Would anyone be interested in a children's dressage-based picture book?

[xQHDQ]

My nieces and I wrote a children’s picture book about my baby horse’s first dressage show. It’s fictional and has the message that trying new things can be fun. It’s not a dressage manual or anything like that. It’s for young children. I did put at the end a short paragraph about what dressage is and links to where they can get more information (like USDF and dressageforkids).

Is this something the dressage or greater riding community would be interested in? Is there anything else like this out there? Where should I advertise that it’s published? (pretty sure it’s against forum rules to say where it’s published.)

[trubandloki]

A good way to get it out there is to offer copies of it as a prize for some lead line class or something.

I have found childrens books are like so many things, popular because of word of mouth.

(Disclaimer, I know nothing about book publishing or how to best advertise books.)

[Impractical_Horsewoman]

I’m an author. Self-published children’s books tend to be more difficult to market than adult books, because the market is still primarily driven by print versus eBooks, so it’s more difficult to offer the books at a lower price point to encourage people to take a chance on the book.

Is it published and available on Amazon? There are a number of ways to advertise, including Amazon ads, offering a discount and reaching out to sites like eReader news today, as well as possibly contacting bloggers (although I personally haven’t gotten sales that way, although I enjoy working with bloggers, it seems to be kind of a dying art). There are also Facebook groups for horse book authors and readers.

To move physical copies, you can partner with vendors at horse shows and other sale sites–it’s usually not worth the money just to get a tent for yourself.

In terms of whether people will be interested, well, it depends on the quality of the book! Particularly for kids’ picture books, the quality of the illustrations are equally if not as important as the text and story.

[MorganSercu]

Children’s books are one of the markets where BOOKS are really important. Children like to handle them, use their fingers to follow along when being read to or reading aloud. The illustrations are going to be particularly important the younger the target audience (but who doesn’t like illustrations?).

I’ll be contacting you via DM a little later to get the information on how to purchase a copy or two.

I’m betting you already know about the biggest book fairs around, but there may be other people who would enjoy going to one or more. Maybe one is in your backyard?

10 Book Festivals Announced for 2023

Top Book Fairs and Festivals for Authors 2023 - Book-Publicist.com

[Natalie_A]

A recent children’s dressage picture book that I loved was Jubilee, about Lis Hartel. It worked because it was a really good story and very well illustrated. Children’s e-picture books are really not popular and cover art and design are important because kids and parents are much more likely to just grab whatever looks visually appealing off the shelf.
https://ktjohnston.com/jubilee/

[xQHDQ]

Thanks for everyone’s suggestions. I never thought of a book fair.

The book is available in e-book and print formats with lots of pictures.

It’s for a younger audience than Jubilee - cool looking book.

Here’s my baby horse as envisioned by my niece: