 000 in
the kindle store and this brings me in
around
maybe thirty to fifty dollars a month i
know
it is not much at all but
better in my pocket i think then i get
sales from the actual kindle version of
the book so when someone actually does
purchase the kindle version of the book
and i think that also helps with keeping
a really consistent bestseller rank
that's it's not massively low but it's
like i say very consistent sits in the
10 to 25 000 best seller rank range and
doesn't really move any higher than that
again i don't get paid much at all from
royalties on selling a kindle book but
what i am noticing is that the majority
of my reviews come from the kindle
customers
more so than the paperback buyers so i'm
thinking of it kind of like this i sell
my paperback version of my book to make
royalties and that's where the bulk of
money comes from that i make on this
book and i'm selling the kindle version
of the book in order to get reviews so
when you think of it like that they are
serving two completely different
purposes having two different formats of
my book available okay so once your book
is live you've been through that promo
period in that first week or so all your
promotions have ended what are some of
the things that you can do to help your
book to keep selling and to help new
customers find it i am a big advocate
for creating a brand and it doesn't
matter what niche you're in or what
genre of books that you write more books
sell more books so this means create
more books
create more books and link them up in
your author central account even create
a series but the more books that you
make the more chance you have of finding
your books and then buying more
especially if their child loves it if
you go out and look at some of the
biggest children's book writers and
publishers out there you will find they
all have multiple books published
talking about
the
wonky donkey series margaret donaldson
mem fox pig the pug a part of building a
brand then involves promoting your books
on social media create a website to
showcase your books and showcase
yourself as an author and link to all
your books from your website
create social media accounts for your
brand and talk about your books through
those channels as well as sharing
content related to your books or related
to your book's genre and basically just
things that your target market or your
target readers would enjoy
seeing on social media build an email
list so that when you do release new
books you already have
that team or that
group of people who are fans who you can
tell about new books being released
rather than just relying on getting
sales from running paid promotions or
trying to get sales and reviews from
people who don't really know anything
about you or your brand or any other
books that you have you can use it all
in conjunction with each other if you
have a budget enter book award contests
the last video that i did about
publishing a children's book was a
video that i did about that my book
received a feathered quill book award
and that is now something i can use as
additional marketing material to say
that i have an award-winning book and
i'm an award-winning children's author
there are many contests out there so do
your research don't just enter all of
them or any of them without really
looking into
who creates the contest where the
contest came from and that sort of thing
because you will have to pay to enter so
you want to make sure that it is
reputable that it's been around a while
and especially if you have a small
budget you will have to pick and choose
you won't be able to enter them all
because it will end up being quite
costly to enter
lots of award contests but winning an
award from a book contest can really
give some credibility to your book and
boost your book's reputation and your
reputation as an author you'll also get
a
cool little sticker or a digital logo of
some kind
naming your book or showcasing your book
as an award winner that you can put on
your book and you can use it within your
marketing materials on amazon on your
amazon listing or the marketing
materials that you're using to promote
your book and whether people have heard
of the contest or not it doesn't really
matter it just gives your book a really
good reputation and it gives
the customer confidence in buying your
book especially when they haven't heard
of you before as an author and it is
really great to be able to call yourself
an award-winning author so those are
just a few of the ways that you can help
boost your book in the amazon's
algorithm when you first publish your
book and consistently make sales and
gather reviews as time goes on have you
heard of any of these methods have they
worked for you what are you struggling
with when it comes to marketing your
children's book let me know down in the
comments below and if you found this
video helpful please give it a thumbs up
and i'll see you in the next video