Self-publishing adventures

Children’s Self-publishing Event, Russian rights deal and other news…

Posted on May 2, 2019 by kareninglis

Hello from a grey, breezy London. It’s coming up to the first of two May Bank Holiday weekends here in the UK — always a time that makes the nation smile, whatever the weather!

Barnes Children’s Literature Festival – May 11th/12th – an indie friendly festival

One reason I love May is it’s the month in which we have The Barnes Children’s Literature Festival, conveniently held down the road from where I live. It’s now in its fifth year and I’m grateful that what has become the largest children’s literature festival in London immediately opened up to indies following my request for a slot in its first year (2015).

As well as the many big names this year (Lauren Child, Judith Kerr, David Almond, to name but a few…), there’s also a fabulous free programme that over the years has welcomed many more self-published authors. So if you have kids and live within reach of London, do use the link above to look at the programmes and come along. I’m already looking forward to hearing Judith Kerr’s interview and attending Emma Carroll’s event!

Self-publishing children’s book event on Saturday 4pm

If you’re starting out in self-publishing, or just curious to learn how it all works, I’m running a Children’s Self-publishing and Marketing session at the festival on Saturday May 11th from 4-5.30pm. This is the second year for the event and there was a packed house last year. I’ll have my book How to Self-Publish and Market a Children’s Book on sale on the day and there’ll be plenty of time for questions. The first half of my talk looks at children’s self-publishing options and the second half covers the crucial question of marketing. Click here to find out more or book.

Karen Inglis discussing children's self-publishing -- seated audience and slides

Children’s Self-publishing event Barnes Children’s Literature Festival 2018

Karen Inglis giving a talk - audience and slides

Plenty of time for questions along the way – oh, and we’ll be indoors this year!

The Secret Lake – the journey continues

May has another special place in my heart, because it’s the time that Isabella Plantation, a magical woodland in London’s Richmond Park, comes into bloom. As most of you know, the woodlands and Still Pond (seen below during a walk last Sunday) were a strong part of the inspiration for my time travel adventure The Secret Lake which hit the Amazon UK bestseller lists last year and this, and is also now climbing the charts in the US and Canada.

Image of Karen Inglis standing in front of Still Pond, Isabella Plantation with pink azaleas

Still Pond just coming into bloom at Isabella Plantation – Sunday 28th April

Unbelievably, over 20,000 print copies have sold in the last year and the story now has over 100 reviews on Amazon UK with a further 35 on Amazon.com. Certainly, selling in volume really helps with reviews which had been a steady but very slow burn until 12 months ago.

The game changer for raising awareness of The Secret Lake beyond my school visits was Amazon advertising which has become a vital part of my book marketing strategy and needs to be part of yours too. I talk about this in my non-fiction book alongside all the other things you need to be doing to get your book into children’s hands. And I’ll of course be discussing it at my event at the Barnes Children’s Literature Festival.

Russian rights deal for The Secret Lake

Yesterday I signed the paperwork for a Russian rights deal for The Secret Lake which will be coming out in hardback and paperback, as well as in eBook and audio format over there. The paperwork is being UPS’d back to Moscow today. I feel I should probably hold off naming the publisher or giving more detail until the advance is received (I hate to tempt fate!). Suffice it to say that it’s one of Russia’s largest children’s publishers so I think I’m in safe hands. Of course you’ll be the first to see a photo of me holding the translated copy when it finally arrives! They have 18 months in which to publish.

This is my second rights deal — I signed with Botart publishing in Albania in January and will of course post an update as and when the title comes out there.

Envelope from Moscow containing my rights agreement 🙂

A new picture book for Christmas

I swore I’d avoid doing more picture books as it’s *so* difficult to get things right. However, a story I’ve had in my head for years just wouldn’t go away and I finally sat down and created the first draft a couple of months ago. Not having to deal with rhyme was a welcome change, but shaping the story to fit a 32-page picture book wasn’t at all easy. I ended up with 1,400 words, which is way too long!

Christmas tree undecorated

Following discussions and review by two trusted editors/writing colleagues, and after storyboarding and then working up rough sketches with my illustrator, we are now down to 750 words. My illustrator works in ink on paper, so the next stage is a whole new learning curve for me. (Damir, who does my other books, works entirely digitally.) Luckily we’re working with the wonderful Rachel Lawston for layout, so she is hand-holding us through this stage.

I’m sure more words will get culled once we get to the final layout stage, but it’s all going in the right direction. It’s a too early to share concept drawings I’m afraid, so above is a tree from Pixabay!

