How to Publish a Children’s Book on Amazon KDP

About this video

Dale gives a step-by-step tutorial for publishing a children’s picture book on Amazon Kindle, drawn from his own Grumpy Gus book. Step one is writing and developing the story, thinking about the audience and message — he wanted writing/alliteration and monkeys. Step two is creating artwork, though he notes a picture-free book is possible, citing B.J. Novak’s The Book With No Pictures. For art, he lists drawing it yourself, hiring a freelance artist, or purchasing and altering licensed vector images, warning to check full licensing and fine print on sites like Deposit Photos, Shutterstock or iStock; he chose licensed images and altered them in GIMP. Step three is compiling everything into one PDF, using slideshow-style software such as Keynote, Word or PowerPoint. Step four is downloading Kindle Kids’ Book Creator from Amazon only. Step five is uploading and converting the PDF in that tool. Step six is publishing to KDP as normal, except uploading the .mobi file the creator saves. He claims his first book became a number one bestseller in its category in its first week and took about 12 hours to produce.

Key takeaways

• Start with audience and message first — Dale calls writing and developing the story the hardest step.
• Artwork options are draw it yourself, hire a freelancer, or license and alter stock/vector images, but verify you have full rights for the intended use.
• A children’s book without pictures is presented as a valid alternative, so the artwork step can be skipped.
• Compile the finished book into a single PDF before conversion, preferably using slideshow software for easier element placement.
• Use Amazon’s Kindle Kids’ Book Creator to convert the PDF, then upload the resulting .mobi file to KDP instead of a standard ebook file.

Episode details: published June 26, 2017 · 5:35 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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