Have you ever thought about publishing a children’s book?
As my guest on this week’s video says, everyone has a story in them just waiting to come out! April M. Cox is an award-winning author and the founder Little Labradoodle Publishing where she’s been helping other authors realize their dreams of becoming published authors with FREE and low cost services to help new and aspiring authors. April also has her own Youtube channel, Self-Publishing Made Simple.
We recently sat down to go through all the ins and outs of what goes into publishing a story-book from start to finish, and you won’t want to miss it.
I ask April:
- Do you publish your children’s books exclusively through KDP, or have you used other platforms as well?
- Is there a research component to your process, or are your children’s stories born solely out of your own creative ideas?
- How do you come up with creative ideas for your stories?
- Do all of your stories fall within a certain age group, or have you experimented with different age groups? 5. Can you give us a high-level overview of your process?
- Do you outsource any of the steps of your process—editing, illustration, design, layout, marketing and promotion?
- How big of a financial investment do you need to make to publish a children’s book if you decide to outsource certain parts of the process?
- What’s your launch strategy?
- How do you market your book after publication?
- How important is your email list as part of your marketing strategy?
- Do you have any tips on how to get your books into retail stores or libraries?
Enjoy!
Rachel (00:00):
If you’ve ever wanted to publish children’s books, but you didn’t really know where to start, then I think you’re going to love today’s conversation that I just finished recording. April M Cox April is an award-winning author, and she’s also the founder of The Little Labradoodle publishing, where she helps other people to finally realize their own dreams of becoming published authors. Let’s go ahead and dive right into the conversation. My name is Rachel Harrison-Sund, and I help people to create a passive income selling journals, planners, notebooks, and more on the Kindle direct publishing platform. If this sounds interesting to you, then don’t forget to subscribe and also hit the bell so that you can be notified every time I put one of these videos out, each and every Monday. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, April. I’m super excited to have you here on the channel. Before we dive right into the questions, though, I would love to hear a little bit of backstory about how you got started with self publishing.
April (00:53):
For me, it was after my grandkids were born, I was an empty nester for a while. And then when the grandkids started coming, my heart just exploded with this new role of being a grandmother. And the thing that I love to do most with my grandkids is read to them from the time they were a baby. And then as they got older and they started being able to snuggle and sit together, it’s my very favorite thing to do with them. And we would start making up stories. My little labradoodle used to jump up on our lap so we started making up stories about him and then inserting them in the story. And we just had all kinds of adventures together,
April (01:44):
and I found myself at that point in a job that I was like not really feeling, it had been a 35 year career. I was kind of getting to that point where I wanted to do something different. I needed a passion project. So I thought this would be really cool to take some of the stories that we’ve been writing and to put them into a children’s book, into something, into a series that I could leave behind as a legacy project for my grandkids. And that’s how it all got started for me. It’s just amazing to see what holding your own book in your hand and reading and seeing, , I actually think my grandkids make really cute little cartoon characters. So they were illustrated into the book. I was illustrated into the book. It was so much fun. I just enjoyed it. And it gave me something to hop out of bed in the morning, feeling excited about doing
Rachel (02:41):
So fun. I love that story. That’s so fun. So I want to ask first, do you publish your books exclusively through KDP or have you used other platforms as well?
April (02:50):
So I do love Amazon KDP platform. I also use Ingram Spark because for a long time, Amazon didn’t have an option for hardcovers. They just started beta testing that, but Ingram Spark does a great job with hardcover print on demand. They also have a wonderful distribution network. So I do use them and also pepper in a lot of new experimentation I’m doing with Lulu as well, because they have some high quality paper better than both of the other platforms. They have some things that the other platforms don’t like landscape books, ringed books. Like if you’re doing some sort of a notepad or a sketchbook, you can do those kinds of things through Lulu that you can’t do. And they even print board books, print on demand. So those kinds of things that Lulu is doing is also making that my third platform and I’m kind of doing all of those. And I’m just loving the flexibility. So I wouldn’t pick one. I would pick it depending on what I’m doing. I might go with Lulu for, , a board book or a low content book, but I’ll still distribute through Ingram and everything always goes to Amazon. So it all fits together very well.
