What are the differences between publishing a trade book and a children’s illustrated picture book?

Modern digital printing technology has made it possible for an author to write a novel and print just a few copies of a pretty professional looking book for well under a thousand dollars. For another couple dollars this same author can have their book made available to 20,000 plus wholesale and retail outlets including Amazon and BN.com and for all practical purposes… they are “published”. This is certainly not to downplay those of you who have spent hundreds of hours perfecting your manuscript and hundreds if not thousands of dollars on editing and design and plan on truly self-publishing. Technology has just made it a easy for the overwhelming majority of the “minimally committed” writers to get into their names in print. This reality is the primary reason the virtual gaggle of Internet based POD publishers is so popular. For very little investment of time or resources, a writer can get something that looks like a book and feels like a book regardless of literary value. This is not the same with an illustrated children’s book

To many, an illustrated children’s book looks easy. They think that all you need to do is write a few hundred words, pick up a few clip art illustrations, put it all together in word or PowerPoint and call it an illustrated children’s book. This might be Ok for a little fun on a rainy Sunday but it’s not going to work in the real world. Neither is the product currently being produced by a few of the online “technology companies” masquerading as publishers. With the exception of printing a few test copies or personal copies digital printing will not work. It’s too expensive, often $10 or more for a 32 page plus cover paperback book.

Writing is a love, publishing is a business. The market place sets the retail price of virtually everything. Books are no exception. The marketplace sets the retail price of a paperback illustrated color children’s book at about $2.00 to $5.00. To think you are going to sell your book at a price higher than that is a fantasy. The public could care less what you paid for your book. You ask, how can publishers like Scholastic and Modern sell their books at such a low price? They buy quantity, that’s how. As a printing salesperson I used to sell millions of paperback color illustrated books to publishers. Remember the old saying, “the first book is real expensive and they are pretty cheap after that”. The large publishers are buying 25,000 to 50,000 books at a time. The 32 page book that you pay $10 for in digital quantities and not much lower than $3 or $4 in offset quantities of a few thousand costs the large publisher less than 50 cents per book in the large quantities they print. How can you compete with that? You can’t. Don’t waste your money unless your marketing plan lays out a way you that you can sell at least 5,000 to 10,000 books.

Hardcover on the other hand is an area where the small publisher can compete with the large publishers. Large publishers do not print the huge quantities they do with paperback. They print fewer copies, therefore they pay a higher unit cost for their printing which results in a higher retail price. You as a small publisher can print a few thousand hardcover books and have a unit cost that will allow you to compete in the same marketplace. Note I said a few thousand books, not a few hundred books. That brings us back to the first line which points out the increased financial commitment to an Illustrated children’s book. 2000 copies of a jacketed 32 page hardcover book is going to cost you $7,000-$8,000. Unless you are better off than most, this represents a sizable investment. On top of this you are going to spend another $3000- $10,000, or more on editing and illustrations. This investment is before you have sold your first book. Also, keep in mind, that the couple of dollars you as a trade book author spend to get your title listed in the Ingram wholesale/retail database of 20,000+ stores, it not available to you as an illustrated children’s book publisher. You need to get your book placed with wholesalers and retailers the old fashioned way… through a distributor.

In short, if you want to publish an illustrated children’s book you need to go into it with your eyes open. Education and preparation are the key ingredients of success. To help get you started down the right path, my partner Dana and I have just recently released the 2^nd edition of our popular book, Publishing Basics for Children’s Books. In the words of Kathy O’Hehir, the Editorial Vice President of Modern Publishing, a New York based children’s book publisher, “In this new edition of Publishing Basics for Children’s Books you have once again managed to offer self-publishers and small press owners an insightful, informative guide to the entire process of publishing a children’s book – ingeniously styled and made easy to answer all questions about editorial, art, design and manufacturing. I love that you show paper selection choices as well” If you would email me your name and address, I would be happy to send you a copy of this new book. It is the only book of its kind and will answer many of the questions that you will need the answers to succeed. I look forward to hearing form you.

For a free copy of Publishing Basics for Children’s Books please contact me at ron@publishingbasics.com

Ron Pramschufer

Ron Pramschufer has been in or around the printing and publishing industry for over 35 years. His experience, including working in the pressroom, bindery, production office and estimating department helped give him a firm foundation to build on when he entered sales and management. He was partners in a small press publishing company in Annapolis, MD in the late seventies and co-invented and marketed two controversial political board games which sold over 100,000 copies in the early eighties. Moving from his home state of Maryland to New York City after his game experience, Ron sold printing services to, primarily, small to mid-sized book publishers for over a decade before founding RJ Communications with an old friend. Ron recognized the potential of the Internet very early as a powerful communications tool. In 1997 he started one of the first printer related websites, www.rjcom.com, which caters to the professional print buyer. This evolved into www.BooksJustBooks.com and more recently www.selfpublishing.com which target the print buying novice, primarily self-publishers. All three sites are still operating successfully and SelfPublishing.com was named as one of Writers Digest’s, 101 Best websites for writers for 2006. Educating the novice print buyer has been a top priority from day one. To help address this issue, Ron co-authored the popular title Publishing Basics- a Guide for the Small Press and Independent Self-Publisher, now in its Third Edition, as well as Publishing Basics for Children’s Books, in its Second Edition. He is the organizer of the monthly Publishing Basics Newsletter where he writes a sometimes controversial Ask Ron column which addresses various aspects of the publishing process. On the same note, he started the Publishing Basics Radio PodCast in 2005 and serves as the show’s host. A wide variety of topics are covered including a very popular series titled, The Truth Behind POD Publishing, where he conducts interviews with a select group of industry insiders. Since its inception, RJ Communications has helped thousands of customers print over 105 million books. Ron is married and has three children. His daughter, Stephanie, teaches second grade and recently self-published her first children’s book in the Oliver the Clownfish series. Matthew, his oldest son, owns a website design business and Erik, the youngest, is enjoying high school.

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