In some ways, marketing a book written for adults is easy. Most of the time, the reader is also the buyer. If you can convince readers to try your book, they become your customers. But to market a children’s book is very different. Kids don’t have money to spend, and most book-buying decisions are made by the adults, like parents, librarians, or teachers. Marketing strategies used for adult audiences often do not work for children’s books. Some are even illegal! While adults will purchase hundreds of ebooks for their Kindles, children prefer reading print books. While authors can reach adult audiences via online advertising, children typically are not shopping for books online.  How can you market a children’s book in an online-everything world? So, how can you successfully market your children’s books in today’s world of online everything? I asked Karen Inglis, who has mastered the art of self-publishing and marketing her children’s books. She is an international bestselling author. Her time travel adventure, The Secret Lake, has sold over half a million copies in English and has been translated into ten languages. She is successfully making a living as an indie children’s author, so when she says something works, it works. How did you get started writing books for children? Thomas: You’re making a full-time living writing and publishing books for children without the help of a traditional publisher. How did you get started? Karen: Well, I started fairly late on. I had written for years, but when my children were little and I read books to them, I’d think, “That one’s good,” or “That one’s not so good.” I got inspired and started penning some rhyming picture books. During that period, I visited a friend who had just moved into an apartment that backed onto the communal gardens of Notting Hill. I walked out there and saw all the children playing in that very safe space, surrounded by big Victorian houses, and I thought, “Wouldn’t it be magical if they could meet the children who lived and played here a hundred years ago?” That’s how I was inspired to write The Secret Lake. It was the first of my longer non-picture books. It was very much a story from my heart. I believed in the project, but it took a long time for it to take off. In fact, in the early days, I sent it to traditional publishers before the days of the internet. I waited six weeks and got the rejection letters back saying it was either the wrong length, too traditional or not modern enough. I’d meant to write a traditional non-modern adventure because I didn’t think enough traditional adventure stories were available. Thomas: I 100% agree. My wife and I have three children, five and under, and we buy hundreds of children’s books. Many books we buy are out-of-print, older books because we don’t like modern books. We don’t want to read “a is for activist.” We want to read Goodnight Moon and older, traditional adventures because our kids love those. Karen: I know what you mean. After a few rejections, I put the manuscript in a box, and it stayed there for about ten years.