Rachel (04:19):
So do you ever use Amazon’s free ISBN or do you purchase all of your own ISBNs?
April (04:25):
I always recommend purchasing your own ISBNs because you don’t want to be tied to the publisher being Amazon. Your the publisher, , just because we self publish, we’re creating beautiful quality books. We are our own publisher. And if you accept the free one, it lists as Amazon being the publisher and the bookstores, especially like Barnes and Noble and some of the local bookstores, they won’t even purchase. If it’s got an Amazon ISBM on it, you can’t get it into other places. So don’t accept that, spend the money and invest in 10 ISBNs so that you can get that package and have your own ISBNs and be your own publisher.
Rachel (05:16):
And are you buying them from Bowker? I know there’s some other sort of options, but is that generally how you tend to get yours?
April (05:22):
Yup. I always recommend going to Bowker. It’s myidentifiers.com, buy the bulk package of 10, because for the price of a little more than paying two ISBNs, you’re going to get 10. So if you think you’ve got like a ton of books, , buy a hundred, because you can get even a much lower price on that, and if you are a prolific writer and you have a lot, you can save a lot of money by purchasing more of the ISBNs in one bulk package.
Rachel (05:58):
Okay. Now I’m really curious about research because with low content books, it’s all about research, , researching what the market wants so that you can create those books. This is a little bit different, but I’m wondering, is there still a research component to your process? Are you researching what people are looking for or are you strictly using ideas that you’ve just kind of come up with creatively on your own?
April (06:23):
So I do a lot of research and while I know there are people out there that will research, , what are the things that are our current trends and what are people looking for? What sells well, for me, I’m writing, and especially children’s books, it’s something that comes from my heart and it’s something that I have to feel really inspired about. So my series that I have, it’s the Little Labradoodle series, they’re all about resilience. My goal is to reinforce building and raising resilient children. So the different themes that I’ve come up with are different things that the children are going to need to be more resilient. And I don’t like the idea of pushing lessons at kids. I like a story that unfolds and opens conversation for kids with their parents and helps them figure things out and through a story, a colorful, beautiful story that they are going to love and that they’re going to want to read over and over. How to breathe or be mindful of this or mindful of that or something that I feel like is very oversaturated.
April (07:50):
It might’ve been a great thing that people flocked to because everybody was looking for mindfulness books, but I want something that’s really going to stand the test of time and it’s going to serve a purpose for the people that I’m writing for, which are my grandchildren and children like them. So I start with that. I start with a specific thing that I’m trying to get across now with the research that I spend will have to do with number one. And I do coach a lot of other authors. So I’ll kind of talk about how I recommend, not just for myself, but for others, I always recommend that you spend a lot of time researching the niche. So for me, it’s about, , it’s children’s books. Yes. It’s about, , building resilience. It’s beautiful, bright illustrations, and mine are starring my Labradoodles.
April (08:46):
So look into the niche that you are working in, what are the best sellers out there in that, in those niches? And what can you learn from them? What do their covers look like? How do they describe their book? What are the hooks that they use? How do they formulate their listings? How does your book compete with what’s out there? ,and, and really understand in other words, the climate that you’re going into, because you’re going to learn so much from the books that are doing really well in that area. You also need to have a really good idea about your audience. Why should people buy your book from you? Who are the people that the book is going to resonate with and how are you going to sell to them?
April (09:44):
Like spending time researching your avatar, like who is your avatar, who’s buying the books, what do they care about? How do you find them and how do you connect with them? So, , getting through that process and going through that, as well as thinking about everything you learned about the niche and your target, perfect readers, and putting that into a marketing plan and really researching what’s out there. What are the organizations maybe that you might want to partner with, who are some of the collaborators, bloggers, podcasters that you can connect with and continue to build relationships with who are also like-minded and you can put some things into your marketing plan that will help you not just finish the book, but you’re going to need to sell the book and you’re going to need to market the book. And if you don’t start researching and thinking about those things early on it’s way too late by the time you hit the publish button. So those are some of the areas that I would spend a lot of time researching and acting upon.
