My Daughter (14) Wrote A Book - Now She's Learning How To Sell It
My daughter (14) started writing a play over a year ago. The play is a historical drama set in World War One.
The story and writing is completely different from anything I could have produced. Whilst I’m a man in my mid-forties writing children’s stories about trees and pocket money, my daughter has written a deep story about relationships, conflict, and the pressures of war that I believe most adults would struggle to write.
Her teachers were blown away by what she had produced. So was I, however, as her father, I’m not exactly unbiased.
She decided to make it into a book that she could sell. I loved that idea!
In my blogs (and books), I have encouraged parents to help their kids start their own mini-business. I believe there are so many life lessons from doing so. This is one I didn’t expected to write about: My daughter, the author.
In this blog, I want to share some of the money lessons as my daughter starts her journey as a new author - I hope it helps inspire others kids to consider doing something similar.
Creating the book
My daughter already had the play written. The first task was to make it into something that could be sold.
After a lot of formatting and creating a cover, she added her book to Amazon using their Kindle Direct Publishing service (KDP).
Side note: KDP is an Amazon service allows you to upload the manuscript and cover and will print copies as people order them). This means there are no upfront costs and allows authors to self-publish. I have an account so added her book to that account but she’s still the author and I’ll transfer her the proceeds from the book.
With a click of a few buttons, the book (play), In the Wake of War (by I Rainey), was released on Amazon.
She’s had a good start as the book went to #4 in the Historical Drama book charts.
Now the challenge begins. A lot of people believe that if you have a great product, it will sell itself. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. If people don’t know about it, people won’t buy it.
She needs to get people to buy it and this is where there are many lessons to learn.
Below I’ve set out three money related lessons that she’s already learned as she’s started this experience.
3 Money Lessons from Selling a Book
1. Pricing: What price to sell the book?
When you set up the book on Amazon, you need to set a price. It could be anything from $5 or above (Amazon sets a minimum price).
This allowed her to do some research about what other books are charging. This gave her a good sense of how much books costs (whilst we get our kids to use their pocket money to buy a lot of their own things, we have always been willing to pay for books they are interested in).
This led to a really interesting conversation about economics.
Option 1 - Cheap price
The theory is that the cheaper something is, the more people will buy it. This could increase the amount of people who order the book and increase sales and exposure.
There are also downsides when something is ‘free’ or ‘cheap’. The first is clearly not making much money from each book sold. The second is that people might not value it as much. Why would someone who has something valuable give it away for little cost … they might believe the author doesn’t value it highly.
Option 2 - Commercial price
If she prices the book at a similar level as other books in the same category, then it might not sell as many copies compared to option 1 but it could lead to people taking it more seriously. Also, she’d make more money per book.
In the end, she decided to go with a hybrid, she’ll set the price in line with other books in the category but will also give the book away for free to those that can help her. These include teachers, theatre centres, drama clubs and directors.
Note: In addition to selling the book on Amazon, she ordered (and paid herself) for copies to be printed here. As the costs are lower, she can sell these copies locally for cheaper.
The good thing is that she can try one price now and change something else later.
2. Revenue vs Profit
When she ended up setting the price at $8.99 per book, she was excited about making so much per book. It was then that I explained that she’d actually only get $2.51 per book.
Amazon takes quite a big proportion. Partially to be on their platform so you have a place to sell the book and the other part is the cost of printing the book when someone orders a copy.
Whilst she’s tried other mini-businesses, therefore seen the expenses of physical items being allowed for (mostly ingredients), this was the first time that there was a digital cost.
👉 I reminded her of the Pepsi vs Coca-Cola conversation we had a few years ago which highlighted the differences between Revenue vs Profit. You can find out which of the two companies is doing better in terms of revenue and profit here
3. Create a sales strategy
This is something that I got really excited about. As mentioned earlier, rarely do products just sell themselves. They have to be sold.
Without much guidance or prompting, my daughter started to create some sales strategies which I’ve set out below:
Pre-Sales: Before she released the book, she told as many friends and family about the book. This meant that as soon as she released it, there were people excited to buy it.
Door-to-door: She cycled around where we lived and mapped out the houses. She then marked the houses that she is comfortable knocking on (and shared with us to validate). She’ll then try to sell to them once her book copies arrive.
School stand: She is asking her school if she is allowed a stand so she can sell books to older students and parents after school.
Social: She doesn’t have the main social media accounts (due to strict parents 😊) but she is on a writing community (SnipFic) and building up an audience of fellow writers and letting them know about the book. She’s also researching Substack to share her journey there.
If you have any other tips that might be helpful for her, please let us know at will@bluetreesavings.com (title the message ‘Tips for your daughter’s book’) - this can include theatre groups, drama teachers, related influencers or directors who she should send a copy of her book to.
There are likely to be many other money lessons (and life lessons) that she’ll experience on this journey and I’ll share these in future blogs. For example, will she decide to use some of the proceeds from the book sales to do some paid marketing/advertising?. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss these updates.
My daughter’s ultimate goal from the book … is not to make lots of money
Whilst this blog has been focused on the money (and sales) lessons from my daughter’s book journey, her ultimate goal is that play gets performed.
This is something she’s already working towards as she’s taken on the role of the Assistant Director for her school’s upcoming play.
Her hope is that the more that people read the book/play, the greater chance that it will get performed.
Talk to your kids about starting their own mini-business
I hope my daughter’s adventure inspires you to talk to your kids about turning something they are passionate about into a potential money making opportunity.
Don’t get me wrong, life should be fun for kids. Being creative should be about having fun - and doing something you are passionate about - but if it can also help generate some money and learn some amazing lessons, even better.
Whilst this isn’t a promotional blog, if you want to check out my daughter’s book/play, In the Wake of War, and support her journey, then you can find it here.
👉 For other stories of kids starting their mini-businesses, check out: 14-year-old using AI to make money
Thanks for reading,
Will
P.S., I am now sharing content on Substack - if you are there, you can find me here: https://open.substack.com/pub/willkidsandmoney
P.P.S., More examples of kids starting their own businesses (plus a lot of fun money lessons) can be found in Grandpa’s Fortune Fables and Frankie Fortune. Check them out here
