Children's Book Marketing Made Easy

7 Mistakes I'd NEVER Make Again Publishing Children's Books on Amazon KDP
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[00:00:00] 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 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. '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 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 I had to start my children's book self-publishing business all over again, [00:01:00] there are seven things that I would not do

After almost five years of self-publishing children's books on Amazon KDP, IngramSpark, and beyond, selling those children's books and scaling this into my full-time job, I've learned a lot of things that work and the things that don't work And these seven things that I'm gonna go over in this video are gonna save you a lot of time, and I wish it was something that I could have saved time with, but you live and you learn So hopefully these lessons that I detail in this video will save you a lot of time, money, and frustration And make sure to watch until the very end because these points I go through, a lot of people don't talk about them, but I'm gonna be really real with you in this video. And if we haven't met before, hi, my name is Harley and I'm an award-winning self-published children's book author and illustrator.

After publishing my first three children's books on Amazon KDP, 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 And before we get into the meat of this video, if you've been watching a lot of my videos before or if [00:02:00] you've never seen me before and you're feeling really overwhelmed and really stuck in your children's book self-publishing business, I invite you to book a one-on-one coaching call with me. I take these calls all the time, and in these calls we go over what your pain points are, what you're struggling with, how you want to overcome them, and what you're really looking for in your children's book self-publishing business. Are you wanting to do the same thing as me and make it your full-time job?

Do you just wanna make some stable side income? Are you just looking to get your first children's book out there and published? I can help you in this one-on-one coaching call If you're interested in booking a one-on-one coaching call with me, the links will be in the description down below to book. I offer mini sessions as well as full sessions to be as accessible to you as possible, so I can't wait to speak with you and help you solve your problems So the first thing that I would never do again is publishing a children's book without first researching how popular that topic is Now this is something that I didn't do with my first children's book, because my first children's book I had no clue what I was doing. I just truly intended to publish the book, get it [00:03:00] out there. That was truly my only goal. But when I realized that I didn't research the topic and I just wrote from my heart, it was a story that I came up with for my two-year-old son at that point, I didn't think about the marketability of the book, and I know that doesn't sound very fun at all, and writing children's books is supposed to be whimsical and fun and enchanting, but if you're actually wanting to make money from this, you have to treat it like a business, so you have to do research on the topic first So how you do that is you research on Amazon, you do a quick little search on, like, unicorn books for kids, , SEL books for kids, diversity books for kids, inclusion books for kids, and see what results pop up. And if there are really big sellers popping up, that means it's a marketable topic. Another way that you can do this is you can actually pay for a software program.

I know I did this, and it really, really helped me out and that software program is called Publisher Rocket. So in Publisher Rocket, it's a one-time fee. I bought mine almost five years ago, and they continue to update it very [00:04:00] frequently, and I still have access to it for the rest of my life.

Using Publisher Rocket, you can find the best keywords and categories for your book, and you can see how the other books are doing in the Amazon KDP space. So that is a really great, efficient way to really do research on your topic before you publish your book to make sure it will actually sell and it's something people wanna read about Now the second thing I would never do again is assume that Amazon KDP is going to market my books for me. Now that was another thing that I learned the hard way after publishing my first book I saw all these videos in the beginning before I published my first book with all the gurus saying, " Oh, if you publish a children's book on KDP, you're gonna make $100 a day in passive income," yada, yada, yada.

Did I kinda fall for it? Yes. So I truly thought that Amazon was going to bring me customers because there are so many customers on Amazon That is most certainly not true. If you don't know how to optimize, if you don't know how to pick the best keywords and categories, like using Publisher Rocket, which will be linked down below for you Amazon will not bring people to your [00:05:00] book listing. You have to get people to your book listing so what I learned the hard way is that you have to have a marketing strategy and not just be completely reliant on Amazon And there are tons of free ways that you can market your children's books for free on Amazon KDP. I mean, I can go over a couple of them, but I have a ton of videos that go over a bunch of different marketing strategies The first quick tip that you can do is you can just post more consistently on social media.

And before you click away because you heard the word social media, please don't. I promise you I did not wanna be on social media when I published my children's book. I didn't wanna show my face. I didn't wanna do any of that. I know, shocker just from looking at me right now. But I truly did not wanna do that, and that really helped move the needle.

Another thing that you can do is you can make your e-book free for the time of launch when you publish on Amazon KDP If you haven't heard of that strategy, watch this video right here. I go in detail how you can set this up and how it benefits you. That will also be linked in the description down below, as well as any other link and any other helpful video.

That is gonna be linked in the description [00:06:00] down below, and a bunch of free resources, so definitely go check those out

And another quick thing that you can do to market your children's book for free Is to talk about your children's book to your friends, family, and your coworkers. I know I have so many coaching clients and students that say, "I just wanna hide behind my computer screen. I don't want anybody to know about my children's book." But even their biggest support system doesn't know they have a children's book out, and those are the people that will buy from you and leave reviews from you.

So you should definitely just tell them about it. They will support you, and don't be afraid of that Now, the third thing that I will never do again after publishing my first children's book on Amazon KDP is I wouldn't spend any money on Amazon ads. When I published my first children's book on Amazon KDP, I think I spent about $500 on Amazon ads, and I got only two book sales because I didn't know what I was doing.

Amazon ads is a skill set. You need to know how to run ads and what to target, and you need to know what cost per click is, automated Amazon ads. Like, it's a whole thing that you need to learn about and research, and if you don't have an [00:07:00] optimized Amazon listing first, like you don't have reviews, you don't have a good book cover, you don't have a good sales description, you don't have any of that, you're just gonna be wasting your money.

You're gonna be lighting your money on fire paying for Amazon ads. So please, please, please, don't do that until you have proven to yourself that you can sell your book without ads, and then ads can just help amplify that Another thing about Amazon Ads is that you might think that Amazon Ads is a marketing strategy, and for the most part, it is not a feasible marketing strategy for a lot of us. So please think about marketing strategies that will actually work for you and ones that you can sustain and especially find marketing strategies that are free.

There are so many of them, and you can make them work for you The fourth thing I will never do again and I don't want you to do at all is not talking about your book before launch. So not marketing your children's book before you launch it. I didn't do this with my first book because like I said, I was just trying to get it out there, but little did I realize that I had to talk about it [00:08:00] beforehand in order for it to do well after launching it So you have to start building awareness before you launch. So a couple quick ways that you can do that is you can post about it on your personal Facebook, you can post about it on LinkedIn if you want, if you have a LinkedIn profile, you can post about it there. You can post about it on Snapchat, on Instagram, wherever your closest friends and family members are, post about it there And if you happen to have an audience and you have an email list or you have a Substack, make sure you talk about it before then.

You can share behind-the-scenes content. You can share sneak peek illustrations, cover reveals, book updates. You can even talk about the process of publishing a children's book because a lot of people don't even know what the publishing process looks like 'cause they're never gonna go through it, so they're gonna find it very interesting.

So feel free to talk about it even if you don't think it's very interesting And another thing that will help you is building a launch team. So a launch team is essentially your support system in one place that basically promises you that they will read [00:09:00] your book and they will review your book on Amazon And creating a book launch team is not a process that needs to be super complicated either. You can do it via Google Forms. You can do it via your email service provider. I use MailerLite, and I just created an embedded form to have them put in their first name and their email, and they sign up for my book launch team Or you can just text people and ask them if you can send them an email on launch day, and you can just put that into a Google Sheet or write it on pen and paper that you're gonna email these people on your launch day If you want a step-by-step video on how to create a book launch team, watch this video right here.

That will also be linked in the description down below if you wanna go ahead and set that up The fifth thing that I wouldn't do if I published my children's book for the first time is I wouldn't rely entirely on social media. Now, I know what you're thinking. "Harley, didn't you just say make sure to post about it on social media?" Yes, I did, but you shouldn't put all of your eggs in one basket, and it kind of goes back to relying on Amazon to market and sell your book for you.

You're putting all your eggs in one basket, so you need [00:10:00] to split up your eggs into a bunch of different baskets. So one basket could be organic Amazon searches. Another basket could be posting on social media, and another basket could be doing pop-ups at local bookstores or doing in-person events or doing community events.

There are tons of different ways that you can really talk about your book and get your book out there And I want you to do that because social media algorithms change constantly, so even if you have a marketing system down that has been working for you, one day it might not work, and you don't want that source just completely shut off.

You wanna have a bunch of different sources that you could potentially get sales from. And that's just entrepreneurship in a nutshell, and that is diversifying your income stream to keep you safe And what's really cool about bookstores is you can pop up for free. All you really need to do is just walk into your local bookstore, show them a copy of your book, ask if you could collaborate in any way, like pop up for a book signing event, a story time, or even doing a wholesale collaboration so they stock your books in their store.

There are so [00:11:00] many different ways that you can do this with not just bookstores, but even your local coffee shops, your boutiques, gift shops, anything. They are also small businesses and they want to support you too, and you will support them by talking about their business on your social media and to your friends and family and getting people into their store as well Now, the sixth thing that I wouldn't do and you shouldn't do either is completely ignore building an email list Why I think an email list is so important is because it gives you a way to directly contact the people who are subscribed to you. Whereas on social media, you have to fight with an algorithm to even get to the feeds of the people that follow you. So let's take me for example, like my numbers. On my main Instagram account, @doppysofficial, @ D-O-P-P-Y-S official, I surpassed 10,000 followers.

