How To Self Publish a Children's Book: Writing a Kids Book

About this video

This is part two of a four-part series on self-publishing a children’s book, focused on writing the content. On length, Dale says it depends on the value you want to deliver and audience expectations: look at the top 20 bestselling books in your children’s book niche, add their page counts together and divide by 20 to get an average range to aim for, and study those books by buying them, borrowing them from a library or using Kindle Unlimited. Next, outline the book: for an illustrated book, storyboard with boxes, rough clue drawings and lines describing what happens; without illustrations, list what each section or chapter will cover and the questions it will answer. Then write the content. For illustrations, get referrals from other authors, look on Fiverr, or do it yourself as he did for his Grumpy Gus series: he purchased image licensing from DepositPhotos for separate elements (head, arms, body, legs, shoes, hands) and combined them in GIMP, the free open-source software, warning readers to read licensing fine print because some licences only allow use in combination or as a deviation, not sold as-is. He recommends GIMP tutorials from Davies Media Design and Logos By Nick, and Piximperfect for Photoshop. Assemble finished pages in PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides, minding dimensions — he used about 8 1/4 inch by 8 1/4 inch so the book worked for print and could be formatted for ebook — then export to PDF. Finally, get the book professionally edited and proofread before publishing, fix what is needed and do not rush, to avoid bad reviews. The video is sponsored by the North Street Book Prize, with prizes up to $12,500 and a $5,000 grand prize mentioned.

Key takeaways

• Set target length by averaging the page counts of the top 20 bestselling books in your children’s book niche.
• Storyboard illustrated books with boxes, rough drawings and notes; outline non-illustrated books by section and questions to answer.
• Source illustrations via author referrals, Fiverr, or DIY stock licensing — but read the licence fine print on how art may be combined or sold.
• Dale illustrated Grumpy Gus himself by combining licensed DepositPhotos elements in free GIMP software.
• Lay out pages at your final trim size, export to PDF, and always get professional editing and proofreading before publishing.

Episode details: published June 3, 2020 · 8:07 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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