Picture Book Author Seeks Help

Hi @JulieBallard3 and welcome to the Community.  It is nice to meet you.  Congratulations on the publication of your book.  It sounds wonderful and great that you are highlighting disability in it.  

I would agree with @Woodbine to contact Amazon and sell your book on there.  I totally get how frustrating selling/promoting your books can be as my husband writes books too and has had a couple of children's books published, "Martin and the Pigeon" and a sequel to this.  He also writes adult fiction and poetry, but hasn't managed to get these published.  Unfortunately, my husband faces the same situation as you in that he struggles to sell and promote his books and any promotion for them that he does do is done solely by himself as he hasn't got the best publishers.  If your publishers are good and credible they should be promoting/selling your books via their websites and book shops and they should be keeping you up-top-date with what they are doing.  Sadly this does not happen with my husband's books, hence he has to do this himself.  

Do you have a website or blog for your books or even a section of your publisher's website that can promote your book?  My husband isn't unfortunately allowed to set up his own book website due to having awful publishers, but he does have a section on their website - Austin MacAuley.  If you are able to set up your own website or blog to promote your books then I would suggest doing that.  Even if you have a Facebook page or could set one up specifically for your book then that is a good way to publicise also.  You mention that you have some books, I would suggest giving them out to friends and family who can promote your book to their friends also as word of mouth is very good.  My husband did this also when he first started out with his books 5 years ago.  Ask people to give you a review of your book on Amazon and join other book websites such as Good Reads and put your book on there too where people can see it and review it.

Have you got any flyers for your books?  These should be provided by your publisher, but if not, maybe try to make some up if you can on your computer.  My husband got some from the publisher and handed these out to friends/family/work colleagues, etc and also left them in public libraries, community centres, GP practices, some shops, basically anywhere where the public are going to go and see them and hopefully pick one up.  Also my husband and I used to go around our local area and pop flyers through people's doors, especially if they had children to get the word out about his books too.  You can also post flyers to relevant libraries, community centres further afield too and it is also a good idea to scan in your flyer and save a digital copy to your computer so you can email it to people too as this saves the cost of posting.  You may want to think about sending your flyers to children's charities, nurseries, schools in the area and further afield.

From time-to-time my husband and I go around primary schools and nurseries giving readings to groups of children and they have gone down quite well so far with the children enjoying the sessions. Again your publisher should be contacting nurseries/schools in your area and setting up readings for you, but if they are not doing that then it is best to phone/email schools yourself to set readings up.  You will find the majority of schools/nurseries will jump at the chance of this and will show an interest as it is something different for the children.  If you do get readings then take along some flyers to leave at the school and even some freebies for the children such as sweets or making up some colouring books or activity books for them to complete after you have left, but of course this can be costly so is fine to leave it also.  When you go to readings just read a chapter or two to the children and maybe pick out the most exciting bits of your book that you think the children will really remember and focus on.  For example, my husband's book has a chapter surrounding Martin and the Pigeon visiting the zoo and the children love to hear about all the different animals there and want to ask about them, look at their pictures and tell you their own stories about them.  If you make a child remember a part of your book then chances are that at the end of the day they will tell their parents about it and it may mean a sale of your book.  We go to readings also with printed pictures of the characters in the book and show the pictures to the children as we are reading from the book.  We also have a toy pigeon which I fly as it helps to make the story more real for the children so maybe you could get a toy dinosaur if you were doing readings?  Just a thought.

It can be really frustrating and expensive trying to promote your book and I believe children's fiction is the hardest genre to break into so very well done in getting your book published in the first place as that is an achievement alone.  You could go down the route of putting an advert in a paper or magazine or advertising on tv/radio, but this is obviously quite expensive and doesn't always work as my husband took out a newspaper ad once, but it wasn't very successful and was pricey.

Finally, you could contact book shops yourself or go to see them with your flyers and see if you can get your foot in the door and maybe get some of your books sold there, but again, it is very competitive and you will be told that they will sometimes keep with the more well know authors on their shelves, but don't be disheartened and keep pestering them with flyers.  It took a couple of years before one shop agreed to stock some of my husband's books.  Go to book fairs and get a feel for how they work and then if you like the atmosphere then arrange to have a stall there where you can sell your books, you can also do this with craft fayres or even Christmas Markets as it is getting your name out there, but again, don't expect to earn a fortune as it will take a number of years before you will get there with this.  We go along to a lot of book fairs and just did our first Christmas Market last Christmas which we enjoyed.  Another idea for promotion is YouTube as my husband has made videos and posted them on there about his book, but I believe sometimes the publisher can do this for you and maybe put their videos on their website.

I hope this helps somewhat as I have tried to put as many ideas as I can remember, but will speak to my husband and if he suggests anything else then I will post.  Please don't give up as you have a fantastic book there and I like the fact that it is in rhyme.  My husband's book is in rhyme too.  It makes it a bit different, but it isn't easy trying to get a book out there, but you sound really enthusiastic and want to promote your book well so will be prepared to put in the work, I'm sure.  It will be a long journey, and we are still on it with my husband's book, but you will get there.  Believe me, promoting the book can be fun, especially all the readings!

Good luck in whichever way you decide to promote your book and I look forward to seeing it on the shelves one day.  If you need any other help/advice then just give me a shout.  All the best. 

Libraries. Give copies to a few local ones and offer to do readings.

So set it up online and publicise madly.