Eeek! — cover update

I just love the autonomy and flexibility we have as indie authors. It had been bothering me for sometime that Eeek! was missing a football on the front cover. I finally got around to asking my illustrator to make the tweak a couple of weeks ago. (Goodness knows why I didn’t ask for one to start with!) I’ve also updated the title font to make it stronger. To mark the occasion of the new cover, my illustrator has created this rather fun gif — I hope you enjoy!

Gif image of greem alien with spinning football and blue smoke coming from ears

Fun and fast-paced for ages 7-10!

That’s it for now — have a great weekend (or long weekend) when it comes. 🙂 And please do come and say hello if you spot me at the Barnes Children’s Literature Festival, whether or not you’re attending my event .

Karen

PS If you’ve bought a copy of How to Self-publish and Market a Children’s Book it would mean a lot to me if you could take a moment to leave a short review on Amazon or the store where you bought it. With many thanks!

Posted in Book festivals, Children's Books, Marketing, Self-publishing | Tagged children's books, foreign rights, literary festivals, marketing | 2 Comments

Foreign rights deal, self-pub book update and other news…

Posted on February 5, 2019 by kareninglis

A belated Happy New Year – I hope 2019 has started well for you! This post shares some exciting news, along with my plans for the coming year. It also alerts those of you who have How To Self-publish and Market a Children’s Book about a couple of minor updates that you can grab online.

Foreign Rights Deal for The Secret Lake

Firstly, I’m thrilled to say that I’ve just signed a foreign rights paperback deal with Botart publishing house in Albania for The Secret Lake 🙂 I’d never heard of them (no surprise there) but it turns out they publish David Walliams, Jaqueline Wilson and Dr Seuss amongst others, so I think I shall be in pretty safe company!

They’ll be doing a print run of 1,000 for which they’ve paid me an advance. I’ll then earn a royalty once/if the advance is earned out. It’s not a huge deal as it’s a small market, but it’s been a fantastic learning curve; just the right size project to cut my teeth on. And because the deal is direct, there are no agents fees taking a slice along the way.

I had invaluable help from The Alliance of Independent Authors in negotiating the royalty and other terms — all part of the service if you’re a member. Having my lawyer son to check things over was pretty useful too.

Needless to say, I can’t wait to hold of a copy in Albanian – and I shall be intrigued to see what they do with the cover.

Initial estimates for the publication date are June 2019, however that may change. I’ll keep you posted.

So how do you get a foreign rights deal?

Of course, traditionally published authors have agents to handle this for them – or their home country publisher may also handle their foreign rights. However, the few enquiries I’ve made have drawn a blank as far as getting an agent just for foreign rights goes. This deal came about following an unsolicited email enquiry from Botart’s Editor-in-Chief, requesting a reading copy. It’s not the first time I’ve been approached this way. A few years ago Random House in Germany and a major Turkish publisher requested reading copies of Eeek!, though neither came to anything.

More recently, I’ve had approaches for The Secret Lake from Greece, Turkey, Iceland and (just last Friday) a major Russian children’s publisher. Whether any of these will come to anything remains to be seen, but at least I now feel prepared.

Following on from this – and on the back of my sales – this year I shall be researching ways to make contact with children’s rights buyers at London Book Fair. The Secret Lake continues to rank very highly on Amazon UK (around 500-700 as I write) – and has crept up the charts in the US. With print sales now standing at well over 20,000, and one deal signed, I’m hoping I may be able to get some more attention there. Whatever I learn I shall, in due course, report back.

How to Self-publish and Market a Children’s Books – minor updates

For those of you who have ‘How to Self-publish and Market a Children’s Book’ I’ve just posted an interim minor update document in the shared Dropbox folder.

This includes:

A minor correction to my instructions for how to create a simple mock-up for a picture book. (My maths clearly went out the window when I wrote it: I asked you to start out with double the number of sheets of paper you needed – my apologies! I only found out because I followed my own instructions last week to mock up a new Christmas picture book for which I’ve just completed the text!)

A couple of alerts/reminders about a few changes in the industry, such as Google+ closing down in April and Instafreebie rebranding to Prolfic Works.

Image of the front cover and interior of How to Self-publish and Market a

Check the shared Dropbox folder for minor updates

I must say that I had assumed How to Self-publish and Market a Children’s Book might sell two or three copies a week if I was lucky, but it’s averaging more like one a day, which is a very nice surprise. It’s also received some wonderful 5-star reviews – a big relief after all the hard work!

