How to Get Your Children’s Book Published
Step #3: The Publishers
Have you been writing? I hope so! And yes, anything and everything counts, from the 10,000th word of your first novel to a list of some board book ideas. Last time in this space we talked about the physical types of children’s books and some of their most common genres. Today it’s time to learn about the publisher. There’s lots to know, so get yourself a beverage and let’s get started!
WHAT IS A PUBLISHER?
Traditionally, the publisher is a writer’s boss. Wait? Did you think all of us writers sitting in our PJs typing away while sipping hot tea with a cute dog at our feet didn’t really have a boss? Well, surprise, surprise, my friends; or as my grandpa would say, “don’t kid yourself, everyone has a boss.”
Technically speaking (thanks to the old college Webster in my office) publish means, “to make publicly known.” Therefore, a publisher is a person or firm whose business is putting products like books, comics, newspapers, magazines, or their digital/audio equivalents, into the public marketplace.
The publishing business activities of getting manuscripts to market include:
- Negotiating for and acquiring manuscripts or other creative material.
- Working with authors, illustrators, or other creators to revise their proposals or drafts into a publishable form.
- Copyediting and fact-checking.
- Legal support from contracts to copyright to defamation to subsidiary rights.
- Creative design, production, and printing from sketches to raw materials to finished product.
- Payments to employees, contracted creatives, and/or their agents, taxes, royalties and financial reporting.
- Pricing, sales, and marketing of the finished book or other product to retail/wholesale outlets and to other countries, in other languages.
- Publicity and advertising to the general market and all specialized markets, including submitting the book to all major book review outlets and literary award committees.
- Packaging and distribution to retail outlets, including handling damaged product and potential returns.
- Information technology (IT) resources including public-facing website(s) and internal technology creation and maintenance.
- Managing, coördinating, budgeting, and human resources for the entire process.
Managing, coördinating, budgeting, and human resources for the entire process.
If you want more detail, here are the major departments at a publisher, but this information simply proves that publishers do a lot of work. For author purposes, it’s important to remember that publishing employees are BUSY, every workday, most weekends, pretty much all year long. If your work is lucky enough to catch their attention, use their time wisely.
TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING VS. SELF-PUBLISHING
There are two basic types of publishing companies, or routes to getting your writing turned into a book: Traditional publishing or Self-publishing. The easiest way to define them is:
- In traditional publishing “they pay you” to publish your book.
- In self-publishing “you pay them” to publish your book.
Let’s start traditionally. If you decide to work for a traditional publisher, you will sign a contract and be paid what’s called “an advance” and the publisher will handle (with your creative input) the rest of the steps to get your book to market. As the book sells, it earns what are called “royalties.” Once your book has earned your advance back to them (“earning out”), you will be paid an additional percentage of your book’s sales on a quarterly basis, assuming it stays in print. That could be one year or 100 years. So, after your book earns back it’s advance, you could make an additional ten dollars, ten thousand dollars, or Hunger Games money, including vast sums for subsidiary rights: language editions, film, audio, and merchandise. It all depends on popularity… book copies sold.
Advantages of Traditional Publishing
- payment before publication
- no upfront costs
- team of seasoned professionals
- press and other publicity coverage more likely
- sales and distribution to all booksellers, large and small
- literary awards and book reviews more likely
- more prestigious
- higher average yearly royalties: $3600 (due to more copies sold on average) *
Disadvantages of Traditional Publishing
- high barrier to entry: many gatekeepers, chance of publication low
- less control: it’s their money, it’s their business
- slower: as fast as a year, can be 5 years or more
- lower royalty percentage per copy: ranges 8 – 15%*
Alternately, if you decide to self-publish, you will pay a company to turn your manuscript into a book. That sum ranges by company and publisher services provided, but it’s typically at least a few thousand dollars. However, these companies typically can’t or don’t provide all the publishing business steps listed above. You will get what you pay for: They may edit, they may not. They may provide illustrations, they may not. They may print in high quality, or not. They may send your book to reviewers, or not. They may help you sell/distribute, or you may wind up with cartons of your own books to sell yourself. You may get publicity support; you may get none. Not all self-publishing companies are reliable. Every year there are publishing scams, and unsuspecting writers are left with less money and poor-quality books that can’t be sold, IF they are produced at all.
Still, self-publishing (also called “vanity publishing,” “author-published,” “indie author,” as well as the (in my opinion) misnomer, “small press”) has been around forever, and has only become more popular with ebook/online publishing. It’s a viable option for many writers who want to see their work in print as fast as possible, have funds to pay for it, and are willing to take on much of the marketing/sales of their own books.
Advantages of Self-Publishing
- little to no barrier to entry: few to no gatekeepers
- creative control: it’s your money, you are the client
- faster: within a few months
- higher royalties per copy: ranges 35 – 70% *
Disadvantages of Self-Publishing
- upfront costs
- lack of support from quality staff
- lack of support in sales and distribution
- less likelihood of reviews and awards
- less prestigious
- lower average yearly royalties: $1900 (due to fewer copies sold on average) *
- Even though that about covers the major differences between traditional and self-publishing, we have more to learn. Are all publishing companies created equal? No, they are not. Read on.
TRADITIONAL PUBLISHERS YOU SHOULD KNOW
The great majority of books are produced by just five multinational companies, what the industry calls “The Big 5” publishers. The five largest publishing companies (inc. rough total market share adults & children) are: Penguin Random House (40%); HarperCollins (20%); Simon & Schuster (10%); Hachette (10%); and Macmillan (5%).
