Children's Book Writing and Publishing Tips with April Cox

All right.

Hello and welcome to Book Launchers TV with a special edition for children's book authors. So I'm really, really excited to introduce our guest for today. If you don't know, we have April Cox here. She is a best selling children's book author. She also is the founder of self publishing Made simple and also the creator of the upcoming Authorpreneur Summit, which I am a speaker at. And I'm very excited to be participating and supporting that event. So one of the things I always tell people is that Book Launchers, we only do nonfiction. And I welcome everyone here over at Book Launchers TV to always participate, even if you're fiction or children's books. But of course, we specialize in nonfiction, so my advice tends to veer towards all. All things nonfiction. Unless you're asking me from a reader's perspective what it's like to read certain children's books, then, then I can comment. Up until recently, I was a very, very avid consumer of children's books. We, my son has now decided chapter books are where it's at. So, so we've, we've moved on from the picture books. Yeah. But I'm really excited to bring April on and have her share her roadmap to publishing a children's book in 90 days. She's got some great tips, great advice, lots of experience. So I'm not going to talk anymore. I'm just going to turn it over to April. And if there are questions that come in while you're chatting, do you want me to hold them to the end or how do you want me to handle those?

I think, I think we can try to pause at certain points and yeah, interrupt me if we need to address a certain thing because I think it's important. And I really thank you so much for having me. I love being here. You've got an awesome audience and, and I've loved sharing things with you on the Author to Authorpreneur Summit. So it's going to be an amazing event. For those of you who don't know about it, we'll touch on that again toward the end today.

Yeah, absolutely. And we'll definitely be talking about it in our next livestream and it will be in our launch letter that'll be coming out on Monday and then the one right before the summit or the week of the summit as well. So if you're already getting our newsletter and watching here, you'll get the links and all the details, but we'll also talk about it at the end of the session. Today. So, all right, I'm going to turn, I'm going to put your slides on the stage and just turn it over to you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So I have been doing, I have been self publishing for a lot of years and have come up with a way and have really perfected how to publish a children's book in 90 days. So my goal today is that by the end of this session, you have some really great ideas and tips that you can use. And if you are interested in becoming a part of my next launch of the upcoming 90 day class that we have, then you'll get some invites into that as well. So with that being said, let's go ahead and move to the next slide. How am I, am I able to advance the slides?

Oh, you should. Let's just see here. You were.

Oh, yes, I see it now.

Okay, good.

I was like, why isn't it. There's no arrows there. Okay, so. So my agenda for today, and I will do my best at sticking to this and trying, you know, not to veer off course, is first we're going to start with why I self publish. Because self publishing isn't for everybody and many of you may be traditionally published and are perfectly happy with that. So I'll talk a little bit about why I self publish, talk about some of the challenges involved and then some of the keys to success that I have worked through. And then also kind of move into the 90 day way, which is my signature program for publishing your children's book in 90 days. So without further ado, let's get started. And while I'm kind of going through a little bit of an introduction here, I would love to hear why. For those of you that have written or are planning to write a children's book, what is your why? What do you hope to accomplish with it? What impact do you hope to have? I would just love to see some of those comments from the folks that are out there and engaging with the content. My why has to do with this, this picture here. And we'll talk a little bit more about that. Why I self publish. So I never tried to do traditional publishing. Honestly, I am so impatient and there's no way that I wanted to take years to go to get into the traditional publishing. I didn't want rejection letters. I did. I had heard so many horror stories of people collecting shoeboxes full of rejection letters, and it just wasn't for me. I also did some research regarding royalties and, you know, to have a publisher getting, you know, providing me with a 10% royalty or something like that on sales, it just felt like I really wanted to put the work in. I wanted to have a huge amount of control and also keep 100% of the royalties. And I was okay with the investment up front that it took because I really felt like this was going to be something that could grow and turn into a business for me. What I love also, I probably told you I'm an impatient person, is quicker to market. And we'll talk about some of the examples that I have, have gone through with some of my authors. We've got people that are publishing, you know, in two years, they've published 10 books or more. And that's just not possible with traditional publishing. So if you're looking to grow a business like I was, I wanted to make sure that I would be able to turn things around and grow that brand very quickly. The indie author community was huge for me. The group of children's authors on the many Facebook groups that I was a part of, and the group or the community that I've built is just second to none that I've ever seen. And they're supportive, and it's not a lot of competition. It's very much a collaborative and supportive environment, and I just love it. So that was another reason why I chose self publishing. And I like the financial freedom of it to be able to decide. And now I'm not advocating for low quality books here. I'm advocating for producing high quality books, but doing it in such a way where you are in the driver's seat and you have the opportunity to decide how you want to invest and how quickly you want to grow and how many books you want to do. So that financial freedom was really important to me. All right. And this was me at the beginning, and a lot of my children's book authors that I work with, and they have no idea I have so many people or I monitor these Facebook groups and I see, I have no idea. I just finished my manuscript. What do I do? Why does this have to be so complicated? They look things up on Google and on a number of YouTube channels, and even the experts can't agree in the right approach forward. And many of the things, the advice that I was seeing out there had to do with novels or romance or nonfiction, and they weren't really tailored to the children's genre. Let's see, what's your reasons? Okay, I see. Love it.

