Funnels and Flywheels: In-depth Marketing Strategies for Kid Lit authors, with Russell Nohelty
Funnels and Flywheels: In-depth Marketing Strategies for Kid Lit authors, with Russell Nohelty
Plus a picture book submission opportunity!
From the Writing Desk:
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
We made it! I’m so glad you’re here!
December was a blast—a fun, chaotic, exhausting, delightful, wild ride, as the holidays always are. I’m grateful for the fun times I got to have, and feel enthused and raring to go as we start the new year.
I’m someone who has plans all the time, so much so that the ideas keep me up at night, meaning that New Years specific resolutions aren’t especially helpful. But that being said, I definitely do have some ideas of fun new things I want to try in 2024—more experimenting with songs and drawings, getting more serious about script writing and podcasting, writing what I want to write and marketing how I want to market. I’m excited!
And we get to start the year off with a super fun surprise announcement…I have another book coming out this month!!
A monster is loose and Gabby Amelia Penrose, Expert Monster Wrangler (and girl with Turner syndrome), is on the case! Can Gabby get this monster back where it belongs?
Monster Ranch: Paws of Doom is one of two books I’m doing with HarperCollinsUK Big Cat series, highlighting characters with disabilities. The Big Cat books are specifically for classroom use, which is even more exciting! This will publish in the UK on January 8th but I beleive will be releasing in the US later this year (stay tuned!). This will be my first published chapter book, which is the coolest thing ever, and I’m so grateful to HarperCollinsUK for letting me do this! Definitely an area I plan to explore a lot more this year.
And thank you all so, so much for the kind words and response to the cover reveal of my next middle grade, Monster Tree, coming out in September. It’s already up for preorder!
Funnels and Flywheels: In-depth Marketing Strategies for Kid Lit Authors, with
I’m a little giddy and a lot honored that we have the amazing
with us today to talk about marketing strategies for kid lit authors! Russell Nohelty (www.russellnohelty.com) is a USA Today bestselling fantasy author who has written dozens of novels and graphic novels including The Godsverse Chronicles, The Obsidian Spindle Saga, and Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter. He is the publisher of Wannabe Press, co-host of the Kickstart Your Book Sales podcast, cofounder of the Writer MBA training academy, and cofounder of The Future of Publishing Mastermind. He also co-created the Author Ecosystem archetype system to help authors thrive. You can take the quiz to find your perfect ecosystem at www.authorecosystem.com or find most of his writing on his Substack at authorstack.substack.com. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and dogs.Earlier this year, as I was getting serious about this newsletter, I discovered Russell’s work on Substack and just dipping my toes into his wisdom taught me SO much. I took the Author Ecosystem quiz linked above and it felt like such a relief—a lens of looking at marketing that didn’t feel like it was going to exhaust me or eat my soul. (I’m a Forest ecosystem…let me know what you are in comments!)
Russell comes from a very different background than mine—adult instead of kid lit, indie pub instead of traditional—and I always think its incredibly valuable to check my assumptions and the given wisdom circulating in my small niche community against the expertise of someone adjascent to but outside that small niche. I think it can help us see the forest through the trees. And Russell comes from a direct sales and marketing background, an area where I know I need as much help as I can get. There’s a lot of good info here, so check it out and see what you feel is beneficial and adaptable for you!
Thank you so much for joining us,
!
1. In your excellent post about setting up sales environments, you talk about funnels and flywheels. In our subsequent conversation, you mentioned that for middle-grade authors, the funnels would aim toward school and library visits, and the flywheels are livestreams and other ways of nurturing young readers. Can you get more specific? What would that look like, exactly, in terms of what's on our website, socials, newsletters, etc? (Check out Russell’s post to get a more in depth sense of funnels and flywheels).
First, the problem with selling books to anyone under 18 is that you can’t really market directly with them. I mean you can, but it’s weird. Even when you do, they don’t usually control the purse strings. The younger you go, the less likely they are to have money to pay for things themselves.
