Everything You Need To Know About Hardcovers For Your Children's Books

Unlike the growing trend of published books, where many are sold as ebooks these days, children’s books differ greatly from most other genres. Many parents still prefer formats that let them and their little ones turn actual pages. It’s for that reason, that paperbacks and hardcovers for children’s books are still selling to this day.

Because I get asked quite often what format to consider, and whether or not I would recommend creating a hardcover for children’s books, I wanted to share a number of thoughts. This will hopefully help you with the decision as to whether or not this would be a great option for your own children’s book.

In today’s article, you’ll learn:

The different formats that are available to us children’s authors.
Which formats I would recommend, and why.
The only POD platform I’d recommend for hardcovers for children’s books, and why.
Setup details that are really important to your hardcover.

Available Formats For Children’s Books

Before diving in, it’s important to look at the different formats that are available to us children’s authors.

Offering our children’s books in multiple formats will help us appeal to a number of different buyers, as each serves a different purpose, as well as provides a number of different price points.

So let’s take a quick look.

1. EBOOKS

As already mentioned, the ebook format is consistently growing for most other genres. That’s because it provides lots of advantages to both the author, as well as the reader:

Ebooks can be accessed and read immediately after the purchase.
They don’t take up any space on our bookshelves.
They are usually more cost effective.

One of it’s biggest advantages of ebooks that also applies to children’s books is that it’s a fantastic format to use for any promotional purposes, as we can set really low pricing (depending on the file size of our book) and even offer it temporarily for free (if the ebook is enrolled into Kindle Select).

MY RECOMMENDATION:

When it comes to children’s books, I recommend offering an ebook version for promotional and marketing purposes.

2. PAPERBACKS

The second option available to us children’s authors is the paperback. While this format’s popularity is somewhat decreasing for other genres, this is by far the most often-sold format for children’s books. At least as of right now.

Especially for younger little ones, parents still prefer to be able to turn actual pages of a book when they are reading to their children.
Parents of younger children often prefer to restrict screen time.
When it comes to pricing, paperbacks offer a wonderful option between ebooks and hardcovers.

Paperbacks don’t take away much shelf-space, and most of us are very familiar and comfortable with this format, as that’s the format most often offered and sold during our kids’ school book fairs.

MY RECOMMENDATION:

This is a format you do not want to skip! Whether you go with hardcovers or not, be sure to offer your children’s book as a paperback as well.

3. HARDCOVERS FOR CHILDREN’S BOOKS

Now this is an option most authors of other genres don’t usually offer (unless they are traditionally published and/or already well-established authors). And that’s mainly because Amazon’s KDP didn’t offer a hardcover option until recently.

When it comes to children’s books, many often envision their book in this (and only this) format. Here are some of the most common reasons given by many of my students and clients:

Due to its cover, this format is thought to be more durable.
Many often believe hardcovers seem more appealing to buyers.

I hope that by now you can see that this isn’t necessarily true. The cost of a hardcover is often much higher than that of a paperback. So unless you already have a loyal following, people are very unlikely to purchase the more (or in this case, most) expensive option of your children’s book.

So when it comes to hardcovers, my recommendation is this:

MY RECOMMENDATION:

Don’t make this type of format your number 1 choice, especially if you’ve never published a children’s book before. For your very first book, focus on your ebook and paperback. Once you’ve ‘learned the ropes,’ and you feel it’d be beneficial to you and your readers, you can start offering the hardcover version as well.

So, if you’ve already published your book as an ebook and paperback, where do you go to also offer your children’s book as a hardcover? That’s what we’ll dive into next.

Options for Hardcovers for Children’s Books

When it comes to hardcovers for children’s books, we have multiple options. One such option is referred to as off-site printing, where hardcover copies of a book are printed in bulk, usually overseas. The advantage to off-site printing is that this allows the author to have a much lower printing cost PER book, which in turn allows for a lower sales price and/or greater profit per book.

The other option would be POD (print-on-demand). I personally only use POD for all my own children’s books, where the books are printed one at a time, after it has been ordered and paid for by a reader via a site such as Amazon.

My decision to use POD is primarly based on the following:

I don’t have any upfront costs, as I would have with off-site printing. With off-site printing, I would have to purchase my books in bulk. Depending on the used overseas printer, the minimum would be between 500 – 1000 copies, which I would have to pay for up front. POD printing, however, requires no up-front investment, as the books won’t be printed until an actual order (for example via Amazon) has been placed. All printing, handling fees, and shipping costs are then automatically deducted from my book’s selling price.
Storage, and shipping and handling will be taken care of by the POD.
I don’t have to worry about returns, as the POD takes care of these eventualities as well.