On that note, if you’ve bought a copy, it would mean a lot to me if you could find a moment to leave a short review on Amazon and/or Goodreads, or your store of choice.

If you don’t yet have it and want to find out more you can grab a sample or buy on Amazon here or use these links to sample or buy in the Kindle Store, Apple’s iBooks Store the Kobo Store or Barnes & Noble Nook Store

Audiobook, new picture book and other goals for 2019

I’m not known for goal-setting as I’m usually so busy I never have time to sit down and map out a whole year. However, here, at least are my aims:

Record an Audiobook of The Secret Lake – narrating myself but with professional editing/production. This is long overdue!
Publish a new picture book in time for Christmas. The title was chosen years ago and the text is complete as of last week. The story has been going around in my head for the last five or six years and has been in various stages of draft for the last 18 months. Finally it has come together and I’m now about to brief the illustrator. She works on paper and has an entirely different style to my Bosnian Illustrator – I can’t wait to see what she comes up with!
Try to sell more foreign rights for The Secret Lake – and possibly Eeek! – whether directly or by finding an agent who can handle this for me.
Update the covers for Eeek! and Henry Haynes and the Great Escape
Finalise my partly-finished sequel to Walter Brown and the Magician’s Hat
Enjoy visiting more schools!

Perhaps by writing this all down I shall achieve at least half of them 🙂

World Book Day 2019

It’s World Book Day in the UK on March 7th and I shall be at four schools that week. I’ve already enjoyed school visits in October, November and January of this academic year, where the Reception year children have loved a new video I have of a hedgehog running up the road beside my family home.

Spreading school visits out each month certainly works very well and it’s something I want to try to make a habit of rather than packing everything into February and March, which has happened in previous years!

Don’t forget, I have a whole section dedicated to setting up and running successful school visits in How to Self-publish and Market a Children’s Book, including download order form samples. It’s a lot of work putting these visits in place, but it’s more than worth it once you get there! Oh – and if your child’s school would be interested in a school visit do check out my school visits page on my website ask them to get in touch. I also do Skype visits for schools abroad.

London Book Fair – will you be there?

I’ll be at London Book Fair again this year. I can hardly believe that it’s seven years since I attended the launch of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) there! Little did I know how much that would change my life. What a fantastic community of like-minded writers I have met since that time. If you’re going to be there do let me know and come and say hi. ALLi is running an event on the Thursday evening in conjunction with Amazon and that will be the place to be. That apart I’ll probably be there most days. You can find out more about ALLi here.

That’s it for now and I hope that your children’s writing and/or publishing journey is going well.

With very best wishes,

Karen

PS Remember, if you have How to Self-publish and Market a Children’s Book it would be great if you could leave an honest review online, however short if you’ve found it useful. With many thanks!

Posted in Blog Update, Marketing, Self-publishing, Writing & Editing | Tagged foreign rights | Leave a comment

The Seven-year Pitch: The Story of my Children’s Bestseller…

Posted on September 18, 2018 by kareninglis

Seven years to the day after publication, my time travel adventure The Secret Lake is hovering in the Amazon UK children’s bestseller lists for eBook and/or print for the fifth month in a row, variously ranking between 200 and 500 in the whole UK print store. They say the best things comes to those who wait – what better time to give some context to this ‘seven-year-pitch’ 🙂

images of two front covers of the secret lake by karen inglis

The Secret Lake – old and new

It’s almost 20 years since I wrote the first draft of my time travel adventure The Secret Lake in which Stella (age 11) and Tom (age 8), while trying to find their elderly neighbour’s missing dog, discover a time tunnel and secret lake that take them to their home and the children living there 100 years earlier. And it’s seven years to the day since I self-published it. (Amazon shows the print publication date as 4^th August but that is wrong – that’s the date I registered the ISBN, but I clearly did something wrong!)

Notting Hill communal gardens

The story was inspired when some friends moved to an apartment backing onto communal gardens not far from Notting Hill in London. When I walked out and saw the children playing there I couldn’t help wondering what might happen if they could meet the children who had lived and played there in Edwardian times.

The lake in the story was inspired by a pond in a magical woodland in Richmond Park, close to where we live. We used to take our boys there to play when they were younger and it reminded me of the sense of freedom I had had as a child growing up in the Hertfordshire countryside. Even before we’d left Notting Hill that day of our first visit, this magical woodland setting had become connected with the story that was already forming in my mind…

Three children's book illustrations from Ferdinand Fox and the Hedgehog: Ferdinand Fox trotting along the street; Hatty Hedgehog putting her baby son Ed to sleep and mum and son hedgehog nose to nose

Still Pond in the magical Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park

There were many drafts in the early days (I didn’t plot, and things got very muddled!), and it was many months before I felt ready to show the story around.

