Children's Book Marketing Made Easy

How Much Does It REALLY Cost to Self-Publish a Children’s Book on Amazon KDP_
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Welcome to the Children's Book, marketing Made Easy podcast. I'm your host, Harley Mansky. After publishing my first three children's books on Amazon, KDPI 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. 'cause 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. 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.

I thought self-publishing my first children's book on Amazon, [00:01:00] KDP, was going to be. Really cheap. Let me tell you I was wrong. It was not cheap. There were a lot of initial upfront costs that I needed to pay for in order to self-publish on Amazon KDP, in order to get my first children's book published. So in today's video, I'm gonna go through every single cost that I had to pay for in order to get my first children's book.

Published, I'm gonna tell you all the things that I wish I would've done differently and how you can tailor this for your success in the future if you don't know me already. Hi, my name is Harley and I'm an award-winning, self-published children's book author and illustrator. I've been in the publishing game now for about three years, and since publishing my first children's book, the one that I'm talking about today, I have grown my business into becoming a professional social media manager.

A virtual assistant as well as a children's book author marketing coach. So if you ever need any like tailored strategies made for your book marketing plan and book [00:02:00] sales plan, go in my description and book a call with me. I strategize and plan out different marketing tactics for a bunch of self-published children's book authors, since I'm so professional, I have it written down on my teeny tiny little post-it here, the first thing that I had to pay for in order to self-publish my children's book on Amazon, KDP, and this was a personal choice.

This is not something that you have to do. But I wanted this really badly and I wanted my publishing company to run for a very long time. So this is why I invested in this. So the first thing that I invested in was ISBNs. So if you don't know what an ISBN is and you've never heard that term before, I have a video detailing ISBNs.

I'm gonna link it right here for you. An ISBN is basically a social security number for every single book and every format of a book. So if you wanted to use ISBNs, which means that you own the rights to your book when it's published, Amazon [00:03:00] has a feature where they can provide you with like their own ISBN.

But it's only for sales on Amazon, KDP. So you technically can't sell it on your website. You can't have it be sold in stores with that ISBN. Uh, so that's why I chose to, to pay for an ISBN and because I wanted this publishing company to. Served me for the rest of my life. Basically, I decided to go into the second most expensive category of buying ISBN.

So I bought 100 ISBNs at $575. Now I know that sounds astronomical and absolutely bonkers. And yeah, reading this back does seem kind of crazy, especially since I hadn't even published a children's book yet at that point. But I was so invested anyways that I spent. $600 on ISBNs, but I have a hundred ISBNs for my publishing company.

[00:04:00] Like I have my own publishing imprint now. So if I wanted to publish a new book, I don't have to pay for another ISBN for a very long time. And that is the freedom and flexibility that I wanted when I bought these. So this is not something that you have to do. You do not have to do this. You do not have to pay for a hundred ISBNs.

If you wanted to start like slowly balker.com, that is the only place that you can buy ISBNs in the United States. Just do some research for your specific country and like how you wanna polish. But bauer.com is where you get ISBNs in America. So Bauer says that you can buy an ISBN individually for $125 for one ISBN.

Now you kind of understand why I bought a hundred IBNs at $575 versus just one for $125. The ROI is just so much better when you buy in bulk most of the time, and especially in this case for ISBN. [00:05:00] So that's why I bought a hundred. Or you can do blocks of 10 for $295, so that isn't as bad. , But according to Balker, since I bought a hundred ISBNs, I basically saved a ton of money if I published four books and I published three so far.

So after my fourth one, it's like I've officially saved a significant portion of money. So. The tally so far is $575, and this is even before getting to illustrating. So then going off of illustrating, I am an illustrator. I am self-taught, and I had been illustrating for about, what, three years at that point, two or three years, I was illustrating digitally on my iPad.

So I knew that I could illustrate the pages myself, and I knew that I wouldn't have to pay an illustrator. So my cost for illustrations are significantly lower than somebody who [00:06:00] can't illustrate, , or doesn't want to be an illustrator. I also illustrator prices vary a ton. So the ballpark for illustrators typically I would say is between like $500 and like $5,000.

And honestly, this is just a general ballpark. This is just going off of like what I've heard my other author friends say that they've paid for. I've also seen like people soliciting their packages for illustrations and I've seen their prices. So that's the ballpark. Since I'm the illustrator, I luckily didn't have to pay an exorbitant amount just to get it illustrated, but I did have to pay for software and training.