Yeah, I was putting that one up. So people knew. Oh, yeah, some people have just joined in. So we're Talking children's. Yeah, we're talking children's books. And April is our, our guest speaker today and she asked you to share why. What's your why behind publishing children's books? So go ahead and chime in in the comments.

Yeah, love it, love it. I want to hear some whys. So yeah, there was. The challenges are real. And so a lot of what they're facing again, rejection letters. A lot of people suffer with imposter syndrome. Finding trustworthy people that they can trust or like me when I first started getting into a bad contract because you don't know what you don't know or people that are trying to save money potentially you know, going on to fiverr and paying $20, you know, an image or $10 an image. And what they're getting is very low quality things that are not marketable. People wanting to build a brand but needing to be able to do that. You really need to work on a quick turnaround to grow because so many times and, and you guys, I think I know Julie, you went to the 20 books to 50k right? It's all about being able to be really agile and getting a number of books out there before you really see the exponential growth that we all want to see when we're first starting and then launching and marketing is always a challenge for new people. And so I had so many people that I was watching kind of going through these struggles. I was going through them myself as well. And as you know, I am a bit of a geek. I have a background in IT technology, process improvement. And if you show me from my consulting background, if you show me something that's really convoluted and broken, my little imaginary propeller hat starts spinning and I'm like oh my God, I gotta, I got to jump into this and I, I want to make it better. Like give me something broken and I, and I, and I'll have a ball trying to, to make it better. And so that's what I was doing for myself. And then you know, a lot of people are like can you, come on April, can you really publish a children's book in 90 days? This is the sum of. Not all of. Because I couldn't fit them all on one slide of the books that were published just from my previous 90 day session. And you've got a, we've got a number of best selling authors already new releases and I had a whole nother another group of them that were, we're just clicking publish on but we're not quite ready yet. So there's you know, yes, you can do this. And I have helped over 1500 authors publish their children's books with my courses and coaching and other activity. You can absolutely, absolutely do this. And as. And I'll kind of give you some of the tips or the tricks that I have learned over the course of doing this the past five years. And what you can apply, some of this you can apply for yourself.

So I just gotta say those covers are fantastic, aren't they?

Yeah. We're not, we're not doing low quality books here. We're doing beautiful.

Those are good looking.

My goal is to be able to go into any Barnes Noble and put your book next to it and that you people will not be able to tell which one is self published. Right. They're high quality, they're beautiful. They are well designed with a story that's going to be marketable and is going to sell. And we'll go into a little bit of the tips and tricks as to how this happens. Susan, thank you so much for posting that. I love that. Beginners so ukulele skills. I love that. Isn't that cool? And helping people learn. I have an author that's taking ukulele lessons and I thought, I thought that was really different. I hadn't heard anybody. Kindergarten teacher. And I love that audience. This is amazing. There's a lot of teachers in my world and they're so good because they know what the kids want and need and where the challenges are in the classroom. So they're so well positioned to be able to write a book that's perfect for their needs. And children's book lovers. Doreen, great. Love that. The control with self publishing. Yes, I love it. How. Hi, Susan. Nice to see you.

I think we have one more for why and then we'll, I'll, I'll stop by interrupting you.