My first step was to submit it for comment to an independent manuscript appraisal service, The Writers’ Advice Centre for Children’s Books, which I recommend to this day. Thereafter – and several rewrites later – I sent it off by post to a half a dozen publishers only to be told that the story was “too traditional”, “not what children are looking for these days” or “not for our lists”. After the six- to eight-week wait to hear back, I was despondent – and many reading here will know that awful feeling of rejection!

I had better luck with my next story Eeek! The Runaway Alien (a humorous chapter book about a young alien who comes to Earth for the Word Cup), with Bloomsbury asking for more material, and an agent asking for a further version. However, when this eventually came to nothing I decided the odds of getting published were stacked against me in a very large, slow-motion lottery — so I packed everything away and went back to my day job as a business writing consultant where I knew I would at least earn from my writing.

After that The Secret Lake, Eeek! and various other stories lay in a wooden box under my office window for over 10 years. I used to glance at that box from time to time and think what a shame it was that no one would ever know the magical story of The Secret Lake. I also recall fleetingly wondering if one day my great-great grandchildren might discover it and bring it back to life.

The Secret Lake sat in this wooden box for 10 years…

Discovering self-publishing and gaining control

In fact, it wasn’t the future grandchildren who would breathe new life into The Secret Lake. I took a yearlong sabbatical from my consulting work in late 2010 and pulled my stories out again. Around that time self-publishing via Amazon’s CreateSpace was being talked about online and, once I delved deeper, I knew it was for me: it would put me in control and allow me to get my story in front of children instead of sitting unloved in someone’s slush pile.

Early days…

It was a lonely business back then – no Facebook Groups or self-publishing organisations to join to swap expertise (and frustrations!). And book formatting tools were few and far between — and extremely clunky compared with what’s on offer today. I had lots of setbacks but The Secret Lake was finally born in print and for Kindle in September 2011.

Old and new marketing: the long road to discovery

Once The Secret Lake was out, I set up a website, contacted and visited local bookshops and sent press releases to local magazines, newspapers and community newsletters, taking care to point to where it was stocked locally. My first event was a reading in our local library. I was terrified that no one would turn up – or that I’d have hordes – and I burst into tears from nerves the day before. In fact, there were seven children, seven adults and the library staff. It was perfect. The librarian even served tea and cakes!

Thereafter I began connecting with local schools, which entailed a lot of research and persistence. Gradually (very gradually) it began to pay off and my local author brand started to grow.

One of many school visits with children listening eagerly to The Secret Lake

Then and now – children still know best…

My instinct that children still hanker after a good adventure story had proven itself long before its recent rise through the Amazon ranks. By the end of 2017 I had sold over 7,000 copies through a combination of school visits, local independent bookshop sales and signings in six branches of Waterstones (a major UK book chain) around southwest London – plus a steady trickle of online store sales in print and for Kindle in both the UK and USA. During this time the then Head of Independent Commissioning for children’s CBBC also read and enjoyed it, and recommended I pitch it to the BBC and/or to independent production companies. It didn’t get chosen by the CBBC in the end, and life and other writing got in the way after that. However, pursuing the second option is now high on my task list and I’ve even had an enquiry from Hollywood recently. (I am sure this will be case of ‘watch this space for a VERY long time’, so I’m not get excited just yet…).

Waterstones in Notting Hill was the first bookshop to stock The Secret Lake. Several more branches in southwest London took it and I had many successful signings 🙂

What changed in 2018?

The Secret Lake has always been my bestseller at school visits but raising its profile beyond face-to-face events and my local bookshops has, until this year, been by far the hardest part of being an independent children’s author. And if people farther afield don’t know your book then they don’t know to look for it – be that online or in high street bookshops. This in turns means that children won’t know about it in sufficient numbers around the UK to spread the word and so fuel further demand.

I have Amazon UK to thank for the breakthrough. When they opened up sponsored product advertising to independent authors alongside traditionally published titles in early 2018 I was finally able to make The Secret Lake visible online where parents are looking for similar children’s books. The effect was almost immediate and the book began to climb slowly and steadily through the ranks. (This was before I updated the cover in May, though the new design has undoubtedly worked extra magic since and I couldn’t be happier with it.)