Well, the second thing that I had to pay for in order to self-publish my first. Children's book is I paid for Procreate. So procreate is an app that you can get on an iPad, it's my favorite and I think it's the best digital illustration app. And it is so user friendly. You use an Apple [00:07:00] pencil, so it's a lot like your drawing on an iPad.

It's really, really cool, and I bought that for 9 99 and it's probably the best $10 I've ever spent because. From just getting procreate. I have published and illustrated my three books all for $10, and now I know how to use that skill for the rest of my life. So if you're thinking about illustrating your own books, definitely, definitely, definitely go for procreate.

And you already have an iPad. No brainer. Definitely do that. And since I got procreate and I was learning how to illustrate and I was completely self-taught, there was a lot I needed to learn. So the third thing that I paid for was Skillshare. So I love Skillshare, especially if you're trying to learn a new skill.

They have a lot of really cool classes on there by like independent instructors and teachers and course creators, and they all teach different things. So I paid for Skillshare, and Skillshare I think is an annual only subscription. So [00:08:00] I had to pay $168 for an annual subscription for just learning how to illustrate and lay out illustrations well, which I think that money is well spent very, very well spent because like I said, I published three books.

I illustrated three books so far., Just from learning that skills and after I've illustrated the book, I needed to format the book. So I did everything by myself, basically. Like I wanted this to be my thing and right now it is my thing and this is like my livelihood. So I'm glad that I took these steps on being like a full diy, but since I DIYed everything and I knew that I could teach myself how to format.

I use Canva for formatting, way more user friendly. And I canva's really versatile too. So I paid for Canva Pro, which is 1299 a month, and that got all my books formatted. So for 1299 a month, money well [00:09:00] spent. Oh, and just a fun fact, I did have it edited, but it was like a barter system. , I had somebody else edit my first book for me and I did their hair for them.

So yeah, that didn't cause me anything, and I still had it. Edited. Then after I had it written, edited, illustrated, and formatted. The only thing that I bought afterwards is I bought proof copies. So these are copies that you get from Amazon before you officially launch the book. , And it has like a little.

Like gray line down the middle, so you can't even like resell them. But it's just to see if everything turned out okay and everything was aligned and you can see more typos in print. At least I can. So I think I paid around $10, 10 to $12 for an author proof copy. By then, I had my first children's book published, so the grand total from the costs of just getting it published.

Came out to be [00:10:00] $830 and 98 cents. And I also rounded up the author proof copy to like $20 just because with shipping I'm not, I can't exactly remember. So I rounded it up to 20. I'll say it was money well spent. I don't regret any of the choices that I made, and luckily, since I am naturally a very cheap person, so since I was so hesitant to.

Spend an exorbitant amount of money on different services that I didn't know I needed. Like if you see there's somebody talking about formatting a children's book and how they're just pitching their services to format your children's book, I'm gonna tell you right now, you can do it yourself. You can do it on Canva.

It's very, it's, I wouldn't say simple because it is time consuming and tedious, but you don't need to pay. 200 to $500 for formatting services for a children's book like that is wild. You definitely don't need to do that. So a mistake that you can avoid when going through and investing your money [00:11:00] to self-publish your children's book is anybody who's trying to sell you like a book trailer or anybody that's trying to sell you a book review on Instagram or anything kind of like that.

Those are most of the time scams, so do not fall for those traps. If people see you on social media that you are self-publishing a children's book, or you just self-publish a children's book. Do not fall for those scams because Sure. These book reviewers on Instagram or these book trailer creators on Facebook or wherever they can be anywhere, they're gonna be like, oh, I have a massive audience and my readers would love to read your book.

And uh, yeah, it only costs like $50 per review, or like a hundred to $200 for a book trailer. I'm gonna tell you right now, you do not need to pay for that crap. You don't. You don't need it. Don't do it. Please, if you take anything away from this video, it's stay away from the scammers. You really don't need those to self-publish your children's book.

And you don't [00:12:00] need to add that to any of your costs 'cause you're already gonna be paying for a lot. So. Don't do it. Just a warning. So luckily I was cheap enough to be like, if anybody reached out to me, I denied them or I ignored them. I'm like, no. Why am I, why am I paying for that? Absolutely not. And also just make sure to vet your illustrators.

Like if you're not an illustrator and you don't want to illustrate your own books, vet your illustrators. Like if they're off of Fiverr. I've had a lot of friends who are also fellow children's book authors like, reach out to me. And ask me if this, uh, illustrator was a scam artist on Fiverr. And I had to like tell them, unfortunately, yes, they are a con artist.

