The journey of new KDP Writers:
Most of the KDP starters launch a series of books in form of journals, coloring book, activity book and then start looking for niches on various platforms including youtube and other platforms. While these are good efforts it might not always bring results as well as the satisfaction you want from your work.
Children’s book is a good option both from creativity point of view as well as earning point of view.
Like, most of the new starters I was also very skeptical about making children’s book.
The main reasons are:
- Poor knowledge of bleed and trim settings
- No experience on double spread pages
- How to get that professional look.
Due to these reasons, the entry barrier for children book for new KDP writers become very high.
In this article, I will share my experience on how to write your first children book and break this entry barrier for you.
How to break the entry barrier for children’s book:
To make things simple, I am giving you a template to follow. This will ensure that you do not face errors while uploading on KDP and get approval immediately.
I will choose 8.5″ x 8.5″ book size with bleed. Bleed means that the designs will spread to the corners of the pages and will not have any white borders. This is how most of the children book look like.
For this size with bleed you need to add 0.125″ to the width and 0.25″ to the height. SO, the effective size for interior pages will become 8.625″ width x 8.75″ height.
Steps to create the children book easily:
Step 1: Choose a custom size 17.25″ x 8.75″ in Canva. Below I have shown the two books which I have created using this method. Please note that 17.25″ is twice the size of your interior width (8.625″). Idea here is to create two pages together and transfer it in interior pages by selecting 8.625″ x 8.75″ size later.
Step 2: Start creating your pages in this 17.25″ x 8.75″ custom size template. Aim for 17-18 pages so that you will get around 35-36 pages book in your 8.625″ x 8.75″ interiors.
Step 3: Create a blank interior with size 8.625″ x 8.75″ size. In your main interior design, leave first page for copyright and other details and start transferring your custom pages from page 2 onwards. This is important to get the double spread pages in final print.
Step 4: First upload your first image in one of the interior page (page no 2), then click in the center and then drag it towards right. This way you will get the first half (it will be page no 2). In next step simply duplicate the page, click in the center and then drag towardsleft for getting the 2nd half (it will be page no 3). Repeat this for all remaining custom pages which you earlier created. This way when you will upload your book on KDP, you will get a continuous page without any break.
Step 5: Create your cover template using KDP calculator and then upload your files on KDP.
I am giving the link of the YouTube Video which I created showing these steps. It is only a 2.5 minute long video and will help you by showing these steps live.
This is the book link which I was able to create and which I got published in one day.