Wait! you say, I have lots of books on my classroom and home shelves, I can read the spines and there’s no way that most of them come from the same five companies!
Well, each of these Big 5 publishers have what are called imprints: names under which they publish specific book types or to specific markets (like children). As a brief example, Penguin Random House (PRH) publishes children/YA books under these imprints: Dial, Putnam’s, Nancy Paulsen, Knopf, Crown, Delacorte, Speak, Wendy Lamb, Razorbill, Philomel, Dutton, Viking, Penguin Young Readers, Random House Children’s Books, and that’s not near to all of them. The other Big 5 publish under a myriad of imprints also.
In children’s books specifically, there are also two very big players who are not technically considered Big 5 publishers: Scholastic and Disney. Where children’s publishing is concerned, Scholastic holds close to 25% of the market share and IS a Big 5 (or 6?) even though it’s not listed as such. Disney’s market share is roughly 2%, but some of their properties are also owned, published and/or distributed by some of the Big 5 publishers (it gets complicated). Both Disney and Scholastic have additional imprints, and Scholastic has a very popular school bookfair division with which I’m sure you teachers are intimately acquainted.
In addition to the children’s publishing giants, there are many smaller to mid-size children’s publishing companies that will pay you for writing. Some smaller traditional publishers whose books you may have in your classroom include: Albert Whitman, Astra (imprints: WordSong, Calkins Creek), Candlewick, Chronicle, Charlesbridge, Eerdmans, Holiday House, Kids Can Press, Lee & Low, Norton, and Peachtree. These companies (and many, many others) do the same work as the big guys, they just employ fewer staff members and may be smaller (not always) in terms of advances, budgets, or market reach.
SELF-PUBLISHERS YOU SHOULD KNOW
You can find stories of random authors who have self-published books (typically adult genres like romance) and now live in a large house … on the beach … in France. Take all such stories with a grain of salt and a shaker of caution. Self-publishing is in no way easier than traditional publishing, and in many ways harder — it’s a different business model. If you self-publish, you will spend money and time differently than a traditionally published author.
Personally, I decided not to go the self-published route. Instead, I am traditionally published by Big 5 companies (PRH and Hachette) as well as smaller ones (Astra/Calkins Creek, Candlewick, Norton). I made this decision because 1) I wanted to earn upfront money. 2) I wanted to prove to myself that editors would buy my work (prestige). 3) I didn’t want to spend my writing time selling my own books. But you must make the decision as to the route to publication that’s best for you.
So, because of my own decisions and experience, I am less sure about how to judge a good self-publisher. But there are some big ones. The major self-publishers in the children’s/YA book industry include: Amazon KDP (KDP is Kindle Direct Publishing), Ingram Spark, Bookbaby, Lulu, Apple Books, Draft2Digital, and B&N Press. But there are literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of firms that will take your money and print your children’s book. Here are a few articles from trusted sources: Lessons Learned from Self-Publishing My Picture Book, How to Self-Publish Children’s Books Successfully, Self-Publishing Children’s Books‑A Look at the Numbers. I would also recommend checking out or joining the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi … get it?)
If you want to self-publish, do extensive research ahead of time, including talking to self-published children’s authors and booksellers in your local area, never overextend yourself financially, and try to keep the stars out of your eyes about any one book’s potential.
THE BUSINESS OF BOOKS
In fact, anyone trying to break into this business must keep their feet firmly on the ground. Yes, we all love books. Yes, we are emotionally connected to our writing. But book publishing is a business first and foremost. And that publishing business is competitive — harder than most people think going in, and much harder the more you know. It is hard to write at the highest levels, hard (or expensive) to find a publisher, hard to sell the books, and hard to get paid decently, let alone extravagantly.
A 2018 Author’s Guild survey of 5,000 authors across all sectors (children and adult) found a median income for full-time writers of $20,300 and for part-time writers of $6,080. That’s not mansion money, that’s way below the poverty level.
The chance of success for any single book are dismal (roughly 0.08% of the books published in the US make a bestseller list). Very, very few people are making almost all the money, see the LitHub earnings lists here. Here’s one article from Publishers Weekly on authors and finances. And this article also lays out the (depressing) numbers. And still, the article’s author, Olivia Blacke, writes books.
Why? Because authors have the privilege of using their minds and hearts in ways other workers do not. Authors meet new people, go new places, and learn new skills at every stage of their careers from beginner to veteran. Authors get to turn their thoughts into real world objects. And children’s authors in particular touch the future by creating stories that inspire, educate, and make kids laugh. You never know when a word you write may spark a kid to change the world.
For further perspective, here are two books about the publishing business as a whole:
- The Untold Story of Books: A Writer’s History of Publishing by Michael Castleman. “From Gutenberg to Amazon, [this] is the first and only history of publishing told from a veteran author’s point of view … it is a deeply researched, fascinating history of the idiosyncratic book business — aimed at authors, aspiring authors, booksellers, industry professionals, and everyone who loves to read books.”
- Choose the Best Self-Publishing Service by John Doppler. This guide is published by ALLi, so I trust them to provide decent advice. “The book assesses companies that sell publishing tools and services against a code of standards for ethics and excellence.” However, there are also many (many, many) additional guides to publishing children’s books (most of them self-published). Buyer beware.
In the next issue of Bookology, I’ll define the main characters in the book publishing industry including agents, editors, and art directors.
Until then, keep writing! And if you draw, keep illustrating too!
* Numbers from: https://www.tiffanyhawk.com/blog/self-publishing-vs-traditional-publishing-a-stone-cold-sober-analysis. Note that these combine children and adult markets. I would assume that the children’s only numbers are lower overall.