Overview

MK studied the market for her kids books, because marketing MG is different than most. Her books are STEM based and enjoys using her background to write her books.

We discuss all the things that go into making a successful middle grade book. It pays to study the market and imitate what works.

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Transcript

[00:00:46] Stephen: All right. So let's talk some author stuff, cause we've got some similar interests in that. So before we delve into our marketing for middle-grade. What are some things that you learned writing your first [00:01:00] book that you're doing different with your newest, I'm

[00:01:03] MK: much more aware of what the market is buying.

So what kids are actually reading. So I looked at, so I've got like tier one, authors, them trying to model and see what makes them successful. What is, what do they have in their books that I don't have, or don't have enough of in mind. And I look at Rick reorder is hugely popular with all of his series.

Brian Johnson is another indie author who wrote the pro project. And that book consistently ranks up there top engineering books for kids. So what I've learned is. Okay. What did these books have? What did the covers look like? What do my, what feed to have more of, and I've concluded that mysteries and spy [00:02:00] content, those Chaunra sell to middle grade kids, mystery, adventure, and spy content.

So I've got to up the ante in some of that suspense and adventure and conflict, and I've finally figured out. What my covers need to look like, and I'm really thrilled with the illustrator hat. Now that's doing my covers.

[00:02:23] Stephen: Okay. So you mentioned covers a couple of times. What did you do for the first book compared to now?

So

[00:02:33] MK: my coach said, okay, for children's middle grade needs to have a cartoony cover. And I, in fact, I loved my first cover. I found a artists. The cover design got done in a week. The book took another year to, to edit and finish. And before I was ready to release it to the world, because I wanted it to live up to the cover.

But feedback I got later was [00:03:00] I look at that current. I think it's going to be a children's picture book. So when I started learning about here ones and really understanding different genres and what the covers look. I realized that like the middle grade mystery or the Nancy drew or the Steven Case Smith, they are drum covers, but they are not cartoony.

Just understanding that subtlety is okay. It's not a composite picture of a person, although I've seen some books that really, I can't tell if their artwork or their photograph, but. And one of my redesign attempts to was not fun and pleasant and went through a company and you're working through a middleman, who's farming it out to an artist.

And if you've done hardcover and paperback and ebook with [00:04:00] hardcover, you've got all this wrap around. You've got almost three quarters of an inch that you need to wrap around the. For the bindings. So you're, you gotta have extra margin on your artwork and communicating that to the art. So when she finally fixed it for the hardcover, he fixed it for the paperback.

So now I had all that extra margin in the paperback cover. So I just, and there was other stuff going on with my family and health and stuff at the time that I wasn't as. Checking all the files I thought, okay,