Marketing Opportunity for Children’s Authors
Children’s authors—and to some extent, even tween and teen authors—have the potential to use Kindle Unlimited as a marketing opportunity.
There are many parents, teachers, educators, and librarians who would love kids to READ much more.
Kindle Unlimited is an incredible value for parents:
- Bedtime stories. Kindle Unlimited gives access to a huge collection of children’s stories, far more than can be stored on a bookshelf. Some of those children’s book are pretty expensive, too, but Kindle Unlimited offers an amazing selection for $9.99 per month. Kids will love the opportunity to read along on a Kindle Fire (or another device) as the parent operates the device.
- Reading fluency. From elementary school to young adults, access to tens of thousands of children’s, tween, and teen stories for $9.99 per month is a great opportunity to encourage kids to develop a love for reading by finding books that interest them. Get a book they didn’t like? No problem: Find another! The more they read, the more fluent they will become (it helps not only improve English, but also writing and vocabulary—years of practice will be valuable on standardized exams), and the more they will want to read as they get older. Help make reading a habit.
- Educational resource. Need homework help? Need more practice? Want to learn more about a topic that caught your interest in school? Kindle Unlimited provides access to numerous Kindle educational titles that can help with learning, study aids, and nonfiction reading. Parents can learn more, too, or discover books that help them teach particular skills. All that at your fingertips for $9.99 per month.
- Access to a library on your fingertips. Would you rather have your child searching on the internet—where they can find lord knows what—for school help, or would you rather have access to a huge library of published e-books for $9.99 per month? You can check out up to 10 titles at a time. Then simply return one title to check out another.
If every parent takes full advantage of Kindle Unlimited there would be an astronomical amount of downloads (thereby diminishing the KDP Select download royalty). But many parents won’t realize the full potential, and there are many people subscribing to Kindle Unlimited who aren’t parents or who aren’t subscribing for the benefit of their kids. There also is a Restrictions paragraph in the terms of use. Amazon didn’t specify a number, but if you go overboard downloading books, that paragraph might become applicable.
But Kindle Unlimited is an amazing resource for parents. I’m certainly subscribing.
Authors of children’s, tween, and even teen books can take advantage of this. Show parents what a value this is for their children, with examples of how they can use it well. Emphasize how it can help with reading and learning.
The more parents who use Kindle Unlimited to help build reading fluency or improve learning, the more children’s authors in KDP Select who will be benefiting from more downloads through Kindle Unlimited.
You have the opportunity to gain visibility among parents while advertising the educational benefits of Kindle Unlimited. Surely, many parents will check out your children’s books for helping them see the benefits.
All authors enrolled in KDP Select need to be thinking about possible benefits of Kindle Unlimited for their books, and striving to find marketing strategies to help realize these benefits. For example, if you’re a flash fiction author, you want to advertise to flash fiction readers how they can get a great value from Kindle Unlimited.
It’s not just KDP Select books or just indie books. There are 100,000 books from various (mostly small publishers) in addition to 500,000 books from KDP Select. Harry Potter and many other books that your kids may want to read are in the mix.
Chris McMullen
Copyright © 2014 Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers
- Volume 1 on formatting and publishing
- Volume 2 on marketability and marketing
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Comments
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chrismcmullen 
I was thinking about this last night, actually. I have a plan to write some short stories, and thought Kindle Unlimited would be great for children’s books, as they’re usually short, and several of them can be read in a month. So, why not write some short children’s books? I just may do that. if the average amount of pay for every book that’s read past 10% remains around $2 each, then that could be very lucrative.
There seems to be potential here. There sure is a wealth of anticipation for how much each download will pay. Good luck with your books. 🙂
Well, I’d be selling each short story for only 99 cents, but if the downloads are half the current rate at about $1 each, I’d be doing better than the regular sales anyway. That would certainly be nice. But I’d hope it’s still around $2. But we shall see.
I tend to be skeptical. who knows it could be useful tool, but my opinion, I prefer not to be sandbox or be literally crammed into a tiny box. Some self pubbed authors would ponder if they would get pennies or nothing at all.
Besides, I plan to self publish one of these days. who knows, I may get fortunate via a throw of dice.
True, if the KDP Select per-download rate turns out to be very low, many authors will consider opting out of KDP Select. It’s a risk. Some authors don’t mind the risk, i.e. if they get more readers through these downloads, there is increased long-term word-of-mouth potential. Kindle Unlimited is just one more publishing decision every author has to make, and a factor worth considering when marketing the book (whether in or out of the program).
This sounds exciting! I’ve written several children’s short stories that I’d be interested in publishing. Thanks for informing us!
Good luck with your stories.
Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog….. An Author Promotions Enterprise! and commented:
Authors AND Parents – this article is a MUST READ! 😀
Thank you. I’ve been reading Kindle Unlimited books every night to my daughter. Unbelievable value. 🙂