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:
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.
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