When my agent and I were searching for an appropriate home for my first picture book, Volcano Dreams, we knew that it had to be a publisher that specialized in nature books. A niche publisher for a niche book that is about the geology and ecology of Yellowstone National Park.
I was delighted when my agent found Web of Life Children’s Books, not only for the publisher’s dedication to exactly what I had in mind, but also her understanding of how to reach the local and regional Yellowstone marketplace. And the book, illustrated beautifully by Marlo Garnsworthy, sells extremely well in that marketplace and has had a long successful shelf life.
Madeleine Dunphy is that publisher, and she agreed to answer a few questions for me, in particular to address what is the Achilles heel for self-published authors: distribution.
Welcome to Madeleine!
Please tell us a bit about yourself and Web of Life Children’s Books.
I started out as a children’s book author who wrote books about the environment, with the main goal of showing kids how everything is interconnected here on planet Earth. I had six books published by Hyperion Books for Children and one book published by Millbrook Press.
I understand you started your publishing house in response to your own self-publishing journey. Can you tell us how that happened?
Although the books I wrote sold well, Hyperion and Millbrook let the books go out of print (OOP) within a couple of years. The books I write (and publish) are timeless, so I decided to get the rights back and republish the books myself. I did this by forming my own company, Web of Life Children’s Books. After republishing my own books, I was then able to publish new titles by both myself and other authors.
This is exactly why I’m traveling down the same road, getting out of print books back in print. I love that you grew a terrific business out of the frustration of watching your books go OOP.
You said that a key to a successful self-publishing journey is distribution. Can you elaborate?
Book distributors have accounts with bookstores, libraries, museums, aquariums, national parks and anywhere else you would want to sell your books. They also promote your books, bill vendors, collect payment, warehouse the books, ship the books, do the accounting and countless other jobs necessary for selling and promoting books. I wouldn’t have had the bandwidth to do all of this myself.
Do you have any other advice for those of us moving into this new author position of “bookseller”?
If you are unable to get a distributor, you can always sell ebook editions of your book through Amazon and other online vendors. Print on demand would also work well for non-illustrated titles. The cost and quality of print on demand (POD) for illustrated titles is still not as good as traditional printing.
Thank you, Madeleine!
What About the Rest of Us?
Obviously, we can’t all be entrepreneurs like Madeleine and open a publishing house. So what’s the path for you and me?
On my own self-publishing journey, I’ve developed two paths for getting my books into the hands of readers. One path is exactly what Madeliene said above – ebook editions, for which I’m using Draft2Digital as they have an ebook reach beyond one retailer (Amazon).
The second path for me is to create physical soft- and hard-cover editions of the books through IngramSpark, which advertises its connection as a distributor. I’m still in the early stages of this second path, so I can’t yet tell whether this is the right distributor, but I’m hopeful. Self-publishing has come such a long way that there is room for a company to act in the best interests of authors, as well as their own.
But also, Madeleine has a great point about picture or illustrated books – the illustration quality for POD is not so great. Enter Darcy Pattison, who has done great work on this topic, so please check out her detailed blog post and other information here on Substack if you write picture books and wish to self-publish.
And by the way, if you have a nature-based picture book, I loved working with Madeleine, both in terms of the quality of my book and her support.
As always, keep writing!