Okay. Oh, my grandkids. We have something in common. Erica. That's awesome. So I'll show you a little bit about my why as we move forward a little bit. So I'm going to go through in this next section the six things that I have learned that are critical to success with public not just publishing children's books, but publishing them in a way that is high quality that will produce marketable books that are able to also be done quickly in this 90 day. So that's kind of put it together in a way that makes sense. And you can see these amazing kids here. Somebody said their grandchildren are the reason. They're the reason why I started. I was in a job that I was like, it was kind of getting old. I really needed a passion project. I was an empty nester for quite a while and you kind of get into this kind of rut and then all of a sudden the job wasn't really doing it for me. So when I started having grandbabies and they started putting those grandbabies in my arms, oh my gosh. I fell in love with children's books. All I read to them, we snuggled. These kids are my world. And when I create children's books, I put them in them along with my, with my little labradoodles. And now that the kids are getting older, I'm actually using this opportunity for bonding and for writing children's books with them. So I have budding illustrators and storytellers and they all have these ideas and, and oh my gosh, it's such an amazing journey to be doing that with them. And I highly recommend it because the bonding in even doing it from far away, if you're able to zoom together and you're able to talk about the story that you're working on together, it's really an amazing bonding opportunity for grandparents as well. So I will move on. Oh, I should say these are. I've got eight books that I probably don't have them all on this slide, but my books are help with social emotional learning. For me, it was a legacy project. I wanted to really leave something behind for my grandkids that would teach them values that were really important to me. Empathy, kindness, anti bullying, accepting change and embracing change. So all of those kinds of things have been really fun and, and I just love this brand. So I love it. I love what I do. So we're going to switch over to goals and mindset because I said number one thing was goals and mindset. So if you're very goal oriented, and you are, you really need to be able to wrap your mind around what you're doing, be focused, be willing to do the research and, and walk through the planning, really know your audience, really set yourself up for success. And if you're not researching and understanding the topic that you're trying to or you're considering writing about, it's very easy to go in the wrong direction and find that there really isn't an audience for it or somebody else already had that idea. So, so get wrapping your head around the fact that this is about more than just writing a children's book. For most of us, it's about writing a children's book that's going to make a difference for your family, for your other kids that are out there, and for many of us, that will lead to a passive income that can continue to grow or maybe even, like me, leave your job and be able to do this full time. And I've had a number of authors with that, so, so getting goals because if you don't know where you're going, it's really hard to map out a path to get there. So that's the first thing. And then the first major milestone we go through is kind of walking through the edit of the manuscript, making sure that everything is in good shape. I'll talk a little bit more about that. So this is just a high level slide for those who are not familiar and many of you are already doing publishing. So you're doing this. These high level things are very similar from, from the different genres, right? You're writing, you're going through drafts, self editing, working with an editor and then turning that into a final copy that you can get your copyright on and then move to illustration. Now with illustration of a children's book, it is really the longest pole in the tent. It is, it could be. I've seen children's book illustrations take a year to get done. I have honed that way down in my program. We work with illustrators and we focus on no more than six to eight weeks, or I should say, yeah, six to eight weeks is in order to get us done within the three months program. So the illustration is really important and we'll talk more about that. And then many times people, you know, kind of confuse the illustrator or the illustrator says, hey, I can format it. No, no, no, no. You need somebody else who knows, who has a design eye and knows how to, how to create that layout for you. So your formatter or designer will work on taking your beautiful words that you put together your beautiful illustrations into a well designed book that you can be proud of. And then in the end, you're publishing. Right now this is very high level and you can see that there's a line that goes all the way across the bottom. You didn't see any marketing up here. That's because to do it right, you need to start marketing right at the beginning. Planning and marketing happens at every single step. And that has to be a thread that runs all the way through your project. Otherwise there's no way you could be successful in launching in 90 days and expect that you're going to launch well. Okay, so this, this is a very high level. Now we'll move over to a little bit more of my roadmap which takes those. The. The things that we talked about and maps it into the 12 weeks. I am going to share these slides so that Julie will be able to link to them or, or we can even put them so that they're easily downloadable because we won't go through every little line and. And item. But it shows where things are and the design does happen. The designer gets involved earlier but illustrations still continue. So it's more like a few weeks here with design and then publishing and there's a lot of things that happen in between. So the roadmap takes the. The amount of work that needs to happen and spreads it across. Now the program that I put together also aligns training with each step and support and live sessions. We'll talk more about that. But at this at a very high level can give you a sense for if you want to get something published within a three month period or even double this and do six months. It'll give you a little bit of a sense as to how to break that up. I'm just gonna pause for a second.

I was gonna say I do. I do have a question and I. There's. Susan made one comment that's sort of a question. But. So the book mock up. Are you doing that? Like do you kind of like stickman it out and then hire an illustrator? How do you. How do you manage that?

Yeah. So what we're trying to do is take the information that comes from working with your. Your editor and start to paginate it. You know, where are the page turns going to be? And the editors that I work with get very involved in helping with that if you want it. But sometimes I call it a book dummy. You know it's. Some people call it a book dummy, a book mock up. Some people do it electronically using. Using PowerPoint. Others will just like cut out pieces of paper and their manuscript and they'll put the words on it. Right. So in order to be really successful with illustrations, you need to have some thought into exactly where your words are going to go and provide some information to the illustrators out of the gate that's going to help them be as effective as possible moving forward. Cool.

Thank you. That helps me. And then yeah, so Susan did did word it and we might not be there yet but I'll put it up there just in case.

Any more tips for successful launch team? I have a little bit of trouble seeing things because the slide things are cross it. What's it.

Let me see if I can to.

