If you’re a new author planning on creating and self-publishing a children’s book, then don’t make these common first-time mistakes!
Creating a children’s book can be a lot of fun and highly rewarding, but don’t make these common children’s book mistakes if you want to avoid a lot of wasted time and money. Over the past decade, as I’ve helped authors self-publish books and published over a dozen of my own, I’ve learned how to avoid common mistakes in children’s book publishing.
Unfortunately, unlike many other genres, children’s books require considerable thought when it comes to both text and illustrations. Specifically, allowing space for text on or with illustrations. There are also specific steps you need to take in the correct order to ensure your beautiful illustrations don’t end up having to be altered later on.
Some of the most common children’s book mistakes we see when someone inquires about children’s book print and ebook formatting include:
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- Illustrations are low-quality.
- AI illustrations are generic and low-quality.
- Incorrectly sized illustrations.
- Illustrations that aren’t planned to account for text.
- Overly wordy and complicated text.
- The book has been designed in a trim size not supported by the desired self-publishing platform.
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Be sure to check out our Children’s Book Publishing Package, along with our Complete Guide to Children’s Book Design, where we discuss everything you need to know about creating a children’s book for the first time.
Common Children’s Book Mistakes | Choosing A Trim Size
Before you even start designing illustrations and planning your illustrations, you need to choose a trim size, and this can’t be any old trim size.
If you are looking for children’s print and ebook formatting and layout, and have landscape illustrations, you’ll be limited to a landscape trim size. Same if your illustrations are square. Premium children’s book illustrations aren’t cheap. If you get low-quality illustrations that are incorrectly sized, you’ll end up back at square one again.
If you’re planning on self-publishing and want print-on-demand (POD) options for your kids’ book, then Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) or IngramSpark Publishing are your two best choices. However, each platform offers different trim size options, and the self-publishing platform you choose will impact your choices later, both for print and ebook formatting.
Most Popular Children’s Book Trim Sizes Available on Amazon KDP:
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- 5” x 8.5” (21.59 x 21.59 cm) – Premium Colour, 24-page Minimum, Square.
- 0” x 10” x (17.78 x 25.4 cm) – Premium Colour, 24-Page Minimum, Portrait.
- 5” x 11” (21.59 x 27.94 cm) – Premium Colour, 24-Page Minimum, Portrait.
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Most Popular Children’s Book Trim Sizes Available on IngramSpark Publishing:
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- 5” x 8.5” (21.59 x 21.59 cm) – Premium Colour and Ultra Premium, 24-page Minimum, Square.
- 0” x 10” x (17.78 x 25.4 cm) – Premium Colour and Ultra Premium, 24-Page Minimum, Portrait.
- 5” x 11” (21.59 x 27.94 cm) – Premium Colour and Ultra Premium, 24-Page Minimum, Portrait.
- 11” x 8.5” (21.60 x 29.00 cm) – Ultra Premium, 24-page Minimum, Landscape.
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As you can see from the trim sizes above, if you plan on distributing widely, you need to choose a children’s book trim size that is available on both platforms. However, if you want a landscape children’s book, your only option is to self-publish on IngramSpark Publishing and have them distribute to Amazon, rather than self-publishing directly on Amazon KDP.
Once you select a trim size, you’ll then know the dimensions to use for your illustrations.
Illustration Size, Bleeds, and Print Quality
Once you know the trim size, it’s time to start designing the illustration. Ensure your illustrator has experience creating illustrations for children’s books. If you’re working with a new illustrator who’s never created illustrations for a children’s book before, take your time and ensure they fully understand the requirements.
Illustrations for children’s books need to be a minimum of 300 dpi for print purposes, and that is at the desired trim size, which should include a 0.125” bleed around the outside edges of the illustrations. The bleed extends past the edge of the page and accounts for any cutting that may occur during printing.
You need to decide whether you’re doing full-spread illustrations (illustrations which cover both the left and right side of the page, as if you’re looking at an open book), or single-page illustrations which are either a left or right illustration.