Rachel (10:59):
Great tips there. Thank you. Now you kind of already answered this. My next question was, how do you come up with creative ideas for your stories? You kind of went into a lot of that already, but do you have anything else to add there?
April (11:12):
So there are so many things. I have an author work group that has anywhere from 30 to 50 people, , each 12 week group that we do together. And I have seen some amazing creativity from these folks. And usually they come out of necessity. I have one author who has a book about food allergies and it came about because her son has issues with food allergies and she had a reason for creating that book. I have another author who’s passion is for looking on the bright side of things and understanding looking at the silver lining, right? So her book is about her as a disabled person with her service dog, what it takes to become a service dog and how even though she has had some real tough times in her life, she’s always looked for the positive silver lining behind the clouds and this silly service dog of hers helps her with that.
April (12:27):
So she put that story together, which did amazingly well. Another author I can think of is a hearing impaired little girl and she said, all of the stories that I see out there about hearing impaired people revolve around their disability. I want to create something that just has my daughter her cochlear implants, just being her and being her crazy self and having an adventure and looking passed the fact that she is disabled. It does not have to do with her disability just her. So that people can actually see disability represented in a different way. And so that kids who have disabilities can be represented in storybooks just as themselves. So I always say, if you are looking for a book for your child and you can’t find it, you have to write it. So that’s a lot of what happens with many of the authors that I coach.
Rachel (13:39):
Yeah. It sounds like everyone kind of has some story inside of them or something that’s going on in their own life or their own family dynamics that can be drawn upon to create something really special.
April (13:53):
Exactly. Exactly.
Rachel (13:55):
So you mostly focused on children’s books, right, is there a certain age group that you tend to focus on or are you tackling different age groups?
April (14:06):
Mine personally is usually within the age of four to eight. I find that they grow and their learning and their minds and the different challenges that they have at those stages as they’re preparing for school, or they’re going through preschool. Before the elementary school, I want to just instill resilience and understanding. So my first book is about self acceptance and overcoming the shyness and the feeling that you’re not adequate or you’re not good enough. And so that was my first with my little labradoodle dog kind of overcoming that. So that was that one part of resilience that I use with my first book. My second book was all focused on anti-bullying because bullying was such a topic that my kids struggled with. And I started to see some of that with my grandkids and how to deal with bullies, how to be a good friend and to create an inclusive environment and modeling that behavior for them before things really start to get crazy around elementary school. So I think kids are just sponges at that age and that you can partner with teachers and parents and homeschoolers to just create something wonderful together. That’s going to really help the children.
Rachel (15:46):
Can you kind of give us sort of like a high level overview of what your process is from start to finish? I know there’s a lot involved, but if you could just kind of give us the Coles notes version of what that looks like.
April (16:01):
So I typically start with outlining in my mind what the story is like, what I know I’m wanting to accomplish, and then I’ll start laying out an outline of the book. And the story really needs to have a beginning, middle, and end, something that’s going to be an overarching theme, and it’s gotta be fun and it’s gotta have ike I said, I don’t like to beat people over the head with a lesson, but I want to weave those things in, so that as parents discuss the book, they’re able to kind of pick those things out and talk in more depth about the conversation with the child. So I got all of that. And then as I work through that, I typically go to my grandkids. I love to just kind of read them the story and the ideas that I have and they are pretty good critics, children are the best critics.
Rachel (17:06):
Well they’re so honest, right? I mean they never hold back.
April (17:09):
Remember the very first time that I had my first book and I brought it to Isabella and I had it in a paper thing. Like I had sketches and I got through about one third of the book and she looked at me and she said, Oh, Nan, it’s so boring. Can we stop now? So I was like, okay, back to the drawing board with this one. So it kind of went through a lot of different phases until I got the two thumbs up from Isabella saying, yes, this. But it’s so funny. Like you have to kind of go through that process. And so once I’ve got, to the point where I feel comfortable with it, I have wonderful editors, and going through that editing process and then from editing to illustrations with the children’s book, it is so important to have a really good relationship with your illustrator, somebody that you can trust that can capture what’s in your mind and really represent the story, the way that you want to see it done.
April (18:21):
And I’ve seen a lot of self published children’s books that just miss out on the illustration part, they go to maybe their local friend or family member. It’s not a professional. I always recommend spend. That’s where you’re going to spend the best part of your budget is with illustrations. Especially for children. I mean, that’s kind of like the number one feature, I think for children’s books. I mean, they want to look at the pictures, especially until they can read themselves.
April (18:56):
And you can have the best story that, , it could be an award-winning story. And if you pair it with lousy illustrations, it is just not going to sell. If you have amazing illustrations and a mediocre story it’s probably still going to do really well. So you just have to go through that illustration process, and then graphic design and formatting. So they’ll take what comes out from you your manuscript, your editor gives you the final manuscript. You give that to your designer, you give the completed illustrations and they will put together the beautiful book and out pops; the output from there is the files that you then can upload to Amazon and move forward with. So it’s a very, step-by-step. Now I know I overly simplified it because there are dozens and dozens of different steps and different things
April (19:55):
you have to remember all along the way. So I have put together checklists and things for myself and for my students that help them kind of go through that process as simply as possible and put together lists of resources and all the tools and things that I use for myself, I make available to them. So my goal is always to try to keep it simple, but make sure you never skip an edit and get the really great illustrations. And don’t wait until the very end for marketing because marketing has to start right at the beginning. It’s a very important part of the process. Even if all you’re doing is just letting people know, Hey, guess what? Book three is getting going, here’s a little peek at a character, like take people along your journey so that they’re invested in your story, they care about what’s going on and when it’s time to buy or to push that publish button, you’re not publishing to crickets.
Rachel (21:05):
Yes, nobody wants that. So you’ve kind of already mentioned that you outsource things like editing, illustration, layout. Are there any other steps that you outsource?
April (21:15):
Well, I do. I have some amazing resources for video editing. So if we’re doing something like a video read aloud, the book that I have, the anti-bullying book, I actually had an animator help me animate some of the images and I had somebody write a song. I wrote the song and they wrote the music for it, and we put it all together. And in a fun little video with the song that I just thought was amazingly fun. And for kids, I wanted them to understand the spirit behind the story. I think those are important things, extras that you can add for your book that can help you with marketing. They can also, having a book trailer or a read aloud done of your book can really help with children that need to see that as well as there.
April (22:20):
That can be really helpful for them. So, I would say I’m not great at any of these things, but I have a huge, wonderful, amazing network of people that I am able to tap for those things. For some they’ll
New Speaker (22:41):
outsource helping get Amazon set up, or the keywords and categories and ads that you might want to run? You might want to outsource that or at least get the coaching that you need to move forward with that. And I have some of my students come to me and ask who can help me because I’m so new at this, is there somebody out there that can kind of help marshall the book through the whole process? And so a coach or a mentor or project manager might be somebody that you want on your team, if you’re brand new to the project.
Rachel (23:17):
Yeah. All really good stuff there. I’m really curious especially talking about all this outsourcing, how big of a financial investment do you think is typical or sort of realistic if anyone watching right now is to just start from scratch at this whole process, what kind of a financial investment can an average person consider this to be?
April (23:44):
At the end of the day, knowing that there are a lot of variety that goes on, like if you’re doing a board book, a baby book, it’s a very small nuber of pages. There’s less illustrations versus a 20 or a 32 page picture book you’re going to have probably 28 illustrations. So I’ve seen the range go from say a little over a thousand dollars to get the editing, the illustrations and the formatting done. I’ve seen it as little as that. But the big amount, the big variability comes in with illustrations. If you’ve got really simple illustrations, that’s much less costly than lots of characters, lots of things going on, lots of detail inside of the illustrations. So if I were to advise a newbie, I would say, start with probably around $3,000 and that will give you a beautiful illustrated book beginning to end with project management, editing, design and illustration. And from there, I mean, the only thing I don’t factor in with that is how much you want to invest in additional advertisement or marketing. So there’s no Facebook ads or Amazon ads or anything included in that, but that’s a pretty reasonable budget.
