3 Ways to Promote Your Children’s Book

Children’s Book Marketing Requires These 3 Steps

Finding the right media platform to tell your story is crucial to how to market a children’s book. Getting the word out to parents, teachers, grandparents, and librarians is vital. In today’s young adult and children’s book space, it’s all about blogs. They have become an influential community of online media essential in children’s and YA book promotion. Blogs can help spread the word to both mass and niche audiences. Therefore it’s more important than ever to follow these three steps to earn blog coverage.

Step 1: Get to Know Children’s and Young Adult Book Bloggers

Take the time to interact with bloggers. The best route is usually through social media. Follow, like, comment on posts from bloggers. You need to cultivate and build relationships so they know who you are, what you’re about, and understand your book’s message. Also, see what trends or themes are important to them. Is there a charity or cause they support? Do they have a special needs child at home and seek books and content about it? The more you know about them and their audiences, the better.

Step 2: Plan Blog Tours

For YA and children’s book promotion, blog tours are a great way to spread the word. Pick a list of 10-20 influential bloggers and offer them a book, a paragraph, or two about it, your photo, and a cover image (optional). Offer them a few dates for a review posting and try and line-up one per day for a few weeks. Sustained coverage will help build buzz. And you should amplify the posts by sharing them on your social media, too.

Step 3: Hold Book Giveaways on Blogs

People like free books. Consider giving the top five to 10 bloggers a few copies in your space so they can hold a giveaway for their audience. While print copies are preferred, you can also do digital versions. You might even add a contest where the winner receives a signed copy or a chance to talk with you about your book.

Another fun thing is to offer a couple of bloggers exclusive content. Maybe a chapter or two that didn’t make the final book? Or a subsequent story that derived from the book? Something just for them; make them feel special. 

The blogosphere had opened up many many creative promotional opportunities for children’s and YA book marketing. For example, you can showcase videos or drawings. You can also record a short video (30 seconds to a minute) for a specific blog. It’s a great way to help bring your children’s book to life.

Although today’s bookselling marketplace is more crowded than ever before, it presents many new and advantageous young adult and children’s book marketing opportunities. If you engage bloggers, have a plan, and proceed strategically, the chances are good for talented authors to succeed.