Naima B. Robert – Learn How to Write a Children’s Book Na’ima B. Robert Mistakes to Avoid #3
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the different routes to publishing and how publishers can get their children's stories into the world as published books. traditional publishers may offer an advance on royalties to help sell their books, but hybrid publishing is a newer form where a publisher pays for the cost of the book to cover costs and publish the book themselves. The speakers advise the audience to be careful with their book publishing and not feel discouraged by the lack of marketing from other publishers. The speaker also suggests that independent bookmakers may not have enough time to prepare for a hybrid book publishing.
AI: Summary ©
Welcome, guys. It's your sister, Naima b Robert
here, back with another video on how to
write for children.
We've covered a lot in this series, mashallah.
And, hopefully, you've written a story, you've had
a chance to,
get clear on kind of who it's for
and where you're aiming it and all of
that kind of thing.
Now a lot of sisters
finish one of my courses or get to
the end of 1 of my program or
simply get in touch and say, what do
I do next?
I've got my story. I've had it edited.
Where do I go now?
So in this video I'm going to be
sharing with you the different routes to
publishing.
If you're familiar
with this area, then great. If you're not,
then this may be
it might be a huge revelation to you,
mashallah. So, sit tight.
There are
about
3 different ways that you can get your
children's story
into the world as a published book. So
let's start with the one that most people
know about, which is the traditional publisher.
I'm gonna divide the traditional publishers between,
the established
traditional publishers
and the newer independent publishers.
The reason I'm dividing them is because they
work differently,
And that is the same whether they are
mainstream,
so sort of the big non Muslim publishers,
or the Muslim publishers.
They work differently too, but we'll get into
that later. For now, what you need to
know is that
how a publisher works is that
they accept your manuscript
because they like it
and because they believe it will sell.
This is very, very important.
A publisher may say no to your manuscript
not because they don't like it, not because
it's not a good story,
but because they are not certain
that they can sell it. Okay?
So at the end of the day, a
publisher is a business. Publishing is a business
and it's very costly.
So what's happening in a traditional publishing contract
is that a publisher is
accepting your manuscript
and after deliberations
and research, they decide,
we think we can sell this.
So what they do is they give you
a contract, you give them the right to
publish it and they now start to invest
in your book.
So they will hire the editors,
they will hire the copy editors,
they will hire the illustrators and oversee the
illustration process, the design process, the formatting,
the printing,
the promotion, the publicity,
the sales.
The publisher is going to invest and put
money and people and resources
behind your book.
Okay.
Now, for many publishers,
when they exchange the contracts, they may pay
you an advance.
That advance
is money upfront
on the royalty
that they will pay you on each book
sold. I know it sounds a bit choppy,
but
just bear with me. Basically, if a publisher
is going to publish and print a 1,000
of your books, they're going to offer you
a royalty,
a percentage of each book
sold. 3%,
5%,
typically not much more than that. But let's
play with those numbers for now just so
you have more realistic expectations.
So the royalty that they would pay you,
if it was 5%
on a 1,000 books,
they will if they offer you an advance,
they will take a percentage of that calculated
royalty and give it to you upfront.
This is a way of saying thank you,
thank you for writing the book. Sometimes they
pay you so you can finish writing the
book. Whatever the case may be, they'll give
you some money in advance.
That is an advance on royalties.
It's not in addition to royalties. It's on
those royalties.
So they will only pay you royalties
once you've earned out,
meaning if they paid you a £1,000,
however many books would need to have been
sold for them to pay you a royalty
of that £1,000,
you'll have to wait for those books to
be sold before you start to earn regular
royalty checks.
That's traditional publishers.
Some people may say, hey, what do you
mean? I wrote this whole book and I
only get 3%, I only get 5%. That's
a rip off.
Again,
publishers,
when they accept to take your book, they
are putting resources and money and time behind
your book. That's the reason why you don't
get the lion's share. They take the lion's
share usually to pay off expenses but also
for the profits because that's the business model.
That's how traditional publishers work in general.
That's one of the reasons why it is
that much harder to get into traditional publishing
because your book has to be sellable.
Again, just because your book has not been
accepted doesn't mean it's not a good book.
It just means that that particular publisher does
not believe that they can sell enough copies
to make the investment worthwhile.