Rachel (25:22):
What about if you were to remove the illustration from the process and I’m asking, because I know that there’s quite a few people that are watching right now that are actually skilled artists as well and could probably be quite easily take on that challenge themselves. You would have to remove that part of the equation, what might you be looking at then?
April (25:41):
I would say you can get through the whole thing with around a thousand dollars.
Rachel (25:46):
Yeah. Okay. That’s cool. So we’ve got the book published now let’s talk launch strategy. Can you just give us a little bit of tips or pointers or processes even of what your launch strategy looks like?
April (26:01):
Yes. So I always recommend that we build a launch team and build the moment. Start with marketing right from the beginning. And a lot of people will say to me I don’t have a book yet. How can I market it? Just bring people along on your journey, tell them, tell people, I can’t believe how many people that I coach that will say to me, I’m launching next week, but they haven’t told any of their family or friends. They don’t even know that they’re writing a book because they didn’t want to share it until it was a reality. So I say, put it out there, right from the beginning. As soon as a book becomes in your mind is something that you’re going to do. Tell people, create an author page for yourself on Facebook, on Instagram and tell your family and friends that are following you on your personal social media, what you’re doing, and then say, Hey, if you want to follow my journey, follow my page, my Facebook page, or my Instagram page.
April (27:09):
I’m going to post information about my journey and just let them follow. Let them love on you and support you and encourage you and cheer you on because that’s going to help you. It’s going to help them. And over 80% of the people that were surveyed, do you have a book inside you? And it shouldn’t be published. 80% of the people surveyed by a small press said yes, but out of the 80% of people, the people that are actually publishing their books, it’s only 1% of them. What that tells me is that 80% of the people on your list would love to be in your place, writing a book. They want to know about your journey. You might even inspire them to write one of their own. So that’s one part. And I know we said, we’re talking about launch, but that’s an important part of preparing for launch, right?
April (28:15):
Bringing people with you. Now, as you get closer to launch, one of the things I always do is focus and prioritize on the cover of the picture book first, and whether it’s a picture book or whether it’s a middle grade or a novel, we’re talking about having a beautiful cover and a markup of that cover is a great way to show number one, what you’re creating. So you get that out there. But the other thing it lets you do is it lets you set up things on Amazon and Ingram spark tha will allow you to set your book for pre-order. So I would say, give yourself six to eight weeks. So post your book for pre-order six or eight weeks from now. And now let the marketing begin. I mean really take off, and build a launch team.
April (29:14):
You’ve got family and friends that you’ve been bringing along on your journey, have them join your launch team. What does that mean? That means that as part of your launch team, they’re cheering you on, they’re sharing some posts to help get the word out to others. They get a free ebook before anybody else before it’s available to anybody else. And then they will provide you with a review. So yes, family, friends. Wonderful. But you also remember early on, we talked about research. So research is we’ve found our people, we’ve got Facebook groups, we’ve got maybe author groups and other places where our perfect readers reside and go and post to them. Ask if anybody would be interested in serving on your launch team or do a survey about the topic that you’re writing about. And then at the end of the survey ask would you be interested in serving on my launch team for this book that I’m writing, get people to sign up.
April (30:23):
Now we walked through this together in my author work group and I have had authors that have actually gone through this process that had over 800 people on their launch team. The ebook goes live a couple of weeks ahead. Their launch team is ready. They’ve got graphics created. The launch team helps like push the word out. The launch team gets this free ebook, which goes live on Amazon before your print books are ready. They get the free ebook. They go and put reviews in. I had one author that had 120 reviews before her book ever launched because we went through this process together. So your launch team, that’s been very invested in you. Not everybody is going to provide you with a review, but that’s the hope is that these are engaged people that really love the book.
