Hi Reader,
Objective feedback isn’t typically what you hear when you ask a friend how to navigate your children’s book business. This is especially true when said friend isn’t part of this literacy promoting, illustration loving, impact making, kid enriching world of being a children's book author.
Ask someone who’s not familiar with this space how they'd suggest you improve upon what you're doing to drive more sales and they’ll give you a general:
“You shouldn't do anything differently, that looks great!”
Or a “You'll figure it out. You always have such creative ideas!”
And the least meaningful of all, “Do whatever you think it best.”
It’s not that they don’t want to help, Reader. It’s just that they don’t know how to provide the insights you need to take the next step.
They Really Mean Well. They Do...
But because they may not have experienced what you're going through, or made any of the mistakes so many authors make with the trial and error that comes with attempting to grow your children’s book business, it may not be fair to expect them to tell you what you need to hear.
The advice is nice, but nice won’t help you advance.
This is exactly why I extend audits to children’s book authors like you, Reader. Whenever I extend these, I like to gather all the facts on the front end, analyze and evaluate what you're dealing with, and use a formal process for figuring out how best to guide you.
"This feels like a smart growth path"
Two weeks ago, I completed an audit for a children’s book author who’s only recently secured the illustrator that will help him bring the story to life that he's so creatively dreamed up. There's so much potential behind what he's working on that I was thrilled to support where he is in the journey right now.
What he shared in his post-audit feedback is that he walked away with 3 things:
- The reminder that my manuscript is strong — that gave me confidence.
- The push to trademark my brand and think of the name as brand IP (intellectual property).
- The idea of targeting bulk buyers in addition to parents — this feels like a smart growth path.
Being able to share my experiences with sales and marketing over the past 20 years, 5 of which have been with me as a children’s books author, has given me a perspective that’s not what you could expect from one of your besties.
Coaching & Consulting You Can Use
What I do, that most of your besties may not, is offer coaching and consultation that will put you on track. If you’ve unintentionally gotten off course while life has been lifing and Q4 has been creepin' on a come up, there's still time to turn things in your favor.
I’ve opened my calendar this month to extend the same kind of objective guidance to 6 more authors. That wasn’t easy to do, especially since this month’s big push for me blocked a lot of time to release a new screen-free activity for my reader community to enjoy at home.
Now, when you schedule your audit, I will address concerns unique to where you are, whether that's pre-published or post-launch. This may mean you’ll be advised to fine-tune your marketing strategies with specific tools, take an alternate approach that better aligns with your goals, or maybe even revisit something that you didn’t get the desired results from because you skipped critical steps in the process.
Either way, recommendations from your audit will be given to you in an easy to digest report telling you the exact set of steps that will resolve your specific issues.
When you sign up, you’ll receive details on how it all works. For now, though, envision being on the winning end of a consultation and leaving equipped with an action plan that you can implement or have my team handle for you instead.
So what will it be…Will you give coaching a try or keep asking people for advice that can’t quite get you where you need to go?
Until then,
Micaela