Whether you use off-site printing, or POD is of course entirely up to you. There is no right or wrong. There are certainly a number of authors that prefer to print their books off-site, but it’s always associated with a certain level of risk. What matters most is what works best for you, your budget, and the time you are able to allocate to selling your book.

I’ve created a short list of the advantages and disadvantages of each:

Let’s look at what service you might want to consider for your print-on-demand needs.

Where to Print Hardcovers for Children’s Books

As already shared, I personally recommend using POD over off-site printing, especially if this is your very first children’s book. Amazon just recently added the hardcover option to their offered services. Because it is still in beta, it still has a few limitations, especially when it comes to children’s books:

Limited number of trim sizes (8.5 x 8.5 inches not included)
Requires a minimum of 76 pages

Since KDP is still quite limited when it comes to hardcover options, what POD service should we use?

Here, we again have multiple options, the most common ones being Lulu and IngramSpark. I usually recommend (and personally use) IngramSpark. And there are a number of reasons and a number of advantages to using IngramSpark.

IngramSpark vs. Lulu

1. AVAILABLE SIZES:
The first big advantage would be that IngramSpark offers far more trim size choices for books with a full color interior.

2. PRINTING COST:
The second big advantage is the lower printing cost with IngramSpark. While Lulu and IngramSpark have similar prices for black and white books, the price difference is quite significant for full color hardcovers.

3. QUALITY:
The quality of the hardback is about the same for both PODs, including the colors, since Lulu uses a combination of its own printers AND those of IngramSpark for books that go through IngramSpark’s distribution channel.

4. DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL:
The 4th factor we should consider is the distribution channel and the distribution cost. IngramSpark has a direct link to one of the largest distribution networks, which is Ingram. As Lulu partners with Ingram to get into major distribution, you’re more likely to get slightly more in compensation per illustrated book with IngramSpark because you aren’t going through a middleman like Lulu.

The only disadvantage to using IngramSpark is that it has an initial setup fee of $49. And there is a revision fee for each revised content upload. But again, these are just setup fees, and usually not recurring, unless you have to make a revision.

If you would like to hear more in-depth details on these differences, you can listen to this episode over on Kindlepreneur right here, where I share all the children’s-book specific details in the second half of the interview.

MY RECOMMENDATION:

When dealing with POD platforms, three of the most important factors to consider as a children’s book author are:

Available trim size options
Print quality
Ease and cost of distribution

For children’s book authors who want to publish a full-color hardcover book, I recommend IngramSpark, especially if you wish to sell your book outside of Amazon as well.

How to Get Hardcovers for Children’s Books onto Amazon

The beauty of using IngramSpark for your hardcover is that it will automatically appear on Amazon a few days after you have approved its publication.

To ensure that all three of your book’s formats are linked right away so they all appear on one single sales page on Amazon, you can simply wait a few days, as this should happen automatically. If you want to speed up the process, you can reach out to KDP, and request the linking.

To do this, visit https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/contact-us, and simply share the title of your book, and each format’s identification number. For example, in order to have all three formats of the book My Super Me linked, you will want to write something like this:

Dear Amazon Team,

Please link the following:

TITLE: [Your Book Title]
PAPER ISBN: [Your Paperback’s ISBN]
HARDCOVER ISBN: [Your Hardcover’s ISBN]
EBOOK: [Your Ebook’s ASIN]

Thank you so much! Have a fantastic remaining day!

Warmly,
[Your Name]

And this will take care of the linking of all the formats of your book.

Writing a children’s book is so very special. So I hope that once you’re ready to take this next step of creating a hardcover of your beautiful story, this article will help and support you.

And to conclude, here are three quick tips you might find helpful when it comes to hardcovers:

What to Pay Attention to…

If you’re planning to offer a hardcover option for your beautiful children’s book later on, make sure that whatever book size you are choosing is available both on KDP as well as IngramSpark. That’s because you wouldn’t want to having to ask your illustrator later on to create illustrations in two different sizes.
As I shared in my ISBN for Children’s Books article, each printed format will have to have it’s own ISBN. If you are offering a paperback and hardcover of your book, you will need 2 separate ISBNs.
Make sure all three formats of your book are linked, so they all appear on one single sales page on Amazon.

I hope you found this article helpful. If you did, (1) let me know and (2) share with it your fellow children’s book authors. I cannot wait to hear from you!

xo
~ Eevi

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