Private page on my website and personal emails to everyone. But I don't have much luck with people leaving reviews post launch. I'm absolutely happy to answer that question. Let's get a little farther along and we'll put a pin in that for now. But yes, we can absolutely talk about that. Okay, so as we look at the major items here, key within these road the roadmap. First of all, don't ever skip a professional edit. And if you are looking for an editor, find somebody who is a children's book editor who has experience in your genre. If you are having or writing a rhyming story, make sure that your editor is somebody who also is very well versed in rhyme and works with rhyming books. One area that is a common mistake that I see and it happened to me. So I'll give you my my example is when I was looking for an editor, I didn't know what I didn't know. I just saw a bunch of different prices. 300, 500 and then I'm like oh, and this person on fiverr $50. That's wonderful, right? So I didn't know that there was a difference between a developmental edit which really looks at the arc of your story, right? Does it have good flow? Is the verbiage good? Are there words that need to be cleaned out? Is it targeted appropriately for your target age group? So all of that goes into a developmental edit and then you also have once you've got that and you go back and forth with a developmental editor. I prefer to work with somebody who does do comprehensive editing, meaning they do a developmental edit and then you've got rounds of line and copy editing and they'll come back and also do proofreading for you at the end when your book is ready to go. So that many people will not realize that a developmental edit is so important and they'll just see editor. They'll hire somebody who's only looking at the at their periods and punctuation and grammar and it doesn't create a good book. They just don't have the experience for the rest of it. So make sure you have not only a professional editor but the right kind of edits. Don't skip a developmental edit with illustrations. It's really important. My preferred approach is making sure that I am working with a work for hire. I like the idea of because I am a control freak, self self proclaimed. I want to own my artwork. I want, I will pay more for somebody to do it, but I want the source code, I want things in layers and I have a specific approach that I have found works really well for me. Now if you fell in love with somebody who won't give you the rights, you know, that's a different story. But what I've done over the years, because what I found my authors continuing to get stuck on illustration and that would be the area that was causing pain and causing them not to be able to make it in the 12 weeks. So whenever we run into issues, I always think, okay, how can I make sure that never happens again? So I, I paid and I, when I had issues with my own contracts with an illustrator, I went to an attorney and I paid over $12,000 to unravel that contract and do a new one. And then I said, this will never happen to me again. Give me templates I can use for all of my contract, all of my, my things that I'm doing. And so the authors I work with, they get my templates too. So that you have. And on top of that, I actually have a pre vetted list of illustrators who already accept my contract and who have gone through, who've been tried and true and who can get this project done for you within the allotted time. So they know if you're coming from April's work group, they better be careful about sticking to timelines. And I've had to remove a few every, every now and again. But if you are just if I can give you some tips about working with an illustrator, one would be while it's good to have some guidance around what you're looking for, for example, if you say I want, you know, a dog sitting in the backyard and there's a squirrel there. Now this is a true story from one of my books. And first of all, the illustrator had no idea what a squirrel was or how to represent it very well. And I think he was looking at Google to try to figure it out. So I would say provide some kind of reference image. A backyard in New England looks very different than a backyard in other parts of the country. So giving a picture of what that backyard might look like, giving a picture of what my dog looked like. Those reference images go a long way in helping them understand for those things that are must haves, give them some opportunities to understand what you're talking about. I also recommend having an opportunity to get samples from multiple illustrators. This is the 150 or so $200best, $200 you'll spend. What I would normally recommend is get three illustrators that you, you know, you're attracted to give them the same Sample brief. So if. Let's go back to my example. I have. Here's my dog. Here's the image of him, and he's sitting in the backyard. And he's very shy and, you know, and upset. So give it. Make him sitting in the backyard. There's a squirrel there. He's shy, he's upset. That's my sample brief. Now, I'm not giving them a bunch of information about my story. I'm just giving them a sample of what I want them to draw. Now, that goes to three different people. And I always say, pay for the samples, don't ask for free stuff. 50 to $70 or so is about what my illustrators that I have typically charge me. So even if it ends up being a couple hundred dollars, for that couple hundred dollars, you get to, number one, get sketches from all three of them. You get to work with them and give them some advice, some. Some direction on where they need to change some things. You get to then move it forward and, you know, go through the coloring process. You get to see how they communicate, how well do they stick to their timeline and what kind of an experience is it for you. And then you get three. Three beautiful images that you can then decide and show others. Like, hey, what do you think? Do you like this one, this one or this one? Right. You get to choose before you commit to an illustrator. And then my next piece of advice with illustration is don't ever move forward with out a contract. And I highly recommend doing the fixed fee or, you know, work for hire contract versus something where you have to worry about monitoring or sharing licensing of those characters. That to me just adds way too much to worry about and takes control away from me. So I don't like that. Any questions about those before I move into design and publishing?

