Write your own Children's Book!

Some of the best works of children's literature were written for, or inspired by, children and their toys, Peter Rabbit, Thomas the Tank Engine, Peter Pan, the Mr Men books and many more besides.  In the digital age, it is now so much easier to create your own books for your children, and have them professionally produced into real books.  You don't need to pay large sums of money to a vanity press, all you need is a computer and a little bit of talent!

There are lots of book creation services available to choose from.  If you want to create a picture book, even if it only documents your baby's early years, then most photo printing services offer photo books.  Take a look at Blurb, Snapfish or Bonusprint.  If you want to create an illustrated picture story book or a novel, then you may want to look at some of the more specialist options such as Lulu or Booksurge (part of Amazon).  You'll need to lay out your book into one of their specified formats, upload the file and very quickly you can begin to order professionally produced books.  You design every aspect including the cover and all the frontpages.

You don't need to write for a specific audience, just to please yourself.  If you do want to publish to a wider market, books created at Lulu or Booksurge can be made available for international sale at Amazon, and you can pay fees to be listed in standard book catalogues too so that they are available by ordering from any bookstore.  You don't have to get involved with distribution at all, you set your own asking price and receive a royalty on every sale.  You can choose how much you make on each book sold, generally it's more lucrative than going through a regular publisher, although of course you hope that a publisher would do more by way of marketing.

Where publishing was once the preserve of the elite, it is now something that anyone can achieve at a very reasonable price!