How to Self-Publish a Children’s Picture Book on Amazon KDP 2022
Ready to make some side hustle money by self-publishing your very own children’s books? You can do so through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. Like any other side hustle, creating a children’s book will not make you rich but it can create another stream of income for you. Creating a children’s book is fun but it is a lot of work if you want it to be done right. There’s little to no cost to create a children’s book. You can start with something you already own, a smartphone or any other internet enabled device.
What you need to get started:
Hardware:
A laptop, desktop, tablet or smartphone.
Software:
PDF creation and editing software
-Adobe Acrobat or similar software
Illustration software:
-Adobe Illustrator (IOS/PC), Procreate (IOS/ IPadOS), Medibang or any other illustration software.
Finally, lots of imagination.
Content of your book:
-Cover (Front side and Backside)
-Copyright page
-Manuscript (The inside of the book)
Cover (Front/ Back):
The old cliché of “Don’t judge a book by its cover” might be true but it doesn’t change the fact that people will still purchase your book based on what your book cover looks like. Before you get started on your cover make sure your manuscript is complete. Often new writers will design a cover before completing their manuscript only to discover that the cover doesn’t reflect the final draft because it is completely different from the original concept. In addition, if the book cover does accurately reflect the content of the book, then your readers might feel mislead and leave negative feedback. You will need to create an illustration that includes both front and back for a paperback and only the front portion for an e-book.
KDP Cover Specifications:
Review Amazon’s guidelines such as trim size, bleed, and margins for up loading you cover. Once you decided what size book you want to create. You can now start creating your cover. Most children’s book include bleed. Bleed is a printing term that refers to when the printing on a page extends past where the publication will be trimmed. In order to avoid having your image cut off, you should leave enough space to ensure your cover is fully visible and isn’t cut off during printing. You can extend the trim size of your illustration by .25in to ensure you don’t end up with a white border. Amazon also provides a cover creator but it is limited. Finally, you need to ensure that your illustrations will come out clearly. In order to do this, you will need to make sure that your illustrations are in CMYK with a minimum resolution of 300 DPI. Finally, the illustration cover can only be uploaded as JPG, PNG, or TIF/TIFF.
Copyright Page
While a copyright page might not be required by Amazon. It might be a good Idea to include one. A copyright page lets readers know what they are able and not able to do with your work. A children’s book can take a long time to create. You might want to have some type of protection for your intellectual property. A copyright page however, will not guarantee that your book will not be shared or plagiarized but it will add an extra layer of protection. It could even help you if someone claims your work as theirs.
A copyright page may include the following:
• Copyright notice (required)
• Rights reserved notice (required)
• ISBN
• Disclaimers
• Permissions notice
• Print edition
• Author’s website
• Printing details
• Trademarks
• Publisher information
Example Copyright page:
Copyright © [Year of First Publication] [Author]
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact: [Your Contact information]
Manuscript (The inside of the book)
Now the great thing is you don’t have to write the entire book yourself or any of it at all. You can outsource the work through places like fiverr.com, Upwork.com, Craigslist and various other websites.
Select a Niche
Determine what niche you want to focus on. Children’s picture books are mostly fiction but could also include non-fiction.
Things to keep in mind when creating your book:
1. Who is your target audience? Think about the reading level of your intended audience. Is it geared toward boys, girls or both?
2. What solutions are you providing? For non-fiction books, how are you helping the reader solve a problem? What do they need to learn about? Your book must help the reader achieve a goal. Even fiction books must provide a solution to a conflict whether it’s internal or external.
Now that you’ve selected your niche. Check out books in your niche that are on the best-seller’s list. Check out the what readers are saying about the book. Take elements or inspiration from these books. Make sure that you are not plagiarizing. Plagiarizing is Using another author’s work as if it was one’s own original work and it could get you into a lot of trouble and get you banned from the KDP platform.
Create an outline
Now that you have a feel for what you want your book to be, you are going to wasn’t to create an outline to help you organize your thoughts. You don’t want to finish writing your book and realize that you will need to rewrite it because its unorganized. A non-fiction must make sure all its facts are correct. A good fiction book needs a great story arc. Your story needs a conflict, external or internal, that needs to be resolved.
KDP Manuscript Specifications:
Review Amazon’s guidelines such as minimum page requirements, trim size, bleed, and margins for up loading your manuscript. Once you decided what size book you want to create. You can now start creating your manuscript illustrations. Most children’s book include bleed. Bleed is a printing term that refers to when the printing on a page extends past where the publication will be trimmed. In order to avoid having your image cut off, you should leave enough space to ensure your cover is fully visible and isn’t cut off during printing. You can extend the trim size of your illustration by .25in to ensure you don’t end up with a white border. Finally, you need to ensure that your illustrations will come out clearly. In order to do this, you will need to make sure that your illustrations are created in a CMYK color model settingwith a minimum resolution of 300 DPI. Finally, for best the illustration manuscript should be uploaded as one file as a PDF file format for paperback and DOC/DOCX, KPF, EPUB, and MOBI for E-books. Amazon also has Kindle Create which can help you convert your PDF into Kindle Package Format (KDF).
Editing
Before uploading make sure to have someone proofread it for any errors. It’s common to overlook your own work. A few errors on a 500-page book might be ok but not on 30-page book.
Uploading
You are now ready to upload your book. Create an account at www.kdp.amazon.com or simply use your log information from amazon.com if you already have an account. Follow the easy uploading process and you are all set. It might take a couple of days before your book is available on amazon.com.
Make that money don’t let it make you!
-G.T. Blaster