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. Most children's book authors that self publish children's books on Amazon KDP assume they need to spend money on ads in order to make sales on Amazon. They're seeing in their Amazon KDP dashboard that they're not getting any sales.

They're not getting any clicks. They're not getting traction. So they really think the only solution is purchasing Amazon ads, and that's gonna be their quick fix to resolve their problem. I see this all the time with my coaching clients and my students. They really think that they need to be investing in Amazon ads in order to get sales.

But I'm gonna tell you this one little secret that has truly helped me. If you fix your visibility, you fix your sales. Your book just probably isn't being seen enough, and that is common. It's a very normal problem that we have. In this video, I'm gonna share with you three different tips on how you can boost your sales on Amazon without paying for any ads.

And you also don't need to go viral on social media, and you don't need to post that much on social media either. And stick around to the very end because my favorite, favorite, favorite tip for getting no ad visibility in Amazon sales is gonna be at the very end of this video, so make sure to stay tuned. And if we've never met before, hi. My name is Harleigh, and I'm an award winning self published children's author and illustrator. After publishing my first three children's books, I have turned this into my full time job.

So, yes, I am a full time self published children's book author, illustrator, author coach, and creative entrepreneur. If that sounds like something you wanna do too, make sure to hit subscribe down below so you don't miss a new video. Starting with tip number one, sharing your Amazon KDP children's book in your Instagram stories every day. If you've watched some of my other videos, you've noticed that I have talked about this tip before, but not everybody sees all my videos. So that's why it's worth repeating.

I love this strategy because people will view your Instagram stories kind of sporadically. Not everybody is going to view every single story that you share, very similar to how I am with my YouTube videos. I like to make sure that I spread out this information as much as possible because not all of my subscribers are gonna see every single one of my videos because you only have so much time in a day, and I get that. So when you share your book and your book link in your Instagram stories, you're able to actually have a clickable link in your Instagram stories. That's why I'm such a huge fan of this tip.

If you're active on Instagram, you know that in Instagram descriptions or captions, you can't add any clickable links. So even if you share a post about your book or your new book launch or your free ebook, you can't actually put the clickable link in the caption, which is beyond annoying. I can't wait till the day where they actually change that. There is no time frame for that. I don't know if they're gonna change that.

But until then, we can utilize Instagram stories to share our clickable links with our books. So I keep this really, really simple, and I recommend that you do this every day or at least five days a week. You don't need to make it that crazy. It doesn't need to be that complex. Honestly, this should only take you three minutes or less.

This does not need to take a long time in order to be effective. All you need to do is share the cover of your book or the interior pages of your book. If you've already posted the cover of your book, you can literally scroll back on Instagram, go to that cover of your book in that post, share it to your stories again. Nobody's gonna notice that you shared it multiple times. I promise.

And then you add the clickable link feature and add the direct link to your books listing on Amazon and just title the link, read for free with Kindle Unlimited or grab your copy now or add this to your shelf, something like that. And then that's it. Just share it every single day. I noticed that my Kindle unlimited reads go up. I noticed that I get more paperback sales when I do this.

And, of course, with anything, it takes consistency in order to really see results. If you do this one time, if you do for one day and you look at your Amazon KDP reports and you're like, Harleigh, this didn't do anything. I didn't get any clicks. I didn't get any reads, obviously. It is not that easy.

You need to do this time and time again. That's why I want you to share it every single day or at least five days a week. You could take the weekends off if you want to. Because also in marketing, it takes seven touch points for people to actually want to click your link. They could see the cover of your book.

They could read the title of your book multiple times before they actually want to click the link. So that's why I want you to do it every single day. Face that puppy out. Just be consistent. It really only takes three to five minutes.

You don't need to overcomplicate this. And another reason why I love it is because it's free. It's free, and it doesn't take that much time to do it. So just try it out for a week, two weeks, a month. See how it goes.

And, also, if you're really active on social media and you notice that you're growing your Instagram account, you get new followers, new followers see your story that they haven't seen before. So you're really just making sure that you get the maximum amount of exposure as possible. Then this second free tip is another one of my favorites. Of course, I may be biased because all of these tips are some of my favorites, but they're tried and true and effective. And this one is sending out an email newsletter with your Amazon link at least once a week.

I am a ginormous fan of email list. I am a huge believer, especially if you're somebody that doesn't wanna be posting on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok or YouTube all the time. Like, that's not your jam. That's fine. It doesn't need to be your jam.

You can start an email list, and you can get as much or more marketing done with your book with an email list. Email lists are amazing, and I think they are completely indispensable, and I think they are some of the best things that you can do for your business. You're also gonna see this tip mentioned in other business related videos. Any entrepreneur will tell you, especially in this online marketing age, that having an email list is truly an amazing revenue engine for them. And I especially love email lists because you can set up automated sequencing where you can just market your books all the time, daily, even if you want to without lifting a finger completely passively after you set this up, and you really can't do that with social media.

It's not automated like that. There's no segmenting, no tagging, nothing like that. So that's why I really, really, really love email lists. If you send out an email newsletter once a week with your Amazon link, you're gonna notice that your click through rate with your email list is actually higher than it will be with social media posts or even just sharing in your Instagram stories. The people who sign up to be on your email list want to hear from you.

They wanna hear about your offers. They wanna see your books. They wanna learn more from you. And also with email lists, you don't have to fight an algorithm. If you send out an email broadcast, it's gonna get delivered straight to their inbox.

It will be easy. No sweat. So if you have 500 email list subscribers, that email is gonna send to every single subscriber. So all 500 subscribers. So if you post on Instagram or Facebook or YouTube or x or whatever you post on, if you have 500 followers on those platforms, the likelihood of that reaching every single one of your followers is slim to none.