Those were great tips. And I know the questions I often get sent are all about illustrators, so that was fantastic. I don't. There hasn't been any comments coming in. A few people were talking about illustration challenges or, you know, one is actually illustrate. Susan's illustrating her own book. So. Yeah, no, I think you can carry on. And if you guys have questions, just post them and on our next pause, I'll make sure that she sees them perfect.

So then we always include the designer as a separate individual. I don't. I. I can't say not. I've never had an illustrator who was good with. With actually formatting a book, because I have had probably two, but that's two of them in a period of about five years. And I like last year I launched 127 books. This year I'm launching close to 200. So that's a lot of books to see. Illustrators, there's not that many illustrators that are good with design. So don't just, just get a designer who can come with fresh eyes, who is experienced with the layout. Some people try to do it themselves and surprisingly I've had a few authors who were really good with graphic design. They have a great eye and they, they take the extra time to learn how to do it. But if you don't, if that's not you and you don't know how, don't go looking on Google for people that in or on YouTube where people say do it in PowerPoint. You can do this, you can do that and you can get a book out there. Yes, you can. But is it going to be marketable? Is it going to be something you can be proud of? Is it going to be a high quality book that you are going to be that, you know, build your brand around? Because first impressions matter with your first children's book especially. So get that designer who and get them involved earlier. Working with the illustrator. Typically we include the designer when we get the first storyboards from the illustrator. A storyboard for those of you that may not be familiar with that is where they have very rough sketches. But it goes from the beginning of your story all the way to the end of your story. So you have the whole picture of how the illustrator is going to bring your project to life. And you work with that until you get it the way you want, before they go into more detail and then coloring and that's a great time to bring in a designer. And they'll consult with you and may say, hey, this character needs to be moved over. It's in the gutter. We need more, you know, more space, white space over here. Maybe this should be, you know, a little thumb, you know, smaller image or three smaller images so that we can make sure that the book is going to be aligned well and flow well. And so they, they provide a little advice and then they kind of go away for a while unless you have questions to consult with them. They also get involved in taking the beautiful artwork created by your illustrator and the for the COVID So yes, illustrators will, will put a beautiful cover together for you, but it's just, it's really more about the image. Then the designer will work with you to make sure that that looks like a beautiful cover. The way that you saw some of my authors had Gorgeous covers that really pop as thumbnails. That's an important skill that a designer will have. And then the final piece is when all of your illustrations are ready, the designer is going to take those and help you make sure that they flow well, that all that your page flows well, that the words and the images together create something really special. And the end. The output from your designer are files that you can then upload to KDP. You can upload them to IngramSpark or you can send them to your printer for an offset print. So that's the role of the designer. Okay, just quick pause anything.

There's a couple questions and what I will say is I think it's also really important to make sure that your book is going to translate into an ebook because I have purchased. I love to have children's books on my phone for when you're sitting in the dentist office and you've got a, you know, or doctor or you're at the airport, you got to entertain your child or your grandchild and you pull out the book and it's not formatted for Kindle.

It's horrible. Yeah, that, that's true. And the designers that I work with, we, we kind of put together a package and so I send my requirements of, I want the, the mobi file for Kindle, I want the epub file so that when we go to draft to digital and we go wide, we have that ability. And then I do a paperback on kdp, a paperback on Ingram Spark, and then I do a hardcover on IngramSpark for print on demand. And that's. I usually tend to recommend print on demand to get started while you build your audience and make sure that your title has the demand that you need before you go wild and print thousands of copies of it. So that's, that's kind of the package that I typically put together.

Yeah, that's great. Very similar to what we do with nonfiction as well.

Okay, awesome. How much would the illustrations cost for a small book? So when you say small book, what do you mean? You mean a board book? A number of pages can help me understand. I'll tell you that my 85% of my, of my authors are typically doing like an eight and a half by eight and a half inch book square. They're doing a 32 page book, typically a picture book. And if you are, there's a range. Of course, that, that depends on the type of art you want, how simple is it? And you can get some good illustrations anywhere from 50 or $60 a page to Gosh, it can go way up. But my average is usually around 100 per page. And so if you have, I would budget for a few thousand dollars for illustrations and cover and that will really help you to put together the kind of high quality book that's going to be extremely marketable. Yes, you can. There are ways of reducing the budget. Doing some things a little bit differently that can help you. For example, I had one person that said, you know, I'm just going to do words on one side, picture on the other. So now you've got half as many pages of illustrations. Right, Half as many illustrations. Some will work with an illustrator to reduce the complexity. Maybe instead of five characters, two characters would be fine. Maybe the backgrounds don't need to be as complex or as detailed. Simple. A simple artwork. That is really sweet. I mean, look at the diary of a Wimpy Kid, right? We got artwork that's very simple. Or you can get something that's Disney Pixar style. So depending on your budget, that's, you know, you can, you can do some different things to try to improve and get more for your money.

