Children's Book Marketing Made Easy

Welcome to the children's book marketing made easy podcast. I'm your host, Harleigh Manske. After publishing my first three children's books on Amazon KDP, I have turned this into my full time job. So, yes, I'm a full time self published children's book author, illustrator, author, coach, and creative entrepreneur. If that sounds like something you wanna do too, then this podcast is the right podcast for you.

Because in this podcast, I take my original YouTube videos, and I've turned this into a podcast form so you can take it with you on the go in your daily life so that way you don't have to sacrifice your time or your energy, but you're still learning. If you wanna watch the original YouTube video, that's gonna be linked in the show notes down below, as well as a bunch of other free author resources, like a free marketing guide, Instagram content planner, and book launch team checklist with email templates. But without further ado, let's get right into the podcast episode. If you have been stuck at the same number of children's book sales for months or even years, I'm gonna tell you three different ways on how I doubled my children's book sales without the use of ads. And I'm gonna teach you exactly how to do it step by step.

I'm going to make this really simple, almost effortless, and anybody can do this and you can start implementing it into your marketing strategy. If we haven't met before, hi, my name is Harleigh and I'm an award winning self published children's book author and illustrator. I've been in the publishing game now for three years, I have three books under my belt and plenty more to come. From publishing my children's books, I've actually grown my business to this being my full time job now. So from my children's books, I've stemmed off to being a virtual assistant, a professional social media manager, as well as a children's book author marketing coach.

So if you ever need a strategy planned out for your book marketing and book selling, book a call with me down below. So the first thing that you can do to double your children's book sales is to double down on what's already working. Now I know that sounds very simple, like almost too easy and kind of like a duh moment, but you'd be surprised at how many people just don't do this. They think, okay, well, I'm putting in x amount of effort and I'm getting x amount of results, like I'm getting x amount of sales, so I'm just gonna keep doing that and whatever happens happens. Hopefully, I just sell more next time.

What you can do strategically is you can just double the effort that you put in for selling your children's books on the platform or the strategy that's already working for you. So for example, I sell a lot in person. I make most of my book sales from in person sales, so that's craft shows, festivals, fairs, bookstore signings, etc. That is how I make the bulk of my children's book sales. So what I decided to do to double my book sales was to double my efforts.

So that means I went to double the amount of in person events. I did double the amount of signings. I showed up twice as much as I did the year before and the year previous to the year before. Like, year over year, I try to double my efforts and that always doubles my book sales. So if you see that there's something that you're doing, like, let's say you're selling on your website, you're selling on Amazon, you're selling in person like I am, and you notice it's just working, double down, double your efforts.

You know what they say, like when you focus on something, you get so much farther than if you diversify your strategy or you diversify your energy. Focus on that one thing, double down on it, and you can double your children's book sales from just doing that. If you take anything away from this video, please let it be that, that you can double your efforts and double your children's book sales. And you can always refine it and you can get better and better and better over time. Now the second thing that you can do to double your children's book sales is you can offer a bundle discount.

So I do this a lot at my in person events actually. So what I did to double my children's book sales, like I was thinking at my in person events, I want my average order value to go up. So whenever somebody comes to my booth or they see me in a farmer's market, they see me wherever, and I have my books displayed and ready to be sold, I want them to get double the amount of books that they would get if they just saw me this first time and they only bought one book. So how do I get them to buy another book? So my thought process was like, okay, I price my books accordingly so I can host a buy one get 150% off sale for the event.

And that is what I do. So if somebody comes up to my booth and they just see this one book, I tell them, oh, okay. While we're in the process of checking out, I tell them, oh, and by the way, I'm hosting a buy one get 150% off for this barber's market or for this festival or for this fair, whatever. I'm hosting a buy one get 150% off. And 75% of the time, people will buy that second book.

So I know you're probably thinking at this point, why would I host a bundle sale if I'm just cheapening my books? Like, you're not cheapening your books. You're making stories more accessible to people. Think about it that way. And also, if you price your books accordingly, it shouldn't be that big of a hit for you.

And also the way that I like to think about it too is that when I have all these books in my inventory, like I have them in my closet or they I have them in my garage, that is just cash sitting on my shelves. So how can I turn those books into cash as soon as possible? And that is by hosting a buy one get 150% off bundle discount. That is the kind of discount that I'm comfortable hosting. If that is not something that you can do, that is fine.

