An article related to Reedsy’s new course in selling books for young people reveals that marketing an indie children’s book is hardly child’s play
In one of Reedsy’s periodic marketing-advice articles, author Martin Cavannagh looks at marketing children’s books outside of mainstream trade publishing. While children’s/YA is an area of strong sales growth for publishers, it gets as sticky as peanut butter and jelly for indies.
The Association of American Publishers’ preliminary book-revenue figures for the first quarter (subject to revision) show the children’s/YA sector growing at 5.9 percent this year. Even without new Potter power or a Hunger Games blockbuster, the sector continues to show strength. But marketing kids’ books has a lot to do with library and school access, parent-teacher channels long developed by publishing houses, mainstream review attention in such venues as School Library Journal, and bookstore exposure.
One of the best points Cavannagh makes in his article is that the parents of the moment are mostly Millennial. (And with younger children, of course, parents are your buyers.) The Millennial family, often stereotypically depicted as head-down over social media devices, is an online family, so an author’s presence on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms carries more potential in terms of outreach. “Search through Facebook for children’s book groups,” Cavannagh writes, “or groups that might be concerned with the topic of your book. If you’ve written a picture book about fire trucks, you can bet there’s a Facebook group of people who love fire trucks—and some of those people are going to have kids.” Important caveat: Don’t forget the trends we reported from BookExpo: Millennials want traditional media for their children; publishers see only 6 percent of children’s/YA titles sell in ebook form. (Compare that against 50 percent for adult fiction.) Plus indie authors face a challenge in that nearly one-third of all kids’ books sold in 2017 were branded (e.g., Dr. Seuss, Harry Potter, Wimpy Kid, and National Geographic). As with self-published work for adult readers, it helps indies to develop a series or recognizable brand over time.
Also, an author’s distribution capability becomes important because of exposure to libraries. Without the infrastructure of a publishing house behind you, your best route may be walking into every library you can get to, meeting with librarians, looking for chances to offer readings for the after-school set, and so on. And along those same lines, Cavannagh recommends in-school visits—again, very labor-intensive to arrange yourself. Getting your foot in the door requires good reviews, some very professional materials, and the age-range specifications and categorizations that educators are looking for. A good source we can recommend for what seems to be working in the indie children’s space is Kirkus’s Best Indie listings. They break out strong contenders in fiction, nonfiction, middle grade, picture books, and teen.
Bottom line: In short, while we think Cavannagh’s advice at Reedsy is spot on, independent children’s authors (and illustrators) face an uphill battle. Being able to enjoy marketing your work may be even more important in this sector than in others, since so much of it may have to be done in face-to-face appeals with educators and librarians..
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
