Marketing Lessons Children’s Book Authors Can Learn from the 2024 Olympic Games

Laurel Decher

France is making its final preparations for the Olympic Games next month. Stadiums have been erected around famous sites in Paris, including the Eiffel Tower and the Palace of Versailles, so that historic shots of winning athletes will have cultural icons as backdrops. Capitalizing on French cultural sites will probably drive the Parisians mad, but it’s a magical example of both using what you have and giving a project an elegant frame.

Both mindsets can also be perfect guidelines for how children’s book authors can approach marketing, which, coincidentally, should also kick off around this time of year for authors hoping to get serious about holiday sales. Reviewing what you already have—deleted scenes, coloring pages, worksheets, or character sketches—and where your work could fit in—comparable titles, tie-ins to current events and festivals, or connections to existing bookstore or library campaigns—can set you and your business up for sustainable success.

Want more tips for marketing children’s books? Here’s how you can give your publishing strategy that Parisian touch.

Go for Cachet

Follow the French example and lend your books cachet by applying early for prestigious awards and editorial reviews. The magic ingredient here is allowing a four- to six-month window after the book is complete before publication. To start your search, the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) has a vetted database of book awards and contests open to indie authors in a range of genres, found at https://selfpublishingadvice.org/author-awards-contests-rated-reviewed. The organization also published an e-book, Book Prizes & Awards for Indie Authors, available in the ALLi bookshop (https://selfpublishingadvice.org/bookshop) for free to members. Another option is a free or paid membership to Book Award Pro (https://bookawardpro.com), a site that curates a custom list of awards opportunities for your title. Enter the details for each of your books, and receive suggestions via email.

“Go for respect,” says Darcy Pattison, award-winning children’s author and owner of the independent publisher Mims House. She uses awards to prove that her books meet educational standards and to show how they fit into curricula. Applying for awards is a regular part of publishing for Pattison, whose official “awards season” ends in July. Her launch plan for indie authors of children’s books, available through her Substack, has suggestions for book awards, editorial reviews, and timing.

Once your books have cachet, they need to flaunt it. For the Rugby World Cup held in France in 2023, posh tourist assistance offices—la boutique, officially—sprang up in train stations in ten different cities, sporting cushy red benches, extra staff to ensure a positive train experience, and adorable bookmarks cut in the shape of a high-speed French Train à Grande Vitesse. If your book earned an award, add the graphic to your website; consider a gold seal for the print editions; and add the “sell quote” from an editorial review to your book covers, book descriptions, or front matter. Make a bookmark of your own. Like the World Cup’s miniature paper train, your bookmark can glide across the desk as a souvenir of a never-to-be-forgotten adventure, or as the promise of a book that will delight readers and bookstore owners alike.

Treat Your Partners With Panache

France’s communication plan for the Olympic Games might be more than you need, but a classy bookmark, a catalog, or a sell sheet could be just the ticket for keeping your books top of mind at ordering time. You’ve crafted an experience for your readers and set it off with an excellent cover and description. Now make something to remember it by, perhaps a prop to spark word-of-mouth recommendations.

Retailers, educational and library distributors, subscription services, and editorial reviewers all understand your book’s target market more quickly when they have context. Pattison’s website includes a downloadable catalog of Mims House titles to share with distributors, and she uses “sell sheets” to pitch individual titles to schools and libraries. “Children's books don't sell the same places in the same ways as adult books,” Pattison says. “If you ask a children's librarian at a school library, ‘Where do you buy books?’ They buy from education distributors because their school has an account set up with them already.” The two biggest, she says, are Follett and Mackin, and worth exploring for indie authors looking to target a school-age audience of readers.

Sport Your Creativity

France wants to “reward creativity and athletic performance” with four new sports in 2024: breaking, sport climbing, skateboarding, and surfing, in an effort to serve young people. How could you serve a new audience or market with your work? Innovations in tools, formats, distributors, or markets could mean new sales records for indie publishers, but only if they perceive the new opportunities.

Through reading Publishers Weekly, Pattison found a premier reading app for schools called Epic! and got in on the ground floor. She understood the advantage of Epic!’s business model before it was proven in the arena. “Epic! is free for schools,” Pattison says, “so 80 to 90 percent of US schools have it, but parents have to buy it.” Currently, a publisher needs fifty books to be eligible for Epic!, but Pattison’s reward for taking a risk on an unknown platform was huge. One of her titles, A Little Bit of Dinosaur, has over a million reads on the platform. In another creative publishing move, Pattison created pop-up technology books that sported her award-winning quilting skills.

How can you expand into new markets or formats? Some examples are more obvious than others, but don’t be afraid to stray down new paths to see where they lead. In IAM’s May 2024 issue, ALLi Campaigns Manager Melissa Addey details the outlet some children’s book authors have found in Yoto cards (https://uk.yotoplay.com) allowing parents and grandparents to create personalized audiobooks of their titles for young readers.

Plan for a Maintenance Phase

Win or lose, when this year’s athletes return from the Olympic Games, they’ll take time to review their performances to see where they can improve. Off-season training could lead to a breakthrough. This summer, take time to review what’s working for your books. When you’re updating your shiny catalog or marketing materials, it’s the perfect time to perfect your routines. What’s working? Do more of that. What other skills, passions, and interests do you have outside of writing? Use them as a backdrop to give your books allure by association. Update your talking points to include new insights about audience appeal, review quotes, or new awards. Organic, steady, and creative growth can be sustainable for your publishing business.

Go Pro

By tradition, the Olympic Games are for amateurs, but many “retired” Olympic athletes take on professional and paid employment using their world-class skills. The publishing equivalent is the sale of intellectual property (IP). Indie authors spend more time in front of screens than the average Olympic athlete, but most indie authors write for love before they write for money. Andy Weir famously published The Martian in installments on his blog, then went pro on Kindle when readers requested an e-book. Since then, he sold audiobook rights to Podium Publishing, then the print rights to Random House’s Crown Publishing.

But before you decide that the Olympic Games of publishing are only for rocket books, consider Pattison’s experience as a children’s author. After creating and publishing a large body of work, she has discovered what matters to her and is going pro at a higher level to get her themes, topics, and stories out into the world.

“I have a book with a million reads,” she says. “I have other books with great awards. I have now sixty-five books … [and] some interesting intellectual property. So how can I translate that to something else for kids?” For her, it’s time “to look around at adjacent industries that serve kids to see if there [are] opportunities or not.”

Halfway through the year is the perfect time to garner cachet for your existing creations, parlez-vous your way into some opportunities you may have overlooked, push toward the goal with some new stretch goals, and publish with panache. Pay attention to these, and you’ll be on your game.