You can do a buy one get 125% off. You can do something like that. Play around with it. Think about what you're comfortable with and what you can offset comfortably, and come up with a little bundle discount. This also goes into step number two which is hosting a bundle discount.

It goes into the concept of bundling but you should strategically write your books based on a series. So, for example, this is my second book, Dottie Saves the Bees. My strategy with this one is like, okay, this one is my best selling book because it talks about saving the bees and how you can teach kids three simple steps on how they can help save the bees in their daily lives. Right? So a lot of people were really liking that theme and that topic.

So what I did for my third book is I wrote Dappi Saves the Turtles, and this one teaches kids three simple steps on how they can help save the turtles. Do you see what I did there? I intentionally created a series that piggybacks off of each other so that way when they buy one, they want to get the second one. I mean, I just had that today. I came from a farmer's market.

This is my farmer's market shirt. So I had people come up to my booth and they were just looking at Doppy Saves the Bees, but then I strategically placed Doppy Saves the Turtles next to Doppy Saves the Bees and I had them categorized as nature conservation books for kids. So they see one, they're going want the other. So you see what I'm getting at? If you can do that strategically with any of your books, like making it into an intentional series that people will naturally want to bundle, you should definitely do that.

This third tip is one of my favorite things to do aside from in person events and bundle discounts and intentional series and that is turning my free content into a book sales funnel. So I'm making it sound a little bit more complicated than it really is. What I mean by book sales funnel and turning free content into a book sales funnel is I take a free coloring page that is based off of one of my books. So like DOPPY SAVES THE BEES, this is the accompanying or one of the accompanying BE activities that I make for free and I offer them on my website for free. So if somebody wants this freebie activity, what they have to do is they have to follow my link to my website and then download the free activity, and in order for them to download this free activity, they have to put in their email address.

So in simplified terms, this is a lead magnet. I'm using free coloring pages or free activity pages as a lead magnet to get these people onto my email list. And then from my email list, I can further market my children's books to them, like whether that be linked on my Amazon, linked on my storefront, whatever. I keep it to Amazon on my emails because a lot of people trust Amazon more and plus they can click the link and they can see all the reviews that my books have. So it has more social proof behind it, so that's why I do Amazon.

But you can turn one email list subscriber into a future book buyer by getting them on your email list and then marketing your books to them. I've actually had a lot of success with this with teachers specifically. They specifically hunt down free resources so they can give that to their classroom, to their kiddos. They're constantly needing things to do to further enhance literacy and development and educational topics. So these free resources for them are like gold.

So I've had a lot of teachers download these free resources, get put on my email list, I send them emails from my email service provider and market my books to them and they will buy my books on Amazon. I've had that happen a lot. So that is just one thing that you can do and honestly the options are unlimited. That is how I do my strategy with my book sales funnel. There is a specific name for this book sales funnel strategy that is purely dedicated to children's book authors and it's called the Free Traffic Formula.

So it's exactly how it sounds. It is a system, it is a formula that drives free traffic to your website and to your email list so you can further market your books to them. So if you want a free guide that talks about this system and this strategy, go in my description. I have a free guide. It's called the free marketing guide, so download that.

And honestly, there are so many different ways that you can double your children's book sales. There are so many, and you can be really creative with this. And that's why I love children's book marketing because at first I thought it was really horrible and just like another job or like portion of the publishing industry that I didn't want to do. I didn't want to do it at all, But after I got the hang of it, I was like, okay. This isn't so bad.

This is actually kinda fun. And if you make it into, like, a creative little project, you can make it more fun. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast episode. I hope you found it helpful and you learned something new. And if you did find it helpful, make sure to subscribe or follow wherever you listen to your podcast so that way you don't miss a new episode.

And if you want more personalized one on one support to help publish, launch, or grow your children's book marketing business, you can always book a one on one coaching call with me. I take these calls all the time, and it's a great way for me to really see what you're working with and how I can help you grow your social media platforms, grow your book sales, do anything involved with children's book marketing or publishing. The link to book a call is gonna be in the show notes down below. I offer mini sessions as well as full sessions to be as accessible to you as possible. And if you're looking for a more step by step DIY approach, you can join my signature membership program, author growth roadmap.

In author growth roadmap, I give you step by step curriculum on how you can publish, launch, market, and scale your children's book publishing business to help you turn this into a long term sustainable business. That will also be linked in the show notes down below for you. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.