So it's it's worth knowing.
Many of the biggest publishers
do require an agent for you to be
able to even send anything in.
The reason for that is
an agent is a gatekeeper.
Because if an agent accepts your manuscript,
that means that someone from the industry, someone
who has knowledge, has said this is good.
I think I can sell this. And that's
why publishers prefer to get agented submissions because
it's already been vetted, if you understand what
I mean. Okay. Now, not all traditional publishers
require an agent.
So don't be put off by the biggest
ones and they say, you know, no no
unsolicited
manuscripts, a thing everyone hates to see on
a website.
No unsolicited manuscript. We only accept agented submissions.
That's for the biggest publishers.
But if you go down, you'll see that
there are smaller publishers,
we call them indies or independent publishers, who
are also operating on a more traditional model,
but they don't have a policy of agents
only, mainly because they're not as popular. They
probably don't sell as many books as the
big publishers, but they are able to read
more stuff. They're able to be open to
more voices, more submissions, etcetera.
So if you are determined to be traditionally
published,
please don't be discouraged by the fact that
the big guns
ask for agents, etcetera. You know, really widen
your pool.
Look beyond the big ones, the famous ones
that everyone knows about, and research other publishers
that maybe even fit your book better than
those big guys. So that's traditional.
We go to hybrids next. Okay. Hybrid publishing
is a newer form of publishing where a
publisher
gets the author to invest
in the publishing process. So with the traditional,
they're the ones who invest.
In a hybrid, they get the author to
pay some of the, to cover some of
the costs, whether it's to pay for the
illustrations
or to, just just to pay them to
publish the book, basically. Right? Now hybrids,
I I have I have, you know, I
have seen it work well, and then I've
seen it work terribly.
The main thing to understand is what the
hybrid publisher is promising you for your money.
A lot of people think that if they
pay this money, they're going to make tons
of sales, they're gonna make all the money
back, and it's gonna be amazing because
they've got a publisher behind it. But if
the hybrid publisher has not offered you marketing,
if they haven't offered you a sales team,
if they
are not
if they haven't offered you a sales team,
if they are not gonna be pushing your
book, then please be aware that these sales
will still be your responsibility.
So it's not because you paid them £2,000,
you're gonna all of a sudden make 4,000.
It doesn't work like that. What you're paying
the hybrid publisher to do is what you
would be doing if you self published, which,
of course, would take more time and effort
on your part. You're paying someone to do
the same thing that you would do if
you self published most of the time.
So be very careful when you see different
contracts and different offers, especially when you put
into Google
publishing deal or publishing children's books. You'll see
a lot of ads come up where they
say we're accepting submissions,
send in your submission.
Those are typically hybrid publishers, so expect that
they are going to sell you a service.
Enough said on that.
The third way that many of our authors
choose to publish is via self publishing.
Self publishing is when you take on
the what the publisher would do and, you
also take the majority of whatever you make
as well. So you're not you're not sharing
the money with anyone else. You're doing it
all yourself. You're you're doing it all yourself,
means you're paying all the money, but then
when you make any money, you're also taking
most of it yourself.
If you self publish,
you are responsible for ensuring that the book
is edited. You're ensure you're responsible for ensuring
the illustrations and, sort guiding that process of
getting it designed, getting it formatted, and marketing
it to the world.
For some people, this is very daunting.
Other people take it on as a challenge.
We've seen it work very, very well, masha'Allah.
But there are things that you need to
have in place if you're going to do
it successfully.
Not enough time to go into that in
this video. Maybe we'll address it in a
different, in a different video. But for now,
at least you know what your options
are. Everything is figureoutable at the end of
the day, depending on your budget, depending on
what kind story you've written, depending on the
audience that you're aiming for. So just know
that if you have a good story, there
are ways to get it out into the
world. And don't ever feel discouraged because a
certain avenue doesn't look like it will work
for you because there are others that you
can explore. I've only touched on the main
three. There are many other ways that you
can get your story out into the world.
So take heart. And if you want to
be inspired, masha'Allah,
go to my website, naimarobert.com/services
and check out all the other amazing sisters
that have published their children's books. Some of
them with traditional publishers, some of them with
Muslim publishers,