The complaint I always hear is “How can I sell my books when I have to engage with the parents and the child to make sure they’re on the same page?”
I think there’s an answer, though it’s not really an easy one. Admittedly, this is not wholly my methodology. It has been constructed through conversations with my great friends Sheri Fink and Derek Taylor Kent from The Whimsical World, and then strengthened by talking to other kid’s book authors over the years.
The key lies in creating a business around school and library visits. This is where most of my kid-lit friends, both traditionally published and self-published authors, make the bulk of their money.
More than any other type of publishing, except non-fiction, kid-lit authors get the most value out of conventions and school visits, because this is where they can create an experience for their readers and get their parents excited while leveraging the authority of the school or library. Authors don’t really want to hear this, but you are selling an experience. For kid-lit authors, you are selling yourself as the experience that can entertain children and give adults peace of mind to go do other things.
One of the biggest problems parents have revolves around knowing what to show their children, so having trusted sources like teachers and librarians sign off on you is a huge load off their minds. If you sell children or parents, you’re selling the wrong market. You need to focus on where parents and children intersect; schools, libraries, churches, flea markets, etc.
How this works in practice is that you work with the school or library to schedule a visit, and then a week or two before the visit you get them to send an order form home with your books listed so that you can bring them to school and do a signing in conjunction with your talk.
Some of my friends make upwards of 100 or more school visits a year using this strategy and they clean up. The great thing is that once you have inroads to a school, you can continue visiting them every year if you want and interact with a whole new group of students. The school or library becomes lead gen for your business. You set it up once and should hopefully be able to get a new crop of students every year without doing that much except providing awesome books and giving a good experience for families to enjoy.
In order to make this successful, you need to be publicly available so that libraries and schools can find you and get a sense that you’re not a creep or a weirdo. They need to know that you’ll deliver something great without embarrassing them.
Therefore, you should be very, very available online through readings, drawing challenges, and anything you can think of that centers your books and shows parents the value of your books and how to schedule a visit.
Additionally, you should have a specific email sequence just for educators to show them what you offer and how to book a visit. The more you can attract this type of customer, the more you’ll be able to showcase your skills and talk about the benefits of what you can offer them.
Long story short, most children’s book and middle grade authors are missing out on the biggest relationships they can leverage, which is that of educators who are always looking for new experiences for their children. Once you sell a parent a book, they already own that book but once you sell a school on you being a positive presence in their student’s lives, you have new fans forever.
If you can focus on those contacts, even a little bit, and you make your work freely available to parents, then you’ll be able to get them to order a lot of books for your visits, and it will all start to compound.
2. Where do you see wasted effort in kid lit marketing? In other words, what are the things children's authors think they should be doing that aren't actually effective?
In general, I think kid-lit marketing is too focused on getting kids to buy instead of getting kids excited so their parents will buy. It’s not actually very hard to get parents to buy if their kid is excited. Assuming they have money to spend on books, parents are usually more than happy to buy educational things their children want if it will just shut them up. Honestly, we under value how much parents want peace and quiet. If you can help educate children and give them a moment’s peace, parents will be your best friend. If you can then leverage that into doing some sort of event or buying your books, even better. Word of mouth really is king with kid-lit, and if you can develop a systemic process to get that working for you, then you can do really well.
3. And vice versa, where do you see money being left on the table, particularly for children's authors? In your post about how the publishing world is changing, you mention blue ocean strategy, or going where there's less competition--where is that for middle grade and kid lit?
I don’t think hardly anyone is leveraging the educational market in the way I talked about above. Teachers always reach out to me about doing school visits. It’s not a big part of my business since I don’t do a ton of kid-lit and with my chronic illnesses it’s hard to travel places, but every single one I’ve done has been valuable. There are probably 20-30 schools and libraries in your area you could start visiting next year, along with all sorts of events you could exhibit at where children are the focus.
