Recently a friend of mine had questions regarding a picture book her friend was considering self-publishing. My friend S. Arthur Yates told me I should post my answers to her questions on my blog. Eureka. A built-in blog post, what more could I ask for? (Besides a publishing contract with a major publishing house, of course.) So here are the questions and my answers:

[My friend would] like to know the steps and how to self-publish.

It varies. There are a lot of ways to self-pub. The route most people seem to be taking is on their own through Kindle, Smashwords, Nook etc. But that is more for novels than it is for picture books. Also, it’s an ebook form, not hard copy. Right now there are picture books in ebook format, but I don’t think it’s caught on just yet. But she can also self-publish through a print on demand company or purchase book packaging options. The downfall is the upfront costs of some of these methods. Have her google print on demand publishers to start with.

She’s wondering if she would get more of a profit if she self-publishes instead of going through an agent.

It’s a crap shoot. It’s tough to find an agent for a picture book, usually you can deal directly with publishing houses. The good part of going this route is that a professional editor helps with the book, making the book more marketable and improves the writing quality of the piece. A book with many poor reviews doesn’t sell, so having a good editor is crucial. If she does her own artwork for the book (or has a friend do it) and the work is too amateur, the publishing house will provide a professional artist for her book. The cut will be 50/50, if I’m not mistaken. (Note: I do not advise anyone to find an artist for their picture book. Publishers have in-house artists. I’ve been told by an editor at a major publishing house that they prefer to have an unknown author work with a well-known artist or a well-known author with an unknown artist…although a well-known artist and well-known author is the biggest win-win for the house.)
On the other side of the coin, it takes two years or longer for a picture book to hit the bookstore shelves so you might think of it as self-publishing can put it out there sooner. Plus, picture books are hard to sell to traditional publishing houses. They have to be top of the game. If she found an agent for the work, she’d receive an advance most likely, but 15% of the sale goes to the agent. HOWEVER traditional publishing houses have a good reputation and she will have a tough time selling a self-pubbed book to a library, and bookstores generally won’t sell them at all (except as ebooks). So potential sales go down the drain.

She’s wondering how long the process takes to self-publish.

This also varies on if you use print on demand, publishing packages, or go the ebook route (which can be as short as a day).

She’d also like to know if it would be possible for her to get the rights to her story.

Again, this depends on what type of self-pubbing she goes with. Have her read her contract over carefully. A literary lawyer is a good idea, too. I believe with ebooks the rights belong to the author, but have her really look into that.

If you had guidelines about how to self-publish, I think it would be good for her so she can start the process and learn about it.

Okay, she should start by picking up books on self-publishing. I like The Indie Author Guide, although some of the information is already outdated what with the ebook boom. Still, it explains all the different ways she can go, plus how to design her cover and market the book.

My advice is three-fold. First, if she can attend a children’s writers conference it would be beneficial. They often have editors and agents to pitch work to, as well as something called “first pa