Have you thought about self-publishing a children’s book or children’s e-book or app? If so, you can learn a lot from Nicole and Damir Fonovich, the co-creators of Luca Lashes, a line of multilingual children’s e-books and apps, who decided to forego contacting any agents or publishers and, instead, launched the entire series themselves.
Self-Publishing A Children’s Book: A Business Decision
Nicole and Damir didn’t even attempt to find a traditional publisher for their Luca Lashes series. They told us, “We came to the decision to self-publish when we researched what other authors were saying, and learned what the common practices are in the traditional world of publishing. It seemed that in children’s publishing, it’s very uncommon for a publishing company to work with a writer who doesn’t have an agent, or who haven’t published previously. We were also hearing that publishers frequently rely on their authors to do most of their marketing, and we knew that whatever royalties we made—minus the agent’s percentage—wouldn’t add up to the profits we could potentially make by doing it ourselves.It just didn’t seem like the right business decision to wait years to get noticed by a publisher and then run the risk of not being able to make any discernible income. Given the marketplace shift to digital content, we decided to forego contacting any agents or publishers and to do it all ourselves.”
Knowledge of the Children’s Book Market from Teaching and Bookstores
Children’s books coming onto the market are vetted heavily by gatekeepers such as educators and children’s librarians, as well as children’s book editors. However, that didn’t scare the Fonovichs.
Nicole said, “We embarked on the project of publishing Luca Lashes with 17 years of experience in education, in both teaching and administration, which gave us a lot of insight into what we were doing. Damir had had some experience working in bookstores, and so we came to the project with a good knowledge of what was typically in the kids’ section — we knew there was a limited amount of books in different languages available. We’re also committed book-buyers ourselves and wanted our son to inherit the love of books.Anyway, with all the exposure to the kids’ book marketplace, we knew there was a demand for the content of our series, which is specifically designed to help young children turn “fear of firsts” into fun. Things like fear of the first dentist visit are something so many parents encounter with their children, and there was less on the kids’ shelf than you’d think. We’re also fortunate to have a facility with multiple languages and knowledge of a number of global cultures. Knowing that childhood development stages are pretty universal, we figured we could find a niche for our creative content in the digital global marketplace.”
Before bringing their vision to the marketplace, they spent a year with their team writing, editing, and translating nine books and apps. They also beta tested seven of them.
Sales Statistics Give Insights to Distributors and Markets
How to Market Your Books
Marketing can be a challenge for any new business, and self-publishing is no different. Here’s how the Fonovichs have worked to get the word out about their series.
Nicole says, “We’ve done a bit of Facebook promotion and some book PR, but we’ve worked really hard on our online discoverability through by giving our books appropriate metadata (which happens at the back end of the e-book coding) which helps people find them when they’re searching. We’ve attended conferences and seminars to learn as much as possible about things like metadata strategy to increase the likelihood that Luca Lashes will be found when people are searching for our types of books.”
Advice
Finally, here’s a bit of advice from the Fonovichs to aspiring self-publishing authors out there. “If book quality and sales are your goals, self-publishing children’s books is a lot harder and a longer process than you might assume. That said, we’re really pleased with the great consumer reception for Luca Lashes.
We entered the project with a lot of research and passion and hard work and dedication to finding an audience for the series. Years ago, we heard an author say his philosophy was to ‘Do a little good, have a little fun, make a little money.’ We’ve adopted that.“Nicole and Damir Fonovich live in the Chicago area with their son Lucas. The couple created Luca Lashes, a line of multilingual e-books and apps designed to help kids (0-4) turn “fear of firsts” into fun.