Screen Shot 2018-09-18 at 16.39.06

By the time I started promoting it, The Secret Lake had 45 reviews, gradually built up over the years. These undoubtedly helped encourage sales once the book became visible, and the review numbers are now slowly growing. I’m so grateful to those parents and grandparents who have taken the time give their feedback, or help their child give their feedback. As any author will tell you, it means so much after all the hard work – and particularly in the case of children’s authors where our readers don’t have access to the online reviews platforms. So, thank you if you have left a review recently or in the past!

Not just Amazon…

I’m especially delighted to report that word-of-mouth customer requests have also led to independent and high street bookshops outside of my locality placing orders for The Secret Lake through wholesalers, with over 60 recent UK sales and similar in the US this way when I last checked. This is great news for bookshops and readers alike. For once, Amazon seems to be helping high-street bookshops make more sales.

Local bookshops that have supported The Secret Lake. It’s now travelling farther afield…

Reflecting on my adventure

As The Secret Lake continues to land on hundreds of doormats in the UK, US and Europe (notably Germany) each week, I can’t help thinking back to those early rejections. I truly felt there was a gap in the market for more classic adventure stories – the sort I’d enjoyed as a child, but with a modern twist. I’m so glad that children, parents, librarians and teachers have confirmed my suspicions and given this story the chance to breathe.

A typical book order pile ahead of a school visit… (old cover)

In short, without Amazon and self-publishing, this story would still be in its box — how sad would that be? (Oh, except, of course, for those curious future great-great-grandchildren! 🙂 Hmm, and therein might lie another magical time travel story…)

If you have a story you truly believe in, the chances are it won’t let you give up and you will get there eventually. And it will be a lot of hard – but enjoyable – work!

Have a book-loving 8-11 year-old at home?

You’ll find copies of The Secret Lake on Amazon in your country here. It’s also available in print in all online stores worldwide. Alternatively use the link top right of this page to find your closest independent bookshop to place an order.

If your child has read and enjoyed it, it would mean a lot to me if you could help them leave a review online. Thank you!

Posted in Blog Update, Self-publishing, The Secret Lake | 6 Comments

How to Self-publish and Market a Children’s Book: now available in print or as an eBook

Posted on September 3, 2018 by kareninglis

*STOP PRESS* The new second edition of How to Self-publish and Market a Children’s Book is available from Amazon from 21st May 2021, as both an eBook and print book, and is on a time limited offer for seven days.

Follow this link to view on Amazon.

The blog post below pertains to the first edition

Hello fellow children’s authors and blog followers! I am thrilled to announce that my non-fiction book How to Self-publish and Market a Children’s Book is now available both in print and as an eBook. 🙂

Coming in at 296 pages, this is a comprehensive guide that’s aimed at both beginners and more experienced self-publishers. It covers everything from planning and producing your picture book, chapter book or middle grade novel, through to first marketing, school visits, getting into bookshops, online marketing and more. It also includes recommendations for the best tools (free or paid-for) and freelance resources and experts to help you with your self-publishing journey.

Click or tap here to see a video sneak peek of the inside of the print book on instagram (opens in new tab)

PR photo inside with chapter headings_1416

Suitable for beginners or experienced self-publishers. I use graphics to help illustrate key points.

The eBook is available on all the main stores – see links below. The print book is available on Amazon as I write (a day earlier than expected) and should be in wider online stores later this week via the Ingram Spark feed. I will put up a brief post when those wider store links go live.

View or buy How to Self-publish and Market a Children’s Book in print on Amazon
View or buy the eBook in the Kindle Store, Kobo Store, iBooks Store and Barnes & Noble Nook Store

A quick note about the table of contents

There is a top level Table of Contents with 30 chapters spread over two parts:

Part 1: Self-publishing
Part 2: Marketing

You will also have access to a hidden, password-protected resources folder with a more detailed Table of Contents showing sub-sections within those 30 chapters. This will be especially useful to print off to help you keep track of where you are if you have the Kindle/eBook version of this very long book. The resources folder also brings together useful links and example downloads that are included or referenced in the book – and I will be adding to it over time.

Below is the back cover, which I hope gives you a flavour of what to expect.

