Sell More Children's Picture Books

Today we’re going to cover how to sell more children’s picture books, so stick around:

Children’s picture books is a highly saturated market. It’s virtually impossible to sell a significant amount of children’s books online without running some sort of ads. Not everyone can afford to run AMS or Facebook ads to their children’s books.

So today, I’m going to show you 3 ways to sell children’s picture books offline.

1. Craft fairs:
The key to selling children’s books at craft fairs is to
focus on the weeks leading up to the start of school, just before the holidays and the last few weeks of the school year. These are optimum times when parents, grandparents and teachers are all looking for a fresh set of books to give to their children to read.

2. School author visits:
Why not put yourself right where your target audience is? Just reach out to the librarians of area elementary schools and ask to do an author visit. When I do my author visits, many times I’ll work with the kids and create a unique custom children’s story right with them. The more interactive you make it, the more the kids will love it. Increasing their desire to read and write.

3. School bookfairs:
Now I’m not suggesting that you go out and get an agent just to get your book on a Scholastic Book Fair shelf. You sell your children’s book at a school book fair a lot easier than that. Book fairs like scholastic have programs called all for books. All for books is a donation based program, where for every dollar donated,

Scholastic will donate a book to one of 3 children’s charities. So what you do is just as the school year starts, contact the PTA for the schools you’re interested in and ask if you could sell your books at their fair. Tell them for every book you sell you’ll donate, $x to the all for books program. You see, eventhough it’s a donation based program, the school gets credit for the money donated as well.

So your donation will help both the school and the children’s charities.

If you really want to maximize your children’s book sales at the bookfair, schedule it so that the day of your author visit is the same night you’ll be at the book fair. This way the kids go home after your author visit and are especially excited because they can see you again, with their parents and buy your amazing picture book that night.

BONUS TIP:
Do you like bonus tips, well then give that thumbs up button a smashy, smashy. It gives me a nice warm fuzzy feeling inside.

Anyway, don’t limit yourself to 1 school. Most schools in a given area will have their bookfairs the same week, so schedule author visits and bookfair gigs for multiple schools in the same area to sell even more children’s books.

If you’re ready for some next level steps, you can have a clipboard with a sign-up sheet for parents to sign up for your mailing list so they can get updates on your upcoming book launches and author visits.

Well there you have it. 3 ways on how to sell more children’s picture books.

Got any ideas for future videos, drop them in the comments below.

[DaleLRoberts]

Great video and I loved the extra personality. More of this! 😀👍👏

[heathermacdonald]

Saw you on Self-Publishing with Dale, and really enjoyed your interview. Lots of great ideas here. Love the idea of collecting emails at the book fair! Liked and subscribed.

[theundergroundtoysociety]

Thanks for the tips! A library contacted me a while back to do an author visit. I've never done any before, but I said yes. So then I got brave and contacted my local school district and they are going to get back to me for a visit sometime this school year. Vendor fairs are tough in my area. I struggle to make any profit due to the fee for the spot. Last year I made a deal with the one Christmas vendor for my husband to fix the guy's snowblower in exchange for a spot. I don't think my husband was thrilled with the idea, but it worked out o.k.

[richl]

Thanks Keith..good advice...we are trying everything to sell A.K.A Kidney Man...
When covid hit, it was hard to promote. NO book fairs...but this school year we will try what you suggested...
Rich

[walkerpublications]

You are the best-kept secret on YouTube....know that is exactly not what you want to hear....but your videos are great and I have learned so much from watching them....so thank you! Question, when you download pictures from pixby--what size do you recommend? Cheers, S

[chtozaviduyesh]

Hi Keith, thank you for sharing valuable experience with us. I subscribed and liked most of your videos.
Ideas for next videos: how to create different interiors for notebooks (graph paper, Hexagon etc), I saw your lined journal interior, it was great! How to create coloring books for adults, how to create different journals) What is the best selling items on Createspace. How to research profitable niches.

[chtozaviduyesh]

What is the minimum number of pages you can submit on Createspace, suppose, for a journal?

[roniaa]

I live in Turkey my book is in English. So it wont sell well.right?I can not advertise