Top 4 Things to Know to Publish a Book Written by Your Child

Children are great at imagination. This makes them creative, and storytelling might come naturally to them. If your child’s storytelling capability is too good that makes you want to publish their writing there are certain steps you need to follow. Though it might seem complicated, following the right steps the whole publishing process a lot easier.

You can share your child’s masterpiece by publishing it traditionally or using the self-publishing method. It is one of the biggest decisions to make when publishing any writing. To find out what else is important to know while publishing a book of your kid, go through the article and make the dream come true.

Publication Time

Several factors are related to the book publishing of your child that determines the publication time. Many publishing platforms can make the self-publishing process easier by bringing all of the services together on a single platform. This will save you a lot of time and hassle. All you have to do is follow a step-by-step guide to self-publishing your kid’s book and become familiar with the process. Consider the following factors before you do so:

1. The Age of the Child: The older a child gets the more he sees around him and his creativity level becomes more intense. So, while an eight-year-old child pens his story in a week or two, a teenager’s book project might take six months to a year. The more his writing delves deeper the more time it may take to complete the book.
2. The Ability to Stay on Task: Self-discipline is very important when it comes to completing projects. Your child must stay focused, which largely determines the amount of time it takes to complete the process.
3.  Time Availability of the Child: Though your child might have great intentions as well as truly want to publish the story, the limitation of time due to various activities can prolong the writing timeline. If your kid is busy with lessons, sports, and schoolwork, it can place limits on his time available to write.
4. The Genre, Length, and Complexity of the Story: The project itself can affect the time needed for the book’s completion. If your kid has written a short story that has no illustrations, it will probably take less time to complete than a graphic novel that is based on illustrations as it takes much more time in creating the drawings than typing a story.

Costing

You must consider the cost of the whole process of getting the book published. There are a few sectors to think about such as editing, cover designing, formatting, proofreading, etc. While your child can edit the first draft or two, if you want to make it a polished product, you must hire an editor. It will help identify flaws in the story arc, character, flow, continuity, development, pace, or plot.

To make the cover a better one, you can hire a professional cover designer as well. If you hire someone to format and proofread the writing, the produced book might become a perfect one too. But, all these will cost you some extra money. So, if you are going to publish your kid’s writing, make sure to consider all these matters and decide accordingly.

Copyright Issues

When publishing the book, pay attention to the smallest details to get a better result. Copyright might not seem mandatory, but it can add an extra layer of legal protection against infringement. Just going through a simple copyright application process with a modest fee can do the work.

Helping Your Child to Make It Better

You can help your kid to be a better writer and produce a better-published book by maintaining the following steps:

1. Creating an Outline: To start writing a book, first creating an outline is necessary. It is a valuable tool to carry on the whole writing process perfectly. So, make sure your child starts his book project by creating an outline.
2. Writing the Story: As a parent, you can offer some requisite suggestions to develop the scenes. Help them in selecting descriptive or effective word choices, to inject compelling dialogue between the described characters to bring the story to life. So, give some tips to make it easier for them.
3. Revising the Book: You can never call the first draft a finished product. Make your child know that it is only the starting point. To turn it into a better one, it might need some fine-tuning. Provide your kid with a printout copy of the manuscript so that he can perform a manual edit. Once he has cleaned it up along with fixing the major problems using the Word document, you can send the manuscript to the editor.
4. Having it Copy edited: When the editing phase is ongoing, any problems with the characters, pacing, plot, organization, spelling, or grammar needs to be discussed, identified, and corrected.
5. Designing the Book Cover: While the book manuscript of your kid is being edited, make sure to have a cover designer work the book cover to create an amazing one for the project to get the best result.
6. Fixing the Formatting: To prepare the book for publication, To help your kid to make his writing look good, you may hire a typesetter or formatter. They will help create files using a better template. Help your child to publish a print edition as well as an eBook by asking the formatter to use two different files.
7. Proofreading: Have the files proofread before the book is uploaded or published. It is the final, and one of the most important checkpoints. Any pesky typos or flaws in the formatting are identified in this step.
8. Bringing It to Publication: The dream of your child is about to come true as his book is ready to be published. Upload the book on an online bookseller platform to make it available to purchase.

Besides going ahead with other creative stuff like arts and crafts, if you notice your child is becoming interested in storytelling and writing, make sure to help your child get encouraged as much as possible. It will help them to build a better future in creativity.

Final Thoughts

The above-mentioned steps are necessary to make your kid’s writing popular. Ask for professional help in getting your kid’s book ready if the publishing standards do not seem familiar to you. First, decide the publication method and make sure to go through the whole process accordingly and help your child’s dream come true.

Best of luck!