Yes, it’s exhausting, but you don’t have to make money doing this work. Heck, you don’t have to do it at all. Like, it’s okay if you don’t want to do any of this stuff because it’s hard. If you do want to be read more widely though, this is the best opportunity out there right now, especially in a post-pandemic time when kids are disengaged in a way they haven’t been in a long time.
4. With things like Barnes and Noble tightening their middle grade shelves and Goodreads removing kid lit from their Reader Choice Awards, there's a bit of despondency in the middle grade author world right now. Are you able to give us any good news, or hopeful hints about unique and fresh kid lit marketing opportunities you're seeing on the horizon of our new, post-pandemic publishing world?
What I know about the trad published market is that it’s actually very easy to move the needle and get your publisher excited. No, not at launch, but in the months after launch every publisher expects sales to flatline. If you can influence sales in even a modest way, publishers will take notice.
If they see a 10% increase in book sales month over month, then they will start putting more funds into your marketing for the next book if not this one. If you tell them you want to do school visits, they will likely work with you, maybe even giving you books to sell. If you take the reins, publishers love that and will support you if they can. School visits are something they understand and are set up to support.
I had a friend who would drive around the country and sign books at every bookstore he could find. When you sign a book, it moves from the back shelf to the “signed book” shelf in the front of the store. By doing that his publisher started seeing an increase in sales, and they put more money into his books, and it became a virtuous cycle. Bookstores are getting more wary about this because you generally can’t return a signed book, which is another reason it works out in your benefit. They work harder to sell that book because they are stuck with it.
The good news is that even though I’ve been talking about this for years now, nobody is doing it. If you exert a little effort, you can start to build real momentum rather easily compared to any other industry.
The opportunity is, has, and always will be that people don’t want to do the work, so if you exert force in certain strategic places, you will get further.
Thank you so much
for your expertise! If this type of in depth marketing analysis is your thing, today is the final day for Direct Sales Mastery for Authors kickstarter!You can get a 30-day free trial of The Author Stack at this link and unlock $60 in bonuses just for trying it out along with access to over 15 novels, 3 non-fiction books, and his entire archive.
What I’m Reading: You know that weird liminal space between middle grade and young adult? Where characters are 14 or 15? And the tone is delightful and funny and spot on? The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde is one of those rare books that actually lives in that space. I wish there were more! I’m glad I discovered it, because it almost gives Terry Pratchet vibes, and we always need more of those in this world.
What I’m Watching: While I’ve recommended several K dramas here before, I am now watching my first C drama and it’s delightful! This one’s on Netflix and is visually one of the coolest shows I’ve ever seen. Plus it has sunshine + grumpy, which will get me every time, AND a Samwise-esque loyal sidekick, which is maybe the only thing I like I as much as sunshine + grump. Definitely worth checking out!
Thankful ABCs: I wrote this silly lil thing in November but I think it’s good vibes to start out our new years too!
What I’m Drawing: Scribbles and blobs and textures. That is what I am drawing, and having a grand time.
And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
Writing Opportunity: Cardinal Rule Press is accepting unsolicited picture book manuscripts through the month of January! This is definitely an opportunity worth taking advantage of.
Teacher or Librarian? I would love to do a free virtual Q&A with your class or book group! If you’re interested in scheduling a visit you can reach out to me via my website. Let me know how I can support you! I’ve also got free classroom resources to accompany each book. You guys are rock stars!
Thanks for coming along everyone! I’d be honored if you forwarded this to anyone you thought might find it useful. Onward!
-Sarah
WELL. This is amazing. Thank you, Sarah! Happy New Year and thanks for all of the very helpful advice and links. Also: congrats on the new book(s) and I love your drawing AND singing! So talented.
This is the typical advice from people outside children’s lit - do school and library visits. But that doesn’t scale up. There are only so many school days. It requires your physical presence. And these days, it’s harder and harder to get paid to do this.
It’s exhausting. It IS one way to sell children’s books, but not one I recommend.
There are many other ways to market to kids, parents, teachers, and other educators besides a physical visit to a school.