April (31:24):
They want to be a part of this. So they get the free book. They provide you with a review. Now your ebook and your print books are linked on Amazon. So every ebook review you get gets inherited by your books, your paperback, your hard cover, will all inherit these let’s just say 120 reviews and its still on pre-order. Your people you’re driving people there, people are pre-ordering your book. Now it goes live. All of those pre-orders that have come in over time and believe me, these reviews that you’ve received along the way are social proof that are helping, Oh wow. This book is just getting ready to launch. And it’s got 120 reviews already. I’m going to go and purchase that. I’m not worried about one review, right? That I see. So all the way that Amazon tallies everything is now remember that person that had 800 people on their launch team.
April (32:31):
A number of them have not only just downloaded an ebook and give them a review, but they’ve pre-ordered the book as well. As your launch team is sharing other people see this book, they love it. They want to go and they pre-order it. So let’s just say you end up with a couple hundred sales out of that. It all gets tallied as sold in one day. So as your book goes live, it also becomes an immediate number one new release, an immediate seller tag on it because we also, as part of the pre-launch process, we go through and we analyze categories and keywords. We make sure we have some really great keywords that people would be searching for that topic so that they will find the book, and a lot of times I’ll even start ads, with the ebook so that they find the ebook, the ebook is already there and ready and they’re able to see, Oh wow, the hardcover or the paperback is also on pre-order. I’m going to go grab that. So ads help drive traffic. So does all of the work we’re doing with our teams and you end up with an amazing launch that will make you an instant best seller in a number of categories that you are on Amazon. The hard part is now you’re launched, then what? Right. You have to make sure your marketing plan doesn’t stop there.
Rachel (34:13):
My next question. So we’ve launched, what comes next for marketing?
April (34:18):
So post launch, in building up to launch, you also want to have bloggers, you want to visit podcasts. You want to get media attention for your book. You want to keep going. Those sales have to keep coming in for you to maintain that high reading on Amazon. So you want to keep driving people to Amazon, not be afraid to reach out to local press in your local area. Libraries. I remember a recent visitor to my author work group recommended, you could do a whole tour of libraries for months and years, of just starting in your local neighborhood and reaching out and saying I’m a new author. I’d like to do a little, like it could be a workshop. It could be a reading of your book to children.
April (35:17):
But get those scheduled. Preschools. If we worked through all of the marketing part of the activities, because marketing for me might be very different from marketing for you. One of my authors is still busy. She’s a busy surgeon, working a huge number of hours. So her marketing plan is going to be very busy, very different than a stay at home mom who is doing this full time. Of course being a mom, but she has a lot more time in her day. She can go in and visit with schools and libraries and things like that. So, there’s so many different ways that it varies, but it’s got to take advantage of who you are being, being your authentic self, getting your heart out there, sharing why you’re doing the book, partnering and borrowing other people’s audience, will help you get a lot more traction as a new author than just trying to build it yourself from scratch.
Rachel (36:32):
And is advertising a big part of your marketing process as well?
April (36:37):
Absolutely. And I find that Amazon advertising works really well for some authors for others, maybe Facebook ads, there’s a lot of different opportunities there. You have to know the ins and outs of Amazon or Facebook. It can also be costly. So you have to budget for that ahead of time, knowing that you’re not just going to push the button, the publish button, and then everybody’s going to flock to your book. You have to be proactive on driving that traffic and ads is definitely an important part of it.
Rachel (37:17):
Okay. So I’d love to know if you have any tips on how to get your books into retail stores.
April (37:23):
So yes, absolutely retail stores. What my preferred way to do that is first of all, Ingram Spark buy, even though I will work with and set things up with Amazon, I’ll do the e-book and the paperback on Amazon’s KDP. I also put the paperback and the hard cover on Ingram Sparks, print on demand. Now they have a huge distribution network with thousands of libraries and retail stores. So if you contact a bookstore when you’ve published this way, and you’ve got these two working together, you now have Barnes and Noble, your book will end up on their site. You’ll see, typically they start with putting it there. They’ll pull a feed from Ingram spark, and you’ll find your book. A lot of times it will be on Barnes and Noble books, a million like a bunch of others.