So I have 10,000 people following me, but a lot of the times my posts only get maybe 5 to 6,000 views, which means not every one of my followers sees my posts. And when I go [00:12:00] deeper into those analytics

Only 50% of those people are my followers, and the other 50% are non-followers. So it's very hard to get my news and my launches and my updates out to my followers. That's where an email list comes in. An email list, you don't need to fight with an algorithm. The people sign up for your email list, and then you can send out an email broadcast or a launch campaign or a pre-order campaign, whatever you'd like,

And they're gonna get it sent to their inbox. You don't need to fight with an algorithm. You don't need to come up with the best hook. You don't need to come up with a trending carousel idea. You don't need to do any of that. You can just send an email And if you wanna learn how to grow your email list to your first 100 email list subscribers, watch this video right here. It will be also linked in the description down below if you wanna watch that video after you watch this one And the seventh thing that you shouldn't do, and something that I did because I'm psychotic

is don't try to do everything all at once. Because if you don't focus on something, you're really not gonna move the needle on one thing Plus this could lead to [00:13:00] burnout and inconsistency. And that's another thing. When I started launching and promoting my children's books, I started a Pinterest, I started an Instagram, I started a Facebook, I started a Facebook group. I also had a different YouTube channel other than this one, and I was doing all those things at the same time, and I could only do it for a couple months.

And guess what? I dropped four out of those seven things. So I really only use those two to three things nowadays because those are the things that worked for me

And the main thing with marketing and selling children's books online, especially on Amazon, is just staying consistent and staying visible. So finding the path that you are most likely to continue taking is going to be the best route for you, so you're gonna find one that you actually like doing. You shouldn't do a social media platform that you don't like.

I am not on X. I don't really post on Threads. I don't have a Substack. I don't have any of those. So I just lean into the ones that I do enjoy doing. So maybe you do enjoy Substack or X. Do Substack or X. You don't need to [00:14:00] do Instagram or Facebook. If you just wanna do YouTube and you don't wanna do anything else, just do YouTube.

If you just wanna do Instagram or TikTok over one or the other, like, just do one of those. Pick the one that will work for you and the one that you are most interested in, because that one has the higher likelihood of working, 'cause you're gonna keep showing up

And the biggest takeaway that I got after publishing my first children's book on Amazon KDP and any of the books that I publish on Amazon KDP is that publishing is only the beginning

If you want to build a sustainable and profitable children's book publishing business, you need to think beyond just the publishing. You need to think long-term and you need to think really big And that is not just by creating books, but it's actually thinking like a publisher and thinking like a business and how you're gonna sell that book and how you're gonna sell more books to more people.

That is truly how you get the flywheel going and how you get this to be a sustainable income source for you And I mean it when I say this though, if I can figure it out, you can figure it out. You just need to stick with it and stay [00:15:00] determined and be just a teensy bit delusional, 'cause that will help you stick with it.

Now, I know I went over a bunch of information and I hope it really helped you out. But if you're looking for more in-depth trainings, more resources, more freebies, and a community where you can actually get connected with other self-published children's book authors and talk about your problems and brainstorm amongst each other,

I invite you to join my free community, Kidlit Author Growth Academy. In Kidlit Author Growth Academy, I offer you free in-depth trainings that I don't have anywhere else. I give you free resources that I don't have anywhere else, only in that community, and you get connected with a bunch of like-minded people that are going through the same journey as you

And inside Kidlit Author Growth Academy, this is where I host my signature membership program, Author Growth Roadmap. In Author Growth Roadmap, I teach you how to publish, launch, and scale your children's book publishing business sustainably and effectively, and all without the use of ads.

It's basically everything that I learned over the past four years [00:16:00] that helped me get to be a full-time self-published children's book author and illustrator. If I can do it, you can do it, too, and I lay it out step by step in my signature membership program, Author Growth Roadmap

In there I give you a ton of Instagram templates, book marketing templates, 30 plus training videos, and weekly live Zoom calls And all for a very low price of $39 a month. I give you so many resources and so many training videos, and I'm constantly adding to it all the time, and nobody's gonna give you this kind of information for so cheap.

I will happily do that for you because I love to do it The link to join Kidlit Author Growth Academy is going to be in my description down below. It's gonna be the third link to join Kidlit Author Growth Academy. If you wanna join Author Growth Roadmap, that is going to be the fourth link in my description down below.

I can't wait to see you inside, and if you join, please introduce yourself. I would love to get connected with you.

thank you so much for listening to this podcast episode. I hope you found it helpful and you learned something [00:17:00] new. And if you did find it helpful, make sure to subscribe or follow wherever you listen to your podcasts, 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 [00:18:00] notes down below for you. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.