Building Connections with a Community of Kid’s Book Authors

As children's authors, our primary goal is to inspire, educate, and entertain young minds through the magic of storytelling. We love crafting compelling narratives and dreaming up stories to tell. What we didn’t expect about becoming authors is the loneliness and frustration that came along as we muddled through the publishing, sales and marketing processes initially alone.

The four of us, founders of the Local Bookshelf, connected to support each other along our publishing journeys. Quickly our connections became more than sharing scammy reviewer links. We formed The Local Bookshelf to support one another. It was a chance to get together, ask questions, support each other, build a community, make jokes, share tears, vent frustrations, create connections, and to have many brunch and coffee dates. We had each felt the numbness of staring at a computer screen or notebook, holding our incredible book in our hand and not being sure what to do next or where to get our question answered.

Here are some reasons we formed the Local Bookshelf and why we can’t wait to open up our membership (soon!) and expand this incredible community.

Support and Encouragement: Whether it's celebrating a new book release or receiving constructive feedback on a work-in-progress, having a supportive network can make all the difference providing motivation to keep writing and pursuing your publishing goals.

Sharing Experiences: Connecting with other authors allows you to share experiences and advice, the good, the bad and the downright, oops! From tips on navigating the printers and page size to recommendations for illustrators or editors, fellow authors can offer invaluable insights.

Learning and Growth: An author’s community provides continuous learning. We gain insights into writing techniques, marketing strategies, and the ever-evolving publishing landscape. We share printer recommendations and contact details for bookstores. Learning from the journeys of fellow writers is insightful and reassuring.

Networking and Collaboration Opportunities: Building relationships within the writing community opens doors to collaborations, joint promotions and introductions to industry professionals. Whether its joining forces with another author to co-author a book, organise an events or workshop, working together allows us to leverage each other's strengths, reach a wider audience and often, to carpool.

Feedback and Critique: Constructive feedback is instrumental for improving your writing. A supportive community can provide thoughtful critiques and suggestions, helping you produce the best work.

Marketing and Promotion: Fellow authors can share tips on effective book marketing and promotion. Together we can share experiences with social media, photography, content creation, sales, public relations and SO much more. The marketing never ends. We can also ask each other to like our posts or share our reels.

Inspiration and Creativity: Being part of a likeminded community fuels our inspiration and creativity. Exchanging ideas, discussing trends, and having lively conversations about storytelling sparks new ideas and pushes us to explore innovative ways of thinking.

Emotional Support: We need it. Writing and publishing come with emotional highs and lows. Having a community that understands the emotional rollercoaster of the creative process (not to mention the sales and distribution process!) is comforting.

FUN! Having friends who understand the highs and lows of being a kid’s book author and being able to laugh together makes the whole experience so much sweeter. It’s also better to stand at a slow market stall with some company!

Connecting, collaborating, and celebrating together is far better than doing it alone which is why we created the Local Bookshelf. We can’t wait to open our membership and welcome you in. Join our newsletter to be in the loop!