That never happens. As of right now, I have about 6,300 followers on my main Instagram account, and not every single one of my posts reaches every single one of my followers. That actually has never happened, and that is normal. So if you have an email list, you completely cut out the algorithm, and you basically guarantee yourself that you're going to reach the maximum amount of people as possible. And you don't need to make your email newsletter that complicated either.

It can be something like a behind the scenes or like a story from the making of the book or why this book would be really great for their kids. Something simple like that. Or if your book has won an award, highlight the fact that it won an award and then insert the link. You can keep it really simple. You can keep it really short, really concise.

You don't need to make it a huge email broadcast thing. You don't need to make it three pages long. If anything, less people will read it if it's that long. What helps me with my books and when I link to it in my email list and when I link to it on my Instagram stories is if I tell them that you can read it for free with Kindle Unlimited, I get a way higher click through rate, and I get a way bigger boost than if I just say buy the book on Amazon. Because you know as somebody who consumes content, we get so many ads.

We get so many posts that want us to buy products from them. So we're just kind of over it. Like, we don't wanna hear it, And we're also turned off by it. You come out with a really refreshing take like, hey. You can read this for free with Kindle Unlimited if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription.

People are gonna be like, wow. That was really nice of you. Thank you. Make it as frictionless as possible. That is how you're gonna see the best result.

And before you start commenting down below, because I know some of you will, that I don't want them to read it on Kindle Unlimited, I want them to just buy it on paperback. Would I be losing out on a paperback sale? No. You will not. If you have young children in your life, you will notice that they like to reread things.

They like to rewatch things. There's comfort in knowing a story already and knowing that you already like it. I'm an avid rereader and avid rewatcher. So my son, if he really likes a book, he will pick it out over and over and over again. And we find books in the Kindle Unlimited library all the time with my iPad if he wants a new book, and he will want it so much that I have to buy the paperback for him because he wants it in physical form.

He will even ask me, mommy, can we get this for real? Can we get this mailed to us? And then I say, yes. Of course. We can do that.

So this is something that will help you with sales over time because you're basically giving them a sample of what they're going to be getting when they purchase. And, of course, they get the story, but they're not gonna get it in that physical format. So you're building trust and you're building more connections, and you're really just shortening the gap between somebody who's not gonna buy and somebody who will buy. I hope that makes sense. I know I'm throwing a lot of information at you, but I just wanna make sure that you get it and you understand that it's a good thing.

And you also get paid for Kindle Unlimited page reads, and your book actually ranks higher in Kindle Unlimited search discovery. So lots of bonuses there. And this last tip, if you've been waiting for it, is one of my favorites. It is tried and true. It is utilizing that email list strategy that I talked to you about.

You don't need to be super active on social media to make this work. You put in the effort upfront, and then afterwards, it's very sustainable and very easy to grow your marketing capabilities over time. This method is called the free traffic formula method. If you've seen any of my other videos and I've talked about this method before and you're like, oh my god. She's talking about this again.

I'm telling you right now, my students and clients love this because this is a way that you can market your book almost passively and without needing to show your face if you're not comfortable with it, and you don't need to pay for ads. This is the method that gets me my website traffic so high. Like, it grows year over year with this method. This is what my website traffic looks like by using this method. This is all organic.

I have never paid for ads to get people to my website or to get people to my Amazon listings. I actually paid $500 in the beginning of my career, and it was basically like lighting my money on fire. I will never do that again. So this is why I love this method, and I will break it down for you simply here. So this method goes as follows.

I create free coloring pages or free activity pages based on my children's books. Then what I do is I list those as a freebie or a more sophisticated term is lead magnet, if you've heard that term before. So I list them for free, but the only way that people can actually download the PDF is by giving me their email address. Then when somebody enters in their email address to get the coloring page or the activity page, that gets automatically delivered to their email inbox. And after they sign up for this coloring page and they get it delivered, they are on my email list.

And before any of you comment trying to, like, naysay this method, they can unsubscribe whenever they want. It is completely legal. It goes with all the email list growth terms and regulations. It's completely legit. And then I can send them subsequent emails that directly market and promote my books that are related to those coloring pages.

So something even as simple as, I really hope you enjoy this free coloring page or free activity page. This page is actually directly based off of my book. If your child really enjoyed this page, they're really gonna like this book, and you can read this book for free with Kindle Unlimited, or you can check it out on Amazon. Simple, easy. That's all you need to do.

Just from me doing this, I have massively increased my visibility. I have grown my email list by thousands. This is something that is really low lift. I set this up once and it pays off time and time again, and it's very sustainable. I don't wanna share anything with you that's not sustainable or realistic.

I started this three years ago, and over time, my book sales and my marketing potential has increased so much, and it does year over year with this simple method. And I break down this exact method in one of my many courses called free traffic formula. Of course, of course, it's named after the actual method. And since you're a part of my YouTube family and you're watching this video, you can get it for 20% off. It's an already really affordable mini course.

I list it for $47 really, really cheap. People would pay a lot of money for this kind of information, and people in other niches, they charge hundreds of dollars for this kind of strategy and breakdown, but you get it for only $47. And with that 20% discount code, you'll get it for $37. And you have it forever, and you can keep looking back at it, and you can continue to grow your business with this really sustainable and accessible mini course. That will be the second link in my description right after the author growth roadmap link.

Make sure to enter in the promo code YouTube 20 to get your 20% discount. Now I know I threw a lot of information at you. I'm just filled with tips and tricks, and I love talking about this stuff. I also have a ton of free resources in the description down below. I've got a free children's book marketing guide, a free Instagram content planner, as well as a free book launch team with email templates checklist in the description down below.

Grab all those freebies. I know they're really gonna help you out. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast episode. I hope 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.