Writing and Publishing Bestselling Children's Books With Jay Boyer

Welcome to the Real Fast Results podcast!  Today you’re in for
a real treat.  The expert that will be sharing a bit of his
knowledge with us in this edition of the broadcast is Jay Boyer,
who is an incredible expert in publishing and a thought leader in
his industry.  One of his major accomplishments is his ability
to produce bestsellers in an incredible fashion.  Not only
that, but Jay has taught thousands of people how to write, publish,
and market children’s books so that they would be able to create
bestselling children’s books of their very own. Jay is going
to teach people how to write and publish a children’s book in the
next 7 days, publish it to Amazon and drive it all the way to
becoming a #1 bestseller.   Why Writing Children's Books
Excites People I’m constantly amazed at how this really seems to
strike a chord with people.


This seems to be a bucket list item for lots of
people. Something that they’ve always wanted to do.
Write a book, a children’s book, and get it published. Get it
out there, share it with the world, and share it with their
grand-kids, share it with their own children.
 Honestly, this is something that I didn’t know, until I
did it myself and started showing students how to do this same
thing.


Writing children's books continues to be a fantastic
source of passive and recurring
income. For me, personally, I did mid
six-figures just with my children’s book royalties on Amazon
last year. I’m on target to make even more sales this
year.  Actually, I have to qualify that, mid six-figures
total sales, and mid five-figures in royalties.

5 Step Overview on How to Write and Publish Children's
Books Research - The first step is the exact same
process that I did with my son Joe when we published our first
children’s book 3 or 4 years ago.  We headed over to Amazon,
and we did about 3 minutes worth of research inside of the Kindle
marketplace.  We saw what was selling, and we took some ideas
from certain books and combined them and added our own secret
sauce.  That’s the formula of the bestselling book.
Illustrations -  We filled that book with
amazing illustrations. I’m no illustrator and my son’s no
illustrator. Fill it up with amazing illustrations that are going
to make kids go, “Wow,” and purchase your books over, and over
again. Promote - Promote it on Amazon. 
You can do that for free. Repeat - Repeat the
process over and over again.  I have currently almost a dozen
books on my number one children’s book series. That’s what
makes it a sustainable business. How to keep your books
showing up in the bestsellers list. Step 1 - Research The
first step is research.  This is where lots of my
students go wrong, or don’t do this as completely as they
should.  They have an idea in their brain. Maybe it’s
a story that they’ve already thought about writing, and whether or
not it’s qualified as something that’s already selling well in
Amazon Kindle, is not something that crosses their mind.  But
it’s absolutely essential if you want to stand the best possible
chance of actually publishing this and having it go to a number
one bestseller. So, what I do is I head over to Amazon. 
I’m specifically in the children’s book marketplace, and I start
browsing through the categories.  When I wrote my first book
with Joe, I said, “Joe, what kind of book do you want to write?”
He said, “Papa, I just want it to be funny.”  He wanted a
book that he could share with his friends, share a laugh with me,
and read on the edge of his bed.  This was when he was young
enough to want to read books on the edge of his bed. I said, “So,
let’s go look at funny books on Kindle.”  We headed over to
the Kindle marketplace, we clicked into the humor niche. Because
I’ve been doing this for a certain amount of time, I had a
marketer’s eyeball, which is what I recommend that you do when
you’re looking at these books inside of Kindle.  Look
at them, not necessarily as a consumer, but what is trending, what
sort of characters show up over and over again, what
topics. If you have an animal for your main character,
what are the most popular animal characters?  There’s dogs,
and cats, and horses, and unicorns, and all that stuff.  This
is what you want to do.  You head over there and take
some notes and get some ideas for your own
book. We’re not talking about ripping off a
bestselling book.  We’re talking about just getting some ideas
and then adding your own “secret sauce." Adding your own amazing
illustrations, adding what you know, and love, and have to offer
the world in combination with items that are already trending.
Part of step one is to qualify what’s already trending
and selling like gangbusters over in the Kindle
marketplace.  Whatever it is, and whatever category
appeals to you, there’s a #1 bestseller in that category right now.
 G over and find it. Try connecting some other books and
seeing what commonalities you find in these different titles that
are already selling well over in Kindle.  So that’s step one.