April (38:35):
You’ll find a Target. Walmart.com. Your book will just show up in all these places because of the distribution network through Ingram spark. And now once you’ve got that put in place, you can also start visiting or calling in your local area and let them know, Hey, I’m a new author I’d like to come by and I’d like to see if you would be interested in carrying my books. Do you order from Ingram Spark? Most of them do, and they could order your book at a discount and pull a few copies in. There are other bookstores that will work with you to do some sort of consignment where you give them a handful of books. They’ll put them out on consignment and they’ll split it 60 40 with you, or 70 30, and each one has their own, process information that they’ll share with you.
April (39:41):
Usually they have their own forms, but go visit them, show your face, be your authentic self, share the excitement of what you’ve done, and the quality. Have a copy of your book. If you’re face-to-face with someone, show them the beautiful book that you’ve created, because all too often, the self-published books get a bad name and people think, Oh, that’s, somebody put something in word and then pushed it out on Amazon. And here are a lot out there that are just not very good quality, but that’s not your book, right? That’s not my book. The people that I work with, we put together very high quality books, and you’ve got to show that and you’ve got to be proud of it. And think outside the box,. I’ve seen people stop at, so they’ve got a baby book, for example, they’ll go to the local Babies R us, they’ll go to some of the local boutique stores that carry children’s clothes. And they’ll talk with them. I have dog books, sometimes groomers, or rescue organizations and things like that will be great places that I might be able to place my book and say, Hey, can I put some books here on consignment with you and we’ll share the profit? So those kinds of things, it’s just a matter of doing some legwork and pushing yourself outside your comfort zone to get that done.
Rachel (41:17):
Well, thank you so much, April. This has been so wonderful, so much amazing information. I know everyone’s gonna find it super useful. Before we wrap things up, though, why don’t you tell everyone watching where they can find you, maybe a bit more about what you’re up to or any of your current offerings?
April (41:35):
Oh, thank you. Well, one thing that I’m really excited about is I have a 12 week author work group that starts on June 15th. If you have a book inside of you and we know 80% of you out there, at least watching this episode would love to write a book, whether it’s a children’s book or whether it’s a novel, if you are interested in exploring that and moving forward with actually getting some accountability, some community together and walking through that process over a period of 12 weeks, sign up for my summer author work group. It is going to be again, starting June 15th, and you can go to self pubmadesimple.com and you can find the information there. I also have free 30 minute sessions consults. I donate my time for people in the author community because so many gave back to me when I was starting.
April (42:43):
So this is my way of giving back. So if you would love to create a book of your own, and you just want to have a chat, go ahead and book a call with me on my website. And I really look forward to seeing what we can do. I also have a new book coming out my third in my Little Labradoodle series. And that one is, A Baby Sister for Brady. So our Little Labradoodle has decided that he does not want a baby sister. He liked all the attention for his own. And, he learns, through a course of different things, about how it actually is pretty cool to have a baby sister, even though they can be a little bit of a pain in the rear end sometimes. So it’s fun. And it’s been a really fun book to pull together. That one’s coming out very soon. So I should be putting that out on pre-orders, but all this stuff you can find on my website and thank you so much for allowing me to borrow your audience for a little while, and to be able to share some knowledge.
Rachel (43:51):
I know everyone’s going to love it. And all of those links that I mentioned, I will link them all in the description below. So you can find them there as well. Once again, thanks so much, April.
April (44:02):
Thank you. Bye everyone.
Rachel (44:06):
If you want to find out how you can create a passive income selling journals, planners notebooks, and more on the Kindle Direct Publishing platform, then be sure to download my free guide Three Steps to Publishing your First Low-content Book in Less Than a Day. I’ve linked to that down in the description below. Also in the description below, you can find a link to my free Facebook group, Low Content Profits, Check out these videos next for more on self-publishing on the Kindle Direct Publishing Platform. And if you liked this video, don’t forget to subscribe, hit the like button and share it with your friends. Thanks for watching.
Links Discussed
April’s YouTube channel:—Self-Publishing Made Simple with April Cox
Download my free guide: 3 Steps to Publishing Your First Low-Content Book in Less Than a Day
