Self-Publish Your Children's Book - From Start to Finish

Find the most powerful and most valuable combination of the elements of Value and Enjoyment to make your book a success. Learn how to determine what these elements are and how to balance them in a book.

In children's publishing, your readers are different than your buyers. Many books are gifted, bought by teachers, and parents who like to see different things in a book than your readers (the children) do. Understand each of these markets to identify what your book will deliver, and how.

Additionally, please don't forget to download and fill out the two worksheets included here. They will help provide structure for your notes and a framework for building your book!

Conveniently, by the sheer nature of it being a children's book, it will be completely unique. You're designing a new product from the ground up so there is no question that it will be different, but how will it stand out among the rest?

Looking into the future, will you be able to scale the production of your book? Can you satisfy different markets? Can you effectively sell your book internationally?

Please contact me with any questions and let me know what you think of the course. If you're enjoying this content I would love it if you could provide a short review!

What is a "personal brand"? Why do I need one? How do I start building one?

What are the most important social media channels for authors? What can be gained by using them and how should they be used to be most effective?

Don't forget to download and read the FIVE textbooks included with this lecture.

Social Media Plan of Attack will give you an overview of social media and how it can be used to market your brand in general.

Twitter Marketing Made Easy, Unstoppable Facebook Traffic, Discovering the World of Pinterest and Google+ Authority are all great books that will help you, first understand what each of these social media channels is all about and then how to use it effectively. While the books are fairly basic in nature, even advanced users will be able to glean some creative insights from them.

A great way to get some exposure, build some excitement, build a follower base, glean social proof and make money is to start a crowd-funding campaign. The following lecture is the video I used to run a successful kickstarter campaign that helped me launch my very first book!

Some people say it's vital, others think it's too much overhead. Here are my thoughts, but you make up your own mind.

As a student of this course, a supplementary course, "Create an Author Website" is also available to you at no extra charge.

To take the "Create an Author Website" course, please download this document and use the voucher code included within. This course is an additional two hour walk-through on all the details of creating an AMAZING author website, even if you have ZERO experience.

Enjoy!

Although this book is not specifically written for authors, it does provide some good generic pointers to get you started successfully building a valuable and responsive email list.

Creating a great character is more than just dreaming it up. The name, the physical construction and psychological profile will all affect how the readers relate to the character to help the book to be a great product.

Here is my strategy on writing children's books. You may have your own, but this seems to be sound and ensures that you cover all the bases.

If you're not a writer at all or just don't want to write the book, I'll also give you some other ideas.

Starting with a blank page can be hard. In this lecture we talk more about out-sourcing, but we begin by looking at the format of the book and making sure not to get ahead of ourselves with illustrations before we know what the book will look like as an overall product.

The tools and considerations to take into account when putting your final book file together. We talk about formatting for print, formatting for kindle, general layout considerations, as well as creating a book description and choosing categories on Amazon.

If you need more technical details on actually getting your book in print on CreateSpace and making it available through print-on-demand, I recommend you take this additional course that will guide you through the ins and outs of the createspace interface. I share my screen with you and take you all the way through the process in great detail.

A screen sharing lecture explaining the details of the Kindle book submission page. Get familiar with this interface and understand what all the elements are. Make sure your Kindle book is listed on the same page as the print book!!

Your first launch is a big deal. It should be exciting for you, but it should also be exciting for a lot of other people! Don't be the only one tooting your horn. There are others who will join in your fanfare.

A quick recap of everything discussed in the previous 4 sections.

Here are the complete slides from all of the lectures above. I've also added some notes and links along the way to help you keep all of your resources in one place. I hope you will be able to refer to this document easier than going back through the videos to find the information you are looking for.

Some tips and tricks to help you join the ranks of some of the best authors on Amazon. Understand the ranking system, find marketing partners, build traffic and interest, and more.

You're not just an independent author anymore. You're an entrepreneur. Congratulations. Does that scare you? Don't worry, entrepreneurs are people too! Here are some great insights and tips to keep you focused, accountable, on-track, objective and successful!

Thanks so much for joining me! I can't wait to see YOUR book in print! And don't forget to leave a review!

Chances are you are not the only one with a particular question, so in this section I will be creating video responses for your questions, that way all of the students in the course will benefit.

Please be descriptive in asking questions so that I can answer with the most relevant response.

Learn what a cover contest is and how to launch a successful one to help build awareness of your book.

Use this super powerful strategy to leverage high traffic websites to gain exposure to very specific target audiences and build your following.

Make sure to list your book on this high-traffic site to leverage their readership.

Again, leverage this high-power site to gain new readers and get your book on people "to-read" list.