Naima B. Robert – Learn How to Write a Children’s Book Na’ima B. Robert Mistakes to Avoid #3

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,