 Do some basic research, and you can do that in 3-5 minutes. I
guarantee you’ll have a lot of fun.  If you’ve got a child, do
it with them.  You may end up buying a bunch of books and
reading them at a later date, but in any case, that’s step
one.  Do that research. It’s important that you
understand that you’re using this to springboard off of other
people’s success.  You are trying to get an idea of
what’s selling so that you know your book will sell, and you’re not
just guessing at it.  You’re looking at characters, and
topics, and demographics. I publish to the reluctant reader niche,
which is 8-10 or 11-year-old boys, not exclusively though, of
course.  Those sell very well. You’re going to find those
books inside that big bestseller list, before you even drill down
into the smaller categories.  That’s how you get some sense of
how well, and chunk up the demographics, and try to think of the
age group that that particular book is appealing to. What
are people doing with their book covers? Diary of a Wimpy
Kid, for example. I modeled my book cover off of what Jeff
Kinney was already doing with his Diary of a Wimpy Kid book cover.
They’re really easy to do.  It’s a really easy format, and you
can do that for any type of children’s book out there.  Again,
you don’t copy it verbatim, obviously.  In the case of
images, you just take note of the elements that you see in one
successful book and use those same elements in your own.
By the way, you’re not going to be the only one over there doing
that either.  There are lots of people doing the exact same
thing, heading over to Kindle and approaching it with a marketer’s
eyeball, and saying, “Holy cow, that’s selling really well. 
This is interesting.  Maybe I can expand upon that idea. 
Look at this book cover design.  Wow.  Okay.  Well,
I see a dozen book cover designs that look almost the exact
same.”  Obviously, people know what they’re doing when they
are publishing bestsellers over there, and these are some of the
strategies that they’re using as well. Step 2 - Illustrations The
second step is to populate your book with amazing illustrations
that kids are going to love, that their parents are going to love,
that’s going to get them to purchase book after book after book in
your series. That’s the endgame.  You want to publish
as many possible books as you can.  You want to
create a book series.  Someone buys book one, then they’re
going to buy book two. They’re going to buy the 3rd one, the 6th
one, the 8th one, and it’s probably all going to happen in the span
of a Saturday afternoon.  You know, that’s just how this
works.  Kids love these books, and they eat them up
like Halloween Candy. How do you get illustrations? That
seems to be a stumbling block for lots of my students, and for me
as well.  I mean I am no artist.  Believe me, I couldn’t
design my way out of a wet paper bag.  I hope I never have
to.  I’m terrible, and if it were up to me, it would be the
worst-looking children’s book ever.  Thankfully, I don’t have
to be the illustrator of these books, nor my son or whoever else
you’re writing these books with.  You can get
world-class children’s book illustrations by amazingly talented
designers over at Fiverr.com. Yes, there are lots of
different outsourcing sites out there. However, I prefer to use
Fiverr to find the illustrators of all my children’s books.
Basically, you get a sample every time you go shopping over there
on Fiverr.  There’s a thumbnail image of whatever they wanted
to put up from there to represent their gig (that’s what they're
called over there on Fiverr).  You can tell at a glance, “Hey,
is this going to be high-quality enough?  Is this going to be
funny enough?  Is this going to appeal to appeal to, you know,
3 or 4-year-old girls who love princess books?  Or, is this
going to get into maybe the Captain Underpants genre?" You can tell
at a glance, heading over to Fiverr, whether these are going to be
appropriate.  You can check their ratings.  Of course,
lots of people leave ratings, and that’s golden information. 
You’re going to know if these contractors deliver on time, whether
they’re nice to work with, whether the quality is actually there,
etc.  All of these factors are the reasons why I go to Fiverr
to find all of my children’s book illustrators. You can get an
entire book illustrated for under $100 and have all of the rights
moving forward, to use them in any which way that you want. Rights
to Illustrations A common question I get is "How do I know I have
the rights to the illustrations." Actually, Fiverr’s terms
of service state that you have rights to all output that you’re
purchasing, all the content that you’re buying, whatever gigs that
the contractors are creating for you. Fiverr’s terms of
service say that you have rights to all of that, unless it’s stated
otherwise in the gig description.  And, you’ll see that. 
It’ll say, “If you want to use this for an eBook, it’s going to
cost another $5,” etc. Most illustrators don’t do that. 
Either they don’t know that they can or should be doing that, or
maybe they’re just like, “Okay. This is yours and I don’t
care.”  Unless it’s stated in that gig description, unless
there are any intends, or any other language stating otherwise, you
own those illustrations and the rights to those illustrations. You
can do whatever you want with them, in terms of commercial rights
moving forward. It might be a good idea to double check with
whoever you decide on, and make sure that they know this is “work
for hire”.  These are sort of magical legal words in this
game, and if you use those words in an agreement, then it shows
that whatever work is done for you is something that you own. 
