hello and welcome back today i'm going to talk to you and give you five tips on publishing your children's book five reasons you should go ahead and publish your children's book and the very last number five so the very final tip i'm going to give you make sure to watch the whole way through the video because that tip is all about the deal that you make with your illustrator and how it may affect the copyright really important this is a big mistake we see over and over and over with children's authors and it can lead to you know all kinds of legal issues royalty issues so make sure you watch all the way to the end of the video okay so straight off the bat i'm going to give you two bonus tips if you like so the size of the children's illustrated book market in the u.s is around 2 billion and here in the united kingdom it's around 400 million so this is a really big market and of course that is not addressing the global market for children's books at all.
so there is money to be made here if you of course create the correct book okay so tip number one it's really important to hone your vision for your book and the reason this is so important is as you go through the book as you go through the editing process and as you get to the creation of your illustrations you're going to need to be so clear on your vision because the illustrator is going to need as much information as possible in order to create the best illustrations they can for you so you have to be incredibly clear on your characters on the scenes on the style you want and really think about how you want that book to appear when it's sat there on the shelf so make sure to spend a lot of time honing your vision tip number two is to find a gap in the market there are a lot of children's books and we see them you know being printed and created all the time the reason is it is a big market as we explained at the start of the video but also children you know they're small children's books so children get bored they want more books so parents will buy a large quantity of children's books but still it's important to find a gap in the market a good example of this is a book called maxi's super ears so it's all about a young child who has a hearing aid and whilst lots of children have hearing aids they're up until this point wasn't a illustrated children's book that really spoke to that market spoke to parents spoke to children.
who had a hearing aid and that is enough of a differentiator to set you apart in set your part not in a park set you apart in a crowded market and you want to be thinking about other ideas around this so here's you know a crazy idea that in the future we see cryptocurrencies becoming more and more popular so you could write a children's book about cryptocurrencies you know bit of a mad idea but you get the point is is try and come up with something that nobody else has done or very few people have done and that's going to give you a much greater chance of success tip number three to creating a fantastic children's book is to hire partners you trust so whether that is a company that you hire to publish a book for you such as publishing push or you hire individual freelancers to do it for you or you go and work with an agent or publisher make sure you are working with people that you really trust and i'm going to go in depth on this again on that very last point at the end of the video the reason that it's so important is a children's book is a long process because of the creation of the illustrations which takes time it takes a lot more time than a standard textbook or a novel so that's why it's so important to be working with people that you trust.
tip number four is think about the marketing of your children's books so play to your strengths here are you really good on instagram are you potentially good at talking to camera and youtube would suit you more for promoting your book uh are you a true wordsmith and you spend a lot of time on twitter you know so really play to your strengths when you think about marketing the book or you're really good with people and you would be out there contacting people for pr or maybe you already have connections with journalists so really play to your strengths when it comes to marketing as a independent author you can't do all of the marketing channels so pick the one that works well for you and where you have okay so tip number five which is the one i have been talking about the whole way through the article with that final point so the final point is to really know the deal contract or the terms with your illustrator so i've seen this time and time again where a author has worked with an illustrator but they haven't made the terms of the deal clear when it comes to the terms of the deal they're not sure if they own the copyright or if the illustrator owns the copyright are they just licensing the copyright to those images or has the illustrator completely sold the rights in the images and this when the transaction is fairly straightforward so when someone comes and works with publishingpush.com what we do is we actually uh when the illustrators have finished those illustrations they are completely the completely owned by the author so the author owns the copyright in its entirety they can do whatever they like with those images but what we've seen occasionally is where authors have struck a deal with an illustrator so they've said look i'll give you a percentage of royalties uh if you do these illustrations for free or at a discounted rate and the problem there can be who actually owns the copyright to those images and it can even go deeper in terms of who owns the copyright over those specific characters so if an illustrator has created a character and then you've used it in a book that might be okay for just the first version of that book but what about the second or the third or the fourth or if it becomes really popular and there is the potential for a tv show or a movie or for you know comedy toys who owns what what can you do so that's why you have to be really really careful you want to make sure that you 100 own the copyright to those illustrations i hope you found this video useful go out there write your children's book bring it into the world but do so following these five tips.
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