Those are great tips. Thank you. Stick and stone. I don't know if anybody knows that book, but that has such simple graphics. And even if you think about the characters, how easy it is to draw a big stone and a stick. It's brilliant.

Exactly. And look at elephant and piggy. They're not really complex. Right. And he's made a fortune with those stuff. Simple. Splat the cat. You know, like there's some really anything from Jared Lerner. He has done amazing job with very simple illustrations. So it doesn't have to be really crazy expensive illustrations to be beautiful and to still be very professional and, and just.

Yeah, that's great. And Raven is asking if this is a scheme. So April, April is, is one of my trusted in the publishing industry. She has published so many beautiful children's books and done them herself and helped hundreds and hundreds of authors. So no, not a scheme, we are just helping all. We have had so much demand for children's books and I have been looking high and low for ways to support all of the people in the book launchers TV community. So. No, not at all.

You know, it's so funny because the reason I got into this is because the reason that I decided to do it for others, I was publishing my own books and then someone came to me. I saw in a, in a children's book forum that somebody was having a lot of trouble. Their publisher was out of business. Or not responding. She had files and she didn't know what to do. Could I, could anybody help? And I said, sure, just look, get on a zoom and I'll help you, I'll upload the files. And I looked at the files, we got together on zoom and the COVID was not well designed, the interior was not well designed. And I didn't know what level she had worked with this other publisher, but it was just not good. But I did see some beautiful illustrations. They just weren't very well utilized. And so I told her, I said, you know, I would recommend we stop but back up a little and let me help you get this cover recovery designed. And I'll let you know, I'll pass you some information from my, my designer and then the interior too. Just a little tweak there and you'll be able to go. And the tears on the other side of the zoom just like took me aback and I, I was just, you know, she was in tears and I said, what's is, are you okay? What's the matter? And she said, I just spent $26,000 for this book with this publisher. And I knew at that point that I could do better to help people to publish their own books and not be taken advantage of by predatory publishers. And there it's more than just predatory publishers. Sometimes it's illustrators that are like, you know, they sell their services and they say half down or even worse. If an illustrator tells you you must pay it all up front, please run away, don't do that. And then they would disappear. So they didn't know who they could trust and what they could do. And so I do a lot for free. You can check out my YouTube channel, self publishing Made simple with April Cox. I put a ton of free stuff out there for people who can't afford it but need help, need guidance so that you don't get taken advantage of. But I do have services and I do have a course coming up for those of you who would be interested in learning how to self publish a book the 90 Day Way. So that's kind of what we'll go through a little bit today. But I absolutely get it, wondering, is this a scam? Because I see it all the time. It's very hard to know who you can trust. Okay, so publishing and we had a question about, also about the pre launch and the activities around preparing and getting more reviews. So my recommendation for those of you who are planning and you know, maybe you're in the middle of an illustration or you're Coming up on design. First of all, if you wait until the end, I can't tell you how many. How many people tell me, hey, I just need you to help me upload to Amazon. And I'm like, sure, I'm happy to do that. And then I say, did you tell anybody? Like, did you do any launch planning? And they're like, no, it's going to be a surprise. I'm like, no, no, no. It should never be a surprise to your, to your family and friends or people like, you have to spend. Start at the beginning. My recommendation to you would be bring people on your journey. Let them follow you. Let. Yes, let them follow you and help make, you know, share your struggles. You know, picture of you. I got writer's block today. Or hey, I got this new sample from an illustrator. What do you think? Like, build this up over time. Let people know what you're doing. Talk about it everywhere. If you're not excited about your book, no one else is going to be either. And if you're launching a book, creating a launch team is one of the best ways that you can help to hit that bestseller and launch your book really well. My recommendation is to get 100 people on a launch team. If only half of them follow through and download your book and give you a review, you end up launching with 50 reviews out of the gate. And most of us can find 100 people. Whether it's people that are other authors you've built relationship with 50 family, friends, but hopefully the lion share of them are your own target audience and building that through social media, building it through shared audiences. Right. If you don't have quite have your own audience built yet, your own platform, then where can you go to share a platform with someone else? So I'm here talking to you because my friend Julie invited me to share and you're probably my target audience. She has. We have some crossover, so I get elevated a little bit and I other people that wouldn't normally know about me learn about me. So where can you go? Are there podcasts? Are there bloggers? Are there children's book reviewers? I put together a ton of resources for my authors. We have over 700 children's book reviewers, bloggers and influencers. I have a list of over a thousand libraries with all the contact information we have there, just a ton of really valuable information. And we recommend building those relationships early on so that when it comes time for you to launch your book, you're not waiting until you know the day and telling people, oh, by the way, I'M watching today. And what's really important if you want to become a bestseller when you're launching is being really mindful and getting somebody who knows what they're doing about keywords and categories on Amazon. Because I've had a number of best selling launches with my authors and sometimes it's just a matter of hey, you're in the wrong category. We need to make sure we choose a category that's a little less competitive. But I'm not putting people in basket weaving. Right. We're finding the, the categories and we just dislodged one with Katerina Oytiko who has launched a children's book travel series. Well, we were able to find some amazing categories and she became an international best selling author with her launch because we had the right keywords, we had the right categories, we, she did a beautiful launch team and we're able to support her through that. I also have an email list of like 3, well 15,000 and I've got, you know, another probably 30,000 worth of social media followers. I've got people on YouTube so I'll bring my authors on YouTube to talk about their book. So I try to provide as much support for them as when they're launching their book as possible. But you can do this and you can find that support and find people that would be willing to support your efforts by building those relationships early on. Julie, do you have any other recommendations for that?