Then, you also have the terms of service in addition to that to
back you up.  However, in most cases this isn’t an
issue.  Honestly, it’s never been an issue for me at all with
any of the illustrators that I use. I actually don’t tell
Fiverr.  I pull them off of Fiverr, and let them know, “Hey,
if we’re going to be doing some work on several books…” yeah, it
absolutely makes sense to send them a little contract.  Send
it via email, and all they need to do is reply and say, “Yes, I
understand…” or “I agree”.  That’s… contractually, that’s all
that you need.  If you’re doing any sort of work out of
Fiverr, I recommend it, and it’s also a good idea if you’re doing
work inside of Fiverr. Step 3 - Publish The next step is to publish
the darn thing.  Usually, my students want to know,
“So, how does this come together in manuscript
format?”  The answer to that is it’s
super-easy.  I just use MS Word.  You can use any sort of
word-processing document that you want.  Add the images that
you got from your Fiverr illustrator as JPG images inside. It's
just a running Word document. Separate it by chapters.
 Chapter one--just put some page breaks in between the
chapters.  Keep your chapter short. Even if you’re writing for
an older audience, even if you are writing for an older child. All
of my books are for 8-10-year-old boys.  Keep those chapters
short. I used to write them myself, and now I just outsource all of
the writing.  I tell my writers, “Hey, anywhere between 100
and 200 words per chapter, followed by an illustration.”  So,
I end up having maybe a dozen and a half short, bite-sized mini
chapters, followed by an illustration, and another 150 words,
followed by an illustration. Usually they end up being anywhere
between 3,000 to 5,000 words total, for my demographic, which is,
again, older kids.  But, keep those chapters
short.  Keep them bite-sized.  It keeps the pages
turning, and they are a lot easier to write that way as
well. That’s it.  Simply format the book, submit it
to Kindle.  You can do that in 30 minutes, even if you’ve
never done it before, and you are in business.  One secret
weapon that I do recommend is to put a free offer in your book.
Publishing Tip - Put a Free Offer in Your Book This is what
I call my secret weapon. That free offer leads to an
audiobook. Here’s what I do. On the second or third page, right
before the table of contents, I say, “Hey, if you want an audio
version of this book, click this link.”  The cool
thing about a Kindle reading device is that you can actually click
on a live link and it will open up in a browser
anywhere. People can leave you their name and address
in exchange for a 20 to 25-minute audiobook.  An audiobook can
simply comprise of you reading the book.  You can use a simple
word-processing program like Audacity.  All you need to do is
render it into an MP3, and you can save it to DropBox. You just
deliver a Dropbox link to your customers for the free
audiobook version and: that adds a ton of value to your book, it
sets you apart from everyone else who are publishing the same types
of books out there, and you are creating your number one asset in
the world, which is an email list of subscribers. People who know
you, who love you, who buy every book and can’t wait for you to
publish the next one.  And, when you do end up publishing the
next book, all you need to do is send a single email to your list.
I have, at this point, 5,000 or 6,000 subscribers. These are people
who have bought the book and wanted the audiobook as well.  I
just send a single email out, and I get hundreds of people buying
my brand new book, which pushes it to a number one bestseller.
That’s the secret sauce, and that’s what I recommend
everybody do if they’re publishing to children’s books, or any sort
of book to the Kindle marketplace. Just try to find
something of value that’s relevant to the book itself, that people
would be willing to give you their name and email address for. You
can start building your own list in any niche under the sun in the
same way. If you’re not publishing for the children’s
book niche, if you’re publishing to a non-fiction, how-to niche,
that’s how you build your tribe so you can sell to them.
 Once they are on your email list you can develop a
relationship with them. You can sell them other cool stuff and
content. You can jump on a Google Hangout. You can put other offers
in front of them.  This is how they ascend up your value
ladder.  They come in at a free offer, and maybe they buy a
$27 information product from you after that, or a $97, or maybe a
webinar product, or who knows?  A live event, or some
high-ticket coaching.  That’s how it works, and that’s the
power of building a list of any kind. That’s why I consider it to
be my number one asset. You’ve got your #1 bestselling book
with your free offer (don't forget the secret sauce).  Take a
little seal or sticker that says "# 1 Bestselling" and put it on
your book cover image. Moving forward, that’s tremendous social
proof. That’s one more reason for people to buy your book, as
opposed to someone else’s book, by putting a #1 bestselling book
sticker on the book cover.  It's a graphic that you can find
anywhere. Maybe other people are browsing on Amazon, and they see
all of these covers, but they see your cover with this bestselling
book sticker on the front of it, and they’re like, “Oh, it says
it’s bestselling.  It must be good.” Step 4 - Repeat That’s
the strategy. Then, after that you’ve got some social proof, you’ve
got previous customers, you’ve got people on your subscriber base,
and you’re generating recurring passive income through the sales of
that same book.  It would make a lot of sense to
publish a similar book to the very same book series.