If you want to create a mix of single-page and full-spread illustrations, remember to keep the proportions even. You can’t have a single-page illustration between two full-spread illustrations unless you plan on having a page of text too.
Along with a bleed, you need to ensure that your illustrator leaves space for text and doesn’t place any essential elements close to the edges of your page (margins) or close to the centre of the page (gutter), where it will be hard to read.
Finally, ensure that you receive high-quality source files or PSDs, along with JPEGs. This will make it easier later on during formatting and also ensure you have the source files for your records.
Coordinating Text and Illustrations | Leaving Space for Text Placement
A widespread mistake I often see new children’s book authors make is failing to consider the amount of text they have and how it will work with their illustrations. We’ll frequently have new authors show up with illustrations completed, text completed, but no space for all their text in the book or on their illustrations.
You need to leave enough space on the illustrations for the text if you’re planning full-spread illustrations. The illustration’s background must be suitable for text. If you use single-page illustrations with a text page on the opposite page, you have more room for text.
When planning your illustrations, provide your illustrator with the text so they can clearly see the available space.
Show Don’t Tell | Remember Your Audience
You’re creating a children’s book filled with beautiful illustrations, so let the illustrations do most of the work. You don’t need to describe in detail everything that’s happening in the illustrations. Let children read what they need to read, but allow your illustrations to carry some of the load.
This is where a professional children’s book editor can be a huge advantage to new children’s book authors. Not only can they help you reduce your word count, focusing, tightening, and sharpening your manuscript, but they can also ensure your writing is appropriate for your target age range.
Don’t write a novel. Most children’s books are between 24 and 32 pages and have a total word count of between 1,000 and 2,000 words. You could struggle to fit all your words on your page if you have over 2,000 words. You will also end up with a much larger page count. This will impact your printing and shipping costs, which in turn affect your RRP and the royalty you receive per book sold.
All children’s books are considered full colour if they have colour illustrations. This makes children’s books the most expensive to print. Each page in the book counts as a full-colour page. It doesn’t matter whether it’s text or an illustration. The more pages your kid’s book has, the more expensive it will be to print.
Ebooks and Distribution Platforms
Illustrated children’s picture books are formatted as fixed-format ebooks. Fiction and non-fiction books are formatted as reflowable ebooks. IngramSpark Publishing accepts fixed-format ePub files only for children’s ebooks. However, Amazon KDP accepts both fixed-format ePubs and Amazon KPF ebooks. Please note that the fixed-format ePub files don’t display very well when distributed via Amazon KDP. At Author Services Australia, we recommend using two formats, one specific to each platform.
Common Children’s Book Mistakes | Summary
Choose a trim size first before proceeding. It is time-consuming to modify illustrations later. It’ll also cost more money and potentially ruin illustrations.
Plan your illustrations and ensure your illustrator understands bleeds, gutters, and margins, leaving sufficient space for your text. Also, verify that all illustrations are the correct size and have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi for printing purposes. Also, get PSDs or source files of your final illustrations, not just JPEGs.
Coordinate text with illustrations. This ensures your illustrator leaves sufficient space on your cover and in your illustrations for text and essential elements. It will also avoid placement elements within gutters, margins, or bleeds.
Show, don’t tell. Don’t over-explain what your illustrations are already showing.
Research which platforms you plan on self-publishing on. Check what trim sizes they offer. Look at what formats you will require for print and ebook.
If you have any questions about the children’s book self-publishing or creation process, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
At Author Services Australia, we support Australian and New Zealand self-published authors and writers with a full range of affordable self-publishing services, including ghostwriting, copyediting, developmental editing, proofreading, ebook and paperback formatting, book cover design, children’s book illustrations, graphic design services, Amazon KDP Keyword and Category Research, animated book cover reveal videos, beta reading, and social media and marketing.
If you’re currently considering self-publishing, and you’re not sure which is the best self-publishing platform for you, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), IngramSpark Publishing, or others, check out The Best Self-Publishing Platforms to Publish Your Book! We cover the pros and cons of Australia’s most popular self-publishing platforms.