I mean, I think I would love to hear about your course now and kind of make sure everybody gets that information because you know, I could talk about launching all day long.

Yes, yes, that's true.

In fact, I might have even written a book about it.

Yes, we should go, go ahead and move on to talk about and invite you into the, the launch. So let me talk about, let me kind of go over. So we talked about people. You need to have the certain people that you can trust. If you were to take my course. I have the pre vetted list of people but you want to make sure you have your editor, illustrator, book designer. So we've kind of talked about some of this already, some of the processes and you can get these slides. I know I'm kind of getting hung up a little bit. Resources that you'll have in the course as well if you work with me. Budget, spreadsheets, self publishing checklist, contract templates. Like I said, lots and lots and lots of tools. And I call this my self publishing vault. Because every single time somebody gets stuck somewhere I'm like, okay, how can I fix that let's create a spreadsheet. Do I need to move the process a little bit sooner so we have more time? So all of these things will continue to build and grow. Here are some of the things about going into a high quality book we've talked about and hit upon that already. And the importance of, of a mentor or guide, somebody that can hold you by the hand who's been through this many, many, many times. And so what is the 90 day way? The 90 day way is the most comprehensive and proven step by step path to launching your children's book and becoming a published author in just 90 days. And it is, we've gone through, gosh, I think I've had maybe eight iterations. So full work groups, two a year over the past four years and then multiple iterations on just continuing to tweak and improve and make it better and better and better. What happens when you join the program? You end up with weekly meetings twice. So we do weekly lessons live on Zoom. We have drop in hours on Thursdays for people that have any questions, Q, Q and A. So an extra 90 minutes a week for drop in hours. The self publishing Vault group coaching hands on sessions. If it's time to upload to Amazon, we're doing it hands on expert guidance video on demand. And you can actually download the app to your phone if you prefer to listen or watch videos on your phone. All of the lessons are there. Let me just grab my.

I love that you've got a vetted list because that's so, it's so important. I've seen so many people in a pickle because of the wrong person or the wrong contract or you know, just matters a lot.

And we're not, we're also not talking about a workbook that's like, you know, five pages. This is the type of workbook that is going to take you through every step of the process and you have the ability, it's kind of multimedia. So here you've got like, here's your checklist. This is what we're going to cover and then here's the code you can scan to go directly to the video lesson that'll be included. And you've got homework and then you're going to come in and we're going to talk about it live. And this is what the improvements that have come and recommended, recommended improvement from doing this over and over again and getting asking people for their feedback. What can we do better? So you get to benefit from all of that. We also have a private Facebook group And the workbook. So lots of fantastic information. We are enrolling now for a January 16th start and for people that enroll before Sunday, that's the early bird deadline. We're going to give a personal evaluation of your manuscript by 28 time award winning editor Bobby Hinman. And she we're going to spend about three hours with Bobby talking about editing, giving you ideas and assessing your manuscript. That plus you're going to get a couple of sessions from me with preparing for your illustrator and selecting and getting those sample briefs out so that by the time the end of December rolls around you've got all of that done and you're ready to hit the ground running on January 16th. So that's only for early birds. We only had a small number of spots for that. So the price for the course is 1499. But I have a code, a coupon code for the, for Julie's audience. So if you use the code book launchers, all capital book launchers, you get a hundred dollar discount. And you also have the opportunity if you need some sort of payment plan you can check out on my site using PayPal Pay later and that will extend 0% interest over six months for those of you that need a little bit more budgeting. So anything I'm missing, Julie, with regard to.

Oh, I just wanted to clarify. So this is for people whose manuscript is drafted. If they haven't drafted their children's book, they need to. Do you have support or suggestions for how to get like you know that piece? Because I know that question kind of came up earlier.