Screen Shot 2018-09-03 at 13.03.09

Including last-minute updates…

As many of you will recall, I had hoped to get the book out by late June. However, a few things changed in the lead-up to the expected launch that I didn’t want to go to press without including. These are/were:

changes to the rules on posting Amazon reviews
a new UK site that will soon accept self-published children’s books for review
a new marketing feature from BookFunnel that I think will work well for children’s authors
a new personalisation feature from Ingram Spark (I shall be expanding on this further in the resources folder this week)
confirmation of the move from CreateSpace to KDP Print; I had already future-proofed for this, however I took the opportunity to add in some final tweaks when that news firmed up recently
upcoming updates to an Amazon Ads keyword search tool KDP Rocket* which will give better results for children’s authors

In addition, my time travel adventure The Secret Lake has continued on the Amazon UK bestseller lists since May and I wanted to make adjustments to include insights from this. (It hit 75 in the whole of the UK Amazon print store at one point in early July, which was possibly the nicest shock of the year and has been hovering between 200 and 400 in the whole store since.) 🙂 If you have an 8-11 year-old who loves adventure, mystery, time travel and/or historical fiction do check it out!

With the above changes it became clear that reformatting for print would lead to delays (adjusting the eBook was much simpler!). Still, I’m relieved and delighted that it’s finally out and hope it will help you on your self-publishing journey.

It goes without saying that I would hugely appreciate an honest review on Amazon (and Goodreads if you’re there) if you find it useful. 🙂

Keeping up to date with changes in the resources folder

Be sure to sign up to my newsletter if you want to receive updates when I make changes or add new content in the resources folder.

That’s it for now. I hope you had a wonderful summer (or winter depending where you are). And please do share news of the book release with any children’s authors you know!

Happy writing and publishing!

Karen

PS If you’ve already bought the eBook, it would mean a lot to me if you could leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. Thank you!

*Disclosure: this is an affiliate link which means I will earn a referral fee if you go on to buy KDP Rocket. However, there is no extra cost to you.

Posted in Children's Books, Editing, Marketing, Self-publishing, Writing & Editing | Leave a comment

How to self-publish and market a children’s book and other news…

Posted on May 29, 2018 by kareninglis

This is a long overdue update on what I’ve been up to – and to let you know that, after many requests and a lot of planning (in between everything else), I’m finally bringing out How to Self-publish and Market a Children’s Book in the next few weeks.

I’m aiming for a launch date of 30 June 2018 but will confirm this closer to the time. If any last minute changes in the market occur in the next couple of weeks that I think are important enough to warrant a short delay, I will endeavour to include them.

Update – the release was rescheduled to 31 July owing to changes in the market I wanted to include. The book is now out on Kindle with the print book to follow. Find out more here.

KI_HOW_TO_CVR4 As you have probably guessed, this is a book of two halves. It will be packed with practical advice on :

the best print and eBook self-publishing options for children’s authors in this fast-changing market and the best tools to use along the way – going into far greater detail and significantly updated from what you’ll find on my website, albeit the principles here all still hold true
the strategies you can use both offline and online to get your children’s books into more young readers’ hands – by far the most challenging aspect of your journey as I’m sure you will know

While many of the book’s first-half strategies will be useful for all self-publishers, it has lots of extras thrown in that are of specific interest to children’s writers. The second ‘marketing’ half is, of course, highly targeted to children’s authors. With my books sales now close to 15,000 I have lots to share on this – including what works and what doesn’t – and what is emerging…

The book will also include a link that I will use to keep you up to date with key changes in this fast-moving industry, and for useful downloads.

If you’d like me to notify you when How to Self-publish and Market a Children’s Book is out please sign up to my mailing list if you’re not on it already. (I don’t email often.) If you’d prefer not to sign up, don’t worry – I will put out a short blog post announcement here once the release date is finalised.

Now on to other news…

Hitting best seller lists, new picture book and more…

I’m thrilled to report that The Secret Lake has hit best seller status in key children’s categories several times on Amazon UK in the last few weeks, with the print book ranking at 335 in the whole of the UK store on one day and the Kindle version reaching the mid 3,000 spot. This month it has sold over 500 print copies on Amazon UK.

Images of The Secret Lake by Karen Inglis with best seller labels on Amazon.uk

The Secret Lake making its mark on Amazon UK

(Amazon’s bots have chosen to include the print book in a rather odd category ‘Children’s Exploration and Travel’ – it’s not one I chose, but I’m not complaining! I must say that I find the Kindle Store has far more relevant categories for my needs than the print store.)

Amazon stats update hourly so this streak is likely to be short-lived (it’s at around 500 as I write), however the print book has been ranking in the the top 2,000-4,000 since Continue reading →

Posted in Children's Books, Editing, Marketing, Self-publishing, Writing & Editing | 2 Comments

Self-publishing adventures

Children’s Self-publishing Event, Russian rights deal and other news…