- Would you like to learn how
to self-publish a children's book?
More importantly, would you like to learn
how to actually format your children's book for e-book
and with a free program?
Do I have your attention yet?
Well, make sure you stay tuned for more information.
Self-published authors get a chance
to win a piece of $12,500.
Get more details from our sponsors,
the North Street Book Prize Competition,
later in this video.
Hey, I'm Dale L. Roberts, a bestselling author
as well as a self-publishing advocate
who wants to show you how to publish books that sell.
And today marks the third part in a four-part series
on how to self-publish a children's book
and more specifically, we're gonna focus on formatting
your children's book into an e-book.
If you missed the previous steps,
it's important that you go back because the very first step,
we talked about researching the keywords and the niche,
and then we talked about writing and producing
the content for your children's book.
The very first step that we're gonna be doing
is you're gonna search for Kindle Kids' Book Creator
and it's available from Amazon.
Do not download this software from any other site but Amazon
and it'll probably be on an Amazon help page of some sort.
But you're gonna download that and install it
and it's available for both PC and Mac users.
Now, to format the e-book, what we're gonna do
is we're gonna open up Kindle Kids' Book Creator.
You're gonna click Create a New Kids' Book.
Review the instructions
and after you're done reviewing that,
you're gonna wanna make sure you click Continue.
Now enter all of the relevant metadata.
This includes the title, the author name,
the publisher, now this is optional;
you don't have to have this,
the book's language,
and where to save the files on your computer.
Click Continue once you're all set.
Now, select how readers will view your book.
Will it be landscape or portrait?
Now, if it's in portrait, it's just going to be up and down,
almost like you see over on Instagram stories
or something like that.
With landscape, it's the other way,
almost like when we see a television.
You're gonna have two images or one image for landscape
and you can also choose the first page
on the right or on the left.
Click Continue once you've decided on your layout.
Now comes adding the cover and pages.
Now, full disclosure:
I prefer adding the cover to the actual children's book
before I upload it over to Kindle Kids' Book Creator.
It just makes things a little easier
and a little less difficult.
So, if for some reason in the last steps, the last video,
you didn't have the cover in the very first page,
I'd recommend you backtrack
and then export it to PDF that way with the front cover.
Make sure you save it as a PDF and then title it e-book
because this is for e-book only.
You won't need to do that PDF for the print that way.
In the event you don't have the cover, no worries.
You're gonna go ahead into the very next step.
You can always add it now.
Choose your cover image.
Now start adding pages and all you're gonna have to do
is find your PDF, then click Open.
Before we get to the very next step,
I wanna share with you how you can win up to $5,000
with your self-published children's book.
Winningwriters.com presents the sixth annual
North Street Book Prize Competition
that is available for self-published authors just like you
in six different categories
and one of those categories happens
to be children's picture books.
They're awarding up to $12,500
for all the winners across various categories.
If you'd like to enter for a chance
to win the grand prize of $5,000,
head on over to winningwriters.com/dale.
A pop-up window's gonna come up and it says,
"You have successfully imported your pages."
Now, the very next step you're gonna do
is you can either add pop-up text boxes
or just regular text boxes.
Now, when it comes to pop-up text,
it's kind of like an Easter egg.
So you can actually put something somewhere
and click on it and it'll actually pop up some information.
This only works, obviously, on e-books,
but it's kind of a fun and interesting way to do your stuff.
Or if for some reason the print's too small,
this is one of the nice ways to get it
to where it's more readable for folks.
They can click on that little pop-up and see it.
So we're gonna go ahead and click Add Pop-Up.
Adjust the box.
Click and drag to move it anywhere you wish.
Click View Pop-Up
and enter any relevant information that you want to here.
Now if for some reason you forgot
to add some text in the previous steps
of when you were putting together your content,
you can use this text area.
I would recommend that you do it prior to coming here,
but in the event that you need to do it,
we can always do it this way.
We can click Add Text.
Now again, this option is if you did not
put the text in the original doc.
So it works much the same way.
You can adjust the box.
You can click and drag to move it around.
Now if for some reason you're like,
"Ooh, I don't want the pop-up.
"I don't want this text box,"
all you have to do is right-click it
and you can select Delete Pop-Up
or Delete Text to remove it.
Now if you're all set, you're gonna go ahead and click File.
Select Save for Publishing.
You're gonna save as a mobi file.
This is Kindle-ready.
So mobi is a Kindle readable file
and the nice thing is is when we upload
this later on to be published,
KDP doesn't have to do anything for formatting;
it is already set.
Now, as soon as you hit Save as a mobi file,
it's gonna take a while to process.
In fact, you're gonna probably wanna
go make yourself a burger and a coffee and just relax
because your computer's gonna be doing all the work.
Just let it do its thing.
And now, when it's finished,
you're actually going to be instructed
on how to upload over to KDP but good news:
I'm gonna actually show you in the very next video
inside this four-part series,
How to Self-Publish a Children's Book,
I'm gonna show you how to do it
in roughly about five minutes, less than 10 minutes,
for both print book and e-book.
I'll see you there.