 So, you have not just one book for people to read, but you
can be linking out and cross-promoting these books in the back of
your book like I do.  I put all of them in the back of my
books. Every time I publish a book I add another link to that list
of books in the back. So, when people finish that book, I say
“Hey, do you like this crazy, funny kids book?  I have seven
or eight more that you can purchase.” They can click on those links
and actually head on over to the Amazon marketplace purchase the
next one right off the bat.  That's how you turn this from a
hobby into a business.  That’s why I have all of these
cross-promoting books out there in the marketplace.  They’re
all #1 bestsellers, and I have raving fans. I have people that
write me letters. Kids write me letters, parents write me letters,
teachers write me letters because, for whatever reason, they enjoy
these books. If kids don’t even want to read any other books, these
are books that they want to read because they’re fun, they’re kind
of gross-out, they’re madcap, they have crazy illustrations,
etc.  In any case, I get emails all of the
time from people responding to that free offer. They say,
“I loved your book.  This is fantastic.  When are you
going to write the next one?”  And then, it’s just like,
“Well, I’ve got the next one coming out in the next three
weeks.  I’ll send you a link.”  That’s it.  Just
rinse and repeat. Step 5 - How to Keep Your Children's Books
Showing Up on the Bestsellers List Of course I have seasonal books.
I have the one that I promote in December, when I pull Santa Clause
into the story.  I have one that I start promoting when
football season ends, and it has to do with my main character
joining the football team.  I have one that I promote during
Halloween, in October, because it’s about some spooky, scary
monsters. So, that’s another, sort of, overlay of the very same
strategy, and what I like to do. I suppose this is step 5.
 How do you continue to have your books
showing up over and over again on the bestsellers
list?  I have several books that have
been #1 best sellers in their categories for years and years and
years. Here’s one reason why.  A great way to actually get
brand new visitors, brand new book buyers to these books, outside
of the Amazon marketplace, is to go to a website called
BookBub.com.  For, I think it’s $120, you can have them send
out an email to all of their children’s book subscribers.  I
think, at this point, there’s over half a million emails going out
every time I purchase a promotion like this, for $120. They send an
email out to over half a million children’s book buyers that are
looking for daily deals. Sometimes I generate 800 or 900 new sales
in a single day for these books. Of course, that increases the
visibility of not just that book, but all of the other books, by
virtue of the fact that I’m promoting them all together,
cross-promoting all of them inside of the book.  So, every
time I do that, I get a spike of not just those book sales in the
Amazon marketplace, I get not only more visibility, and I’m showing
up on the bestseller list. Last time I did this, I ended up as
the #2 bestselling book of all children’s books inside of
Kindle.  It’s very amazing, and of course, I see a spike of
all of my other books as a result of that. Learn More from Jay
I have a training program, and you can learn more about it
at RealFastResults.com/CBF.  The “CBF” stands for
Children’s Book Formula, which is a very successful program that
has helped many people get published and even become
bestsellers.  This is a course that I had created on the heels
of my #1 children’s book bestseller.  I had people contacting
me like, “Jay, can you please just show me how to… I want to write
a #1 best selling children’s book.”  I had no idea that this
was such a bucket list item, but it’s absolutely the case. I have
had thousands of students come through this program, most of which
have never published a children’s book before. Some of which have
gone on to be even more successful than I have been.  I have
one student who last year was in the KDP newsletter.  That’s
the Kindle Direct Publishing newsletter.  They send it out to
all Kindle publishers.  She was featured as one of the
bestselling authors in the entire marketplace. I was totally blown
away when she sent me that.  She said, “It’s all because of
you, and it’s all because of the course.  This would never
have been available to me otherwise.”  I just feel super
grateful, if that’s the case, that I have been able to make a
difference in other people’s lives with this training.  It
continues to be, for that and other reasons, my best selling
program that I have ever created and launched. The best way to get
in touch with me is to go to my JJ Fast Webinars Facebook
page.  There you can get information about CBF and other
training programs that I offer. Daniel's Real Fast Results Tips:
Children's Books [youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk8BjcDRAEU?rel=0&showinfo=0&w=560&h=315] 
Resources Jay's Children's Book Formula Training (Special
Affiliate Pricing Deal) Book
Illustrations - Fiverr.com
Free Audio Editor and Recorder - Audacity
Online File Storage
- https://www.dropbox.com/
BookBub.com