Introduction to self-publishing

There is a big misconception that writing children’s books is an easy, quick way to make money. It’s not easy, for a start. Firstly, because the market is saturated. The dawn of the self-publishing age has flooded the market. Your book has to be a cut above the rest to stand out. Secondly, children aren’t stupid - and many things compete for their time. They’ll quickly pick up if your heart wasn’t in it.

I believe that one can make money by writing and publishing children’s books. But only if your motivation is something other than money.

You must:

• Believe in your story and characters.
• Be prepared to invest in professionals to edit, illustrate and design your book
• Prepare yourself for a marketing phase. Making a good book simply isn’t enough. You need to create a brilliant book and put it in front of readers in innovative and clever ways.

Making a book should be a fun process. But it often isn’t because authors, like yourself, often have to wade through a nightmare of conflicting information and spend hours surfing the web, and don’t often get advice from the people who actually do the work.

Who I am

My name is Bryony van der Merwe, and I’ve been making children’s books for a long time. Many books I have worked on have won awards (see complete list here).

I have helped hundreds of authors reach their goals. In 2022 alone, I edited over XXXX children’s stories, designed over XXX children’s books and oversaw the illustration of a further XXXX books.

Who is this course for

This is for everyone who wants to write and publish a children’s book. It’s aimed at the complete novice but also contains valuable tips for the more experienced.

If you’re writing a children’s book, I hope to help make this process easy for you with the step-by-step process for writing, printing and publishing outlined in this book.