by Whitney Braun

As I reflected on the start of my journey into children’s fiction, I remember the most consistent advice was: ‘Market to the Moms’. Sure, I get it. I’m a young mother of a seven year old who loves story time. I’m the one who buys, thifts, and borrows our books. Understandably, it made sense to market to the moms for money in my pocket.

However, I always lingered on my purpose of the story. The lessons of my children’s books were not meant for the moms. The messages were for the impressionistic, young readers. Which is why this past spring, during the release month of my second children’s title, Larry Finds the Brightside, I chose to try something new. I decided to market to the kids.

At first, I was not quite sure how to approach this idea. Giving out copies to nieces and nephews was nice and all, but I wanted to reach wider. Not for the sake of dollar signs, but because this story was one God laid on my heart specifically.

You see, my son is autistic. He lives his life and makes his decisions very differently than his peers. He communicates differently, plays differently, eats differently, learns differently. That’s what this book is about—differences. In Larry Finds the Brightside, Larry sees all the wonderful things his friends can do, but he doesn’t see what he himself can do…until his other bug friends show him that despite their differences, each bug is pretty spectacular in their own way.

I wanted that message to reach far and wide because the relevance of this message is prevalent in my home and my community on a daily basis.

After some careful thought and prayer, I reached out to my community. I started with my son’s school, where I was able to come into his class, read my story, lead his classmates in the group discussion questions (which I included at the back of the story), and spend some time chatting with students while they enjoyed my colouring sheets of each character from the book. With just a book, some questions, and a few colouring sheets, I reached the first 21 kids with my story. After the reading, I left the copy in the school library as a thank you for having me, giving more classes the opportunity to come across the book.

And so I reached out to our local Christian school, where I shared by story with not just one of their primary classes, but two this time! The following day, my reading was featured on their public Facebook page to all the family members and community. That reading reached far beyond those two classes.

Finally, another public school in my hometown reached out asking if I would do another reading after they saw the private school’s Facebook post. My answer was an obvious yes. And so the story goes…

My marketing journey reached far beyond my expectations of self-publishing a children’s story. It started with prayer and a little bit of courage to reach out to my son’s school and blossomed into reading to over 100 children in my community, having my book on local store shelves, and being featured on social media all without investing any financial means. By investing my time and attention to the youth around me, I was able to reach wider than ever before with any of my titles.

Have I seen higher sales for this title than the one before? Sure. Does that even matter? Not at all. What matters most to me was children starting to look around at their peers and seeing uniqueness that they never would have noticed before.

Author Bio:

Whitney Braun lives and farms in Northern BC with her husband, son, and 2 cats. She is an advocate for people with complex needs and promotes inclusion wherever she goes. Her latest children’s book, Larry Finds the Brightside, can be found on Amazon.