Their illustrations are all clip art. Like you can tell, like the styles don't match and it just looks like they copy and pasted stuff. So be very wary of who you pick for an illustrator. And just by doing that, that will save you a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of frustration. Alright, now I'm gonna show you how [00:13:00] long it took me to make back the money and how I made back the money.

So once again, I have my handy dandy little post-it note. , so I'm gonna share with you my first month's sales. I published my first book in, uh, April, 2022. Most of my sales came from the United States.

Shocking. Um, because I do live in the United States. I didn't pay for any Amazon advertising. I didn't pay for any kind of advertising at all. Did I think about it? Yes. But like at this point, I just wanted to publish it and I just wanted to share it with my personal network. So all I did was I shared it on Facebook and I just posted a ton on Facebook, like my personal Facebook.

At this point, I didn't even have like a business page. I didn't have my author Illustrator page. I didn't have anything, so I just had my friends and family and coworkers to go off of. So I just made a few posts saying that I self-publish a children's book, but for the first month, so for April, 2022 in the United States, I [00:14:00] made $57 and 84 cents from paperback royalties, which is kind of like shockingly high.

, For not using any advertising or any kind of paid advertising. Didn't even have an audience at that point either. So that was pretty cool. And then from Kindle Unlimited reads, um, I made 92 cents off of Kindle Unlimited reads, so that's kind of funny. So then my total earnings from just the United States was $58 and 76 cents.

Then there were only two more countries that bought off of Amazon, KDP. , So this next country that bought from me is Canada. So in Canada, I actually had somebody buy one ebook version of my book, and that was at $2 and 9 cents. So the grand total from Canada's sales is $2 and 9 cents Whoopee. It's funny.

Then this last country is really shocking. So the last country that I got sales from is from [00:15:00] India. Actually. All of this was from a Kindle Unlimit res that came out to be $2 and 57 cents from Kindle Unlimited Reeds. So the grand total for India is $2 and 57 cents. So the grand total for my first month's sales is $63 and 42 cents.

And yes, all of that is from Amazon, KDP, and that is from the first month. But I think being somebody who is a first time self-published children's book author and illustrator, didn't have an audience, didn't have an email list, like I don't have anything that I have now. I had nothing, and I still made almost $64 in one month from my one little book.

You can tell from the totals like how much I spent and how much I made. There is a big gap. So my grand total from how much I made from self-publishing, my first children's book, after one month of being published, I was in the hole, $767 and [00:16:00] 56 cents. Don't let that discourage you. Don't let that depress you.

I'm just sharing these numbers 'cause I want you to be really realistic about your outcomes after self-publishing for the first time, especially when you have nothing. I'm gonna now tell you when I made back that money and how long it took me, so it took me a while to make back my initial investment and when I say a while, it means like a couple years.

It took me a couple years to do that because after I published my first book in April, 2022, I was more focused on. My outside work and just like my income outside of work and I wasn't really focusing on my publishing career at that point, so I just kind of let it sit until January of 2023. 'cause in January, 2023, that is when I wrote and illustrated my second book, Doppy Saves the Bees.

So then I really picked it up and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna go all in on this children's book business. Like I'm at a good point in my life where I can devote more time to my [00:17:00] books and my publishing company. So that is what I did. And then in 2023, I decided to do in-person events and become a vendor at craft shows and festivals and all that.

And then that is when I started making back my money. So it took me until October of 2023 to make back my initial investment. And I didn't use any paid advertising. I just became a vendor at in-person events and I also opened up a Shopify at that point too. And then I did some online orders from Shopify.

But yeah, it took me about a year and a half to make back my money. To put it in perspective for you, like I am literally a full-time children's book author and illustrator now. And what I wanna do with my life. So this was the best money I've ever spent, and this was the best learning experience that I've ever gone through.

Like aside from giving birth and raising a baby alone, this [00:18:00] was the best experience I could have ever had. And from this, I'm more independent and I don't need anybody to give me money, like I can make money on my own. So I just wanted to share these numbers with you to help inspire you and help encourage you and help you stay a little bit grounded because yes, in the beginning I was like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna publish my first book on Amazon, KDP, and it's just gonna blow up.

And I will be an overnight success and it'll be great. It's gonna be a bestseller. It was not that rarely ever happens. So I just wanna put it in perspective for you that even though that doesn't happen, things can still come and grow from just taking these small steps of self-publishing children's books, like have some faith in yourself, follow along this journey.

It is a rollercoaster, but I wouldn't trade it for the world, and I hope you don't either.

Thank you so much for listening to this podcast episode. I hope you found it helpful and you learn [00:19:00] something new. And if you did find it help. Well 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 many 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 the show [00:20:00] notes down below for you. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.