How to Write and Self-Publish Your First Children's Book

Perhaps you have faced this dilemma: You have a long-running dream or want to accomplish something big, but you don’t know the steps to follow or which option among many to take. Often, it’s been a dream to reach this accomplishment for a long time. Then, you decide to jump in and figure it out. You go for it!

Now meet Emma Berry, who has wanted to publish a children’s book for a long time. Growing up she enjoyed writing, especially poetry, and was an avid reader. She admired book authors and how they positively impacted their readers’ lives even into adulthood. Once she became a mother, Emma realized that writing children’s books would also give her two sons an opportunity to provide input into her writing.

Emma Berry with her first self-published children's book.

There’s usually a moment that provides the last push to finally move forward with the dream. For Emma, it was starting a new job as a daytime bartender in a small boutique hotel. There would be slow times during her workday, so she brought her laptop with her and started working a bit on stories and researching how she could get a book published.

And just this month, Emma is excited that her first children’s book, Little Ricky Wants to Know … Where Did Her Egg Go?, is now available to buy on Amazon.

So, let’s dive further into Emma’s “story” about releasing her first children’s book out on the market.

Finding Inspiration for and Fine-tuning the Story

Coming up with a book’s topic and storyline is an obvious first step, and that task might be an easy one or more of a struggle. Before she decided to write about a little brown hen that her then 3-year-old son named Little Ricky, Emma admits that she wrote another story first about their cat, Mr. Will. But that story ran into a roadblock when it came to capturing the cat’s special personality in illustrations (more on that step later).

Photo 1: Emma's young son holds LIttle Ricky, the hen he named, while sitting next to his grandfather, Emma's father. / Photo 2: Emma holds LIttle Ricky, who loved to hang out with the family inside the house. / Photo 3: Up close and personal with Little Ricky.

Emma decided to focus on a new idea for a children’s book. Fortunately, Emma says “a bunch of animals” were on her brain, which is not unusual since she and her husband own a small homestead farm in California with chickens, pigs, goats, and ducks. They have also shared their family home, now in Louisiana, with many pets over the years. After a couple weeks of Little Ricky showing up in her thoughts, the first line of the book came to her, and later that night she jotted down those words along with about three quarters of the story.

As she continued to tweak the storyline, including making the sentences rhyme, Emma asked for feedback from friends. One friend, who had worked in marketing for years, gave her great advice about how to improve the story’s morale. “In my brain, I knew that, too, but I had been too immersed in it all,” Emma says.

As a mom, she also knew that kids liked books that were funny, so she worked on making the story more humorous.

Deciding Between Traditional Publishing or Self-Publishing

As an unpublished writer, Emma had to figure out whether to try appealing to publishers to buy, produce, and promote her book or to try self-publishing it. So back to her laptop she went to conduct more research. In the end, she chose the self-publishing route to keep the process simpler and more within her control. As a bonus, there were self-publishing options that didn’t require any out-of-pocket costs.

After comparing several self-publishing options, Emma went with Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) because it wasn’t complicated and provided an automatic copyright. There is also the option to choose a free ISBN (International Standard Book Number) as a unique lookup identifier. (Note: Emma says she will apply for a copyright from the Library of Congress.) She also doesn’t have to worry about keeping an inventory of her book and shipping out book orders.

Setting Up the Book Pages and Creating Illustrations

To keep costs low, Emma figured out how she could format the book herself rather than hire someone to do it. She was already familiar with the Canva app, so she used a children’s book template as a starting point to choose the book size, add the words on each page, and create the illustrations. Canva is free to use with cost options to add more functionality to your account.

Creating the illustrations was the biggest challenge. Emma doesn’t have any graphic artist experience, but she spent time using the ChatGPT Image Creator to find the right depiction of Little Ricky. The process was a bit finicky to create the initial illustration – right feel for the character of the hen, the color of her eyes, etc. – and then it was necessary to repeat the same description “cartoon illustration of little gray hen” but with new descriptors such as “cartoon illustration of little gray hen sitting on an egg in a nest.” Once Emma had the illustrations from the ChatGPT Image Creator, she still had to tweak some details once she uploaded them to Canva, such as change the hen’s eyes to yellow.

“I feel grateful that I was able to generate the images that I did,” Emma says. “It’s not super consistent, so I’m grateful that the book came together with me being so new to using AI.”

Emma’s advice: There can be a limit to how many requests you enter into ChatGPT Image Creator to fine tune the graphics. If you put in too many requests, you may get something rather scary. You can try the requests again the next day. Sometimes the right image will “magically” appear.

Emma says she could have considered hiring a freelance illustrator. Besides avoiding the expense, she wanted to learn how to do most of the work herself, especially for her first book.

Selling the Book on Amazon

As already noted, Emma decided to sell her Little Ricky book on Amazon KDP. After joining the service, she uploaded a pdf version of her book and set up pricing for the book.

Emma’s advice: Be sure you understand how the percentage of sales you earn is calculated, so you can set an appropriate retail price for the book. Although Emma followed the formula from Amazon KDP, she’s not earning as much per copy of the book as she expected.

Now that the book is available for purchase, Emma is excited to read feedback from customers. She has also given copies of the book to a few friends with kids. Most of the people who knew she was creating the Little Ricky book are excited that Emma had finally finished it. Others were surprised that she had written a children’s book.

What’s Next in Her Book-Writing Future?

Emma already has other children’s books in progress. There’s the first story she wrote about their pet cat, Mr. Will, but creating the illustrations to match his moody, grumpy personality were proving difficult. Emma is considering having her younger son draw Mr. Will because he is a big fan of the Pete the Cat book series.

Family dog Annie is the lead character in one of Emma's next children's books.

This week Emma finished writing a third story about their deaf and blind dog, Annie. The story’s message is that it’s OK to be different. Emma says that Annie had a good nose, so that sense of smell allowed her to “maneuver on the daily.”

And, she says, there are more animals from the homestead farm or their household that will be the inspiration for future books.

Emma also wants to keep improving her own skills with graphics, such as taking Photoshop classes to have access to more capabilities than in Canva. But, she advises, try what is easier (for you) first, what you already own, or what you can afford.

“I don’t know why I just up and decided to do it,” she explains. “I’m glad Little Ricky is under my belt. I know I can figure out how to do more.”

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