One of the easiest book genres to write is children’s books. Children’s books do not have to be lengthy or got into a lot of details.

The vocabulary used is simple for young children to understand.

You can fill some pages with illustrations and some pages with a sentence to a short paragraph. Writing it is easy.

Nothing is ever easy.

Somewhere down the line, a difficulty arises. That difficulty with children’s books is not completing the project but marketing it. With a lot of writers trying to reach a young audience, there is a lot of competition.

It’s not impossible to succeed with a children’s book since a large number of authors do succeed with them.

The thing to keep in mind with children’s books is that it has to set itself apart from the rest. For example, Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” has very colorful images that appeal to children and draw them into the story of a tiny caterpillar’s bottomless pit of an appetite.

They see the caterpillar eat through a bright red apple and then through a lot of colorful foods.

Carle’s illustrations also use colored tissue paper as opposed to images colored from paint, crayons, pencils, or even computer-generated images.

Carle’s pages contain a simple sentence or two that hold a child’s attention.

Marketing the book is another difficulty for the self-publishing author of any genre. Unless the author has hired a marketing firm to promote the book, there is a lot of hard work involved in coming up with a marketing plan to reach a target audience, get potential customers interested in buying the book, and getting potential retailers interested in selling it in their stores.

After publication, getting the book in front of the right eyes is all a gamble. Find any possible interested customers and don’t rule them out.

For example, my published children’s book is about my daughter’s and dog’s relationship that also includes tips about child-dog safety as well as cute stories about playing together.

Not only have I sent query letters to book retailers, but I have also sent them to pet stores and animal shelters.

I plan on also sending query letters out to public libraries as well as school libraries. I am going to ask some local elementary schools if I can make an author appearance at their school and maybe a book signing.

In this day in age, social media helps to promote the book.

Create a Facebook page as well as a Twitter account for the book. Post about it frequently. Invite all of your friends to like your page as well as their friends. Blog about your book. Built a web site for it. The internet is the self=publishing author’s friend.

So, the two most important things to remember when producing a children’s book is that it has to be different from all the rest of the children’s books, and an author must thoroughly come up with a marketing plan that puts the book’s name in front of as many eyes as possible.

SET IT APART
By Jodi E. Uhron

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Radu Balas

Radu is the Founder of Publishing Addict and author of "Sell More Books Using Your Author Website | The Easiest Way To Brand, Build, Market, and Manage Your Authorship" Soon available on Amazon.