So you want to write a children’s book…? The ultimate Quick-Start tutorial.

When I started out writing children’s books, I was full of ideas, but I had no idea what to actually DO. 

Should I write the story?  Find an artist?  How was it all supposed to come together into an actual book?  Like I said, I had no idea.

You might be right where I was a few years ago, wondering how to get started.

I’ve put this quick-start guide together to help YOU skip over the mistakes I made.  I hope it’ll help give you a smoother launch into this incredible world of writing for children.

1. How can you write (or finish) your book?

You can’t do much until you have a finished book saved on your hard drive (or, if you’re the old-fashioned type, written down on paper).  Here are the basics, the least you need to know to sit down and get writing.

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Write better, sell more books. Under a buck.

Want to write better?  Want to sell more books?  All for under a buck?

Of course you do.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing children’s books, blogs, or full-length adult nonfiction (or anything else).  The basics of writing and publishing in a digital age are exactly the same.

Lots of self-proclaimed “experts” will tell you how you can cash in on some kind of digital gold rush, but they’re all lying to you.  Their tips are gimmicky and most won’t hold true for more than a few months at a time.

Just in time for NaNoWriMo, two bestselling writers and one exceptionally prolific writing team have put together the Indie Author Power Pack.  It’s coming out November 3rd, but if you buy it now, it’s 88 cents.  That’s 88 cents for three books. 

This is easily the best 88 cents you will EVER spend on your writing career.

I literally stumbled across this today on Amazon, so I have no clue how long the presale deal’s going to last.

My current favourite, Write, Publish, Repeat (which I bought in audiobook, but have never sat down and read), alone must be over 100,000; it’s a monster (check out my review of Write Publish Repeat, plus my interview with its author, writer dad Sean Platt).  And it costs $5 all by itself. 

Again, the bundle is 88 cents. 

Get the deal here.

NOTE:  US-based viewers may see a price of 99 cents.  I wrote and published this post before I thought to check how it showed up here.  Here’s a screenshot of how the site comes through at my end:

(Which is funny, because usually we pay MORE outside the U.S.)

Let’s take a look at the math.

• Johnny B. Truant and Sean Platt’s Write. Publish. Repeat.  The No-luck guide to self-publishing success is regularly $4.99.
• Joanna Penn’s How To Market A Book is regularly $5.99. 
• David Gaughran’s Let’s Get Digital is regularly $4.99. 

That’s at least $15 worth of ebooks, and these aren’t some second-run thing put out by fly-by-nights who don’t know what they’re doing.  These are the superstars of self-publishing, who have been at it for years and want to share their ideas with you..

I just bought the bundle, and I can’t wait until it comes out.  You should, too, even if you already own one (or two) of the books.  Here’s your last chance for this post…

Get the deal here.

If you do get it, or if any of these books have helped YOU, let me know in the Comments.

Weekly writing tips and freebies (no ads, no spam, ever)

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Dear Amazon, what’s up with my Kindle prices?

How much thought do you put into pricing your books?

If you’re like me, it’s a lot.  Which is why it finally drove me around the bend that Amazon has been changing all my prices, without even asking nicely.

When you’re pricing a book, you probably pick a nice, clean number with a 99 on the end, a suffix that is invisible to consumers.  If a book is $8.74 (unless it’s clearly marked down, like from $9.99), it’ll stand out and look weird.

Know how I know?  Because for a long time, I’ve noticed that Amazon prices for my KDP ebooks look terrible.  They totally jump off the page.  Oh, they’re close to the numbers I’ve picked… but not exactly.  And that has slowly been driving me mad.

Just to pick a few titles at random, the prices were $5.11, $1.12, $5.14, $1.13.  Those are terrible numbers, numbers that jump off the page and make a buyer reluctant to buy.  That’s very frustrating, especially because I KNEW I’d priced them at $4.99, 99 cents, $4.99 and 99 cents. 

Why bother planning your prices if they’re just going to change, am I right? 

What’s going on here?

I eventually found out why this happens.  If you’re outside the United States, Amazon can tell from your browser’s IP address, and they adjust the price you see accordingly.  Without telling me, Amazon has been detecting my computer’s location and adjusting the prices accordingly.

At least there’s some GOOD news:  buyers inside the U.S. will most likely see the right prices for your books, namely, the ones you’ve so carefully chosen in KDP’s dashboard.

To test this, I ran my author page through two “anonymizers,” sites that hide your current IP address so nobody can tell where you’re surfing from.  One was in Europe and one was in the U.S. 

Here’s what the pricing looks like from each location:

 

There are all those terrible prices!  But look what happens if you’re seeing the same page from the U.S.:

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