Yeah, so I do. We do have a, a couple of editors that we can have you working with. One of them in particular, Joanne sky is working with authors who need help with drafting their story. So if that is something that you want that would, this would be a perfect time for you to work with Joanne. My goal would be that when January 16th hits, your manuscript is drafted. It doesn't have to be perfect because we are going to go through the editing process in the course and for those early birds that get an early start on this, they'll get the editing out of the way prior to the course start, which is really great. You get to go and enjoy your holidays in December. Come back January 16th ready to go and ready to really focus on the marketing side of things.

Cool. That's great. Yeah. So I don't know if Darla, if you're still here but that would help I think because she, Troy, her son has a non fiction book that he. It says that is also going to be turned into a children's book with fun characters. The first chapter is going to be turned into a children's book.

I love it.

And they might need support in kind of figuring out how to take that. So that's great.

Yeah. And the work and the work group, it is 90 days. It. We meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have daytime and evening options. So I ended up. I have two separate cohorts. One that meets at 1pm Eastern and then one that meets at 8pm Eastern, Tuesdays and Thursdays because I wanted to be able. Some people just couldn't make evenings and then vice versa. Some couldn't make afternoons. So I ended up doing two cohorts. It ends up being fantastic community. But yes. And if, if you say, gee, April, I don't really want to learn all the ins and outs, I just want to talk to somebody and see if I can get help, then absolutely, you can go to my website@selfpubmadesimple.com and you can set up a discovery call. You know, there is coaching. This is by far the most successful and proven approach that I've done. And there's just nothing like going through this process with a group of, say, 15 other authors. And at the end, you become a family. You're there supporting each other through the ups and the downs, sharing, you know, and, and supporting each other both when it comes to launching as well as when it comes to, hey, I've just got my, my, you know, cover design. What do you guys think? And just what happens during that, that 12 week period is just magical. I love it.

It's so cool. I love those covers. I'm gonna see if I can make them bigger.

They're beautiful.

I don't think there's any other questions. People are saying nice and, and other comments like that, but I. Oh, I'm not. Just put it right on me. That's not what I wanted. There you are. So, yeah, so I put the links there and then for the people watching the replay, it'll be in the description below as well. And deadlines, I mean, the Sunday is.

The deadline for Early Bird, but we still have, we'll have enrollment open through the 16th as long as there's seats available. There are, you know, we, we are limiting the number of seats because we want to really be able to, to serve the people that come with us. So, so I wouldn't wait till the last minute. I would love to see you be a part of our Early Bird and that, that process, the extra hours that you're going to get with me and with Bobby are all included in the price for early birds. It's a bonus worth well over $500. So between that and your hundred dollar bonus, that's quite a, quite an awesome opportunity for you.

Yeah, it's massive value because I've talked to other companies and you're giving massive value. I don't, you know, we could talk after, but you're probably not charging enough.

I know, I know that it's, but it's one of those things where for me it's really about supporting and yes, I have to keep the lights on, but I, I do this because I really want to see success and I want to and I, I, even for those that are having issues and need a scholarship, there's even a couple there. I think I have one more scholarship left. So if you have, you know, issues that you need to discuss, then set up some time and we'll talk about it.

I love that. Well, thank you. And so real quick, I will send emails out after to talk about the Entrepreneur Summit coming up. But just as we wrap up for today, you know, do you have any words you want to say about the Entrepreneur Summit?

Well, you know, if you've been anything like me, you're probably getting inundated with emails about this summit and that summit and every summit under the sun lately. But what I found is that we had a missing piece that nobody was really covering, which was the business side of things. And I felt like I had struggled with that early on in my author career and, and then I had so many authors struggling. So I assembled. So far, I think we've got 37 speakers. We've got some of the best and brightest, including Julie Broad in the publishing world. But we also brought in folks that could talk about business formation and trademarks. And what about, I have somebody from SCORE talking about the free mentoring that's available to business folks. We have marketing discussions. So much like there, you just have to go to authorpreneursummit.com and take a look. And it's free. Just go and sign up. And if you upgrade to a Premium Pass by this weekend, it's $49. You'll get lifetime access and bonus is worth about $2,000 just for the upgrade to the Premium Pass. But that's not necessary. You can, you can attend the event for free and that's going to be a massive, amazing value. And then after Sunday, it's going to, the price of the Premium Pass is going to go to $89 fantastic.

Well, thank you for everything today. You provided tremendous value and tips. You actually taught me a few things. I didn't know about the process, so that was great.

And.

And just thank you for everything that you're doing for the.

I'm so happy to be here. And thank you for giving me this opportun opportunity to chat with your people.

Yeah. And thank you for everybody who tuned in. The replay is here for. For anybody watching. Make sure you say hello and pop on over to April's channel and say hello to her over there and we'll see you again. Yeah, we'll see you again soon.

Bye, everyone.