So, you are preparing to establish yourself as a children’s books author and wondering if it’s worth it. The answer depends entirely on what you think is worth the effort and what effort you are willing to commit.
Just like any other question about the income of authors, this question attracts varied answers. You must be sure of your writing competence, your understanding of child psychology, and your book marketing expertise. By the way, you can always hire book marketing services if you have confidence in the marketability of your book. But you can never compromise on your writing talents or your understanding of children if you want to successfully publish your book.
Let’s get back to the question: how much money do children’s book writers make? Let’s explore.
Can Children’s Book Authors Make Money?
Is children’s book writing profitable? This is the first question that comes to mind when you are choosing your genre. You want to know the profitability of whichever genre you are choosing to write in, and children’s books are no different.
Children’s books are profitable but only for those writers who publish more than a couple of books, maintain high-quality writing and illustration, and put enough effort and money into marketing their books. You simply cannot make a living with one children’s book published under your name. it doesn’t happen.
How Much Money Can Dedicated Children’s Book Writers Make?
Even if you have dedicated prime years of life writing these books, your passive – or semi-passive, I must say – income will depend on many factors. If you are an empathetic writer who understands children’s reading and understanding needs and who can convey the message in the simplest words, you will enjoy a higher income band. Most parents want the book to be also reading grade specific, so that’s another factor you should consider while developing your book idea.
Check out later sections of this post to find all the factors that impact the profitability of your book.
Most children’s books cost between $4 to $10. Suppose yours costs $6 per copy and you sell 1000 copies in a year, your book revenue will be $6,000. If you apply a 70% profit margin on this calculation, you will get $4,200 a year from one book. $4,200 can be a good passive income amount.
If you take book writing and publishing as your full-time job, you will not make ends meet at this rate. Full-time children’s book authors must publish at least 15 titles with reasonable quality and marketing to break even in a year. Also, note that most books see a decline in sales as time passes, so you must keep publishing new books to make up for dried sales on other books.
What Factors Determine the Income Potential of Children’s Books?
Most aspiring authors want to believe that book writing quality is the only factor that determines the marketability and sales of their books. This myth couldn’t be further from the truth. A book’s success depends on many factors including its price point, cover design, genre selection, and marketing strategy. Illustration is another element that makes or breaks your book’s demand. Let’s dissect every factor below.
Quality of Book Writing
Traditional books are judged by the content they present. The content should be factually correct, easy to understand, and concisely presented. Children’s books demand even more detail and care. You must care to use age-appropriate language and rely more on visual presentation than on text-based content.
Book Formatting and Illustration
Formatting is an essential part of every book whether it’s for children or adults. In most authors’ minds, illustrations are for children’s books only. Children like to see visuals for their story books and it keeps them engaged and portrays the concept better if these visuals make it into science, history, and other non-fiction books as well.
For most children’s books, illustrations aren’t created to support the text; instead, it’s text that’s written to support the images and illustrations. In short, you must pay attention to the artwork if you want reasonable and sustainable demand for your books.
Book Marketing
The last thing that will turn up your book sales will be its marketing and promotion. If you are using the traditional publishing route, your book promotion will be confirmed as soon as it is taken up by one of the few big players. However, most authors today self-publish their books.
The success of these books depends heavily on marketing strategy and efforts. If you cannot commit to hours of marketing and promotion for every book, simply hire professional high-quality book marketing services. You will want to look at historical stats of the success of these book marketing companies to decide between different players.
Number of Books
Till now, we have focused on the profitability of a single book you publish and not the whole publishing career that focuses on children’s book writing. Apart from making each of your books marketable, you also need to build your career strategically beyond these books to start seeing life-long results.
The first step to building a career out of children’s book publishing is strategically publishing a quality children’s book. The second is to not stop at publishing it but to publish another and then another book. The more books you publish, the more you will get closer to replicating your full-time income with book royalties.
Now, the question arises, how many books are enough to earn a living through them? Most authors get results within 15 -20 adequately selling books. So, keep it as a benchmark. Feel free to write and publish more books as a side hustle. That will grow your income and you may end up in the top 5% of the population in terms of wealth.
Author Marketing
Book marketing is about marketing a single piece separately. Many book writers understand the importance of building an author brand. These brands build on the success of their published pieces and their sales keep compounding.
You see, once you have fascinated a target market with your writing talent. They will recognize you and your work from this experience. It will be easier for your next books to capture their attention and make a sale based on this trust that you have already earned. With every subsequent book published, your reader base will grow, and so will the number of potential buyers of new books.
All you need to do is to market your name together with each book you promote. Again, professional book marketing services can help you do that.
Wrapping Up
Are you ready to kick-start your children’s book writing career and wondering if it’s worth it? You will need to look at the numbers. More precisely, how much money do these books generate? This blog post covers rough numbers associated with this genre of publishing.
