Every parent longs to share their son or daughter's first moments of reading. And for aspiring authors, this dream is even stronger -- we long to share those moments with our kids reading a book we wrote!

Thanks to print-on-demand publishing, sharing your own published book with your children is easier than ever. If you have ever dreamed of writing and publishing a children's storybook, these 5 tips will help you.

1. Write for your audience

This is good advice for any kind of writing, but especially for children's stories. While many themes in children's books are universal, you may have more success finding the appropriate tone if you write specifically for a girl, or specifically for a boy. Keep a laser-like focus on the age group, too. Concepts that are too complicated for your target age group, or words that are too difficult, will cause your book to miss its mark.

2. Make every page count

Again, good advice for all well-crafted writing, but especially true for children's books featuring full color illustrations. Printing books in full color is expensive, and for print-on-demand books this is particularly true. Each two-page spread of pages will need to feature at least one illustration (and preferably a full, two-page illustration spread), so you want to make every page important. Full-color illustrations can be expensive, and so can printing them. Fully illustrated children's stories are best kept to 32 pages or less, to allow for a competitive retail price compared with the number of printed pages.

3. The moral of the story is...

All successful children's books have a moral or theme. The protagonist must overcome adversity to change, improve, or grow -- typically by exercising a positive trait. Parents use children's storybooks to impart good values and lessons to their kids; make sure your story has a strong moral. It doesn't have to be preachy, but it needs to be there.

4. Design a mock-up

One of the trickiest elements to publishing a children's book is coordinating the story with the illustrations. Not only does this involve allocating the proper words to the matching illustrations, but you need to make sure there is enough "white space" (either within the drawing itself, or on the opposing page) for the actual printed words. By creating a physical mock-up of the entire storybook, you can make sure the illustrations will match the words and that there is enough room for the words when you describe each illustration to the artist.

5. Find a publisher that offers full-color illustrations

Finding a professional artist for your storybook's artwork use to be an almost insurmountable hurdle. It was difficult to anticipate the "tone" of the artwork you were commissioning, and pricing was difficult to estimate, not to mention very expensive. Lastly, many artists would often require a share of the book's royalties, increasing the overall expensive even further.

Some publishers now offer full-color custom illustration packages that are just as flexible and affordable as their publishing packages. You can choose from a variety of different artists and styles, and you know exactly how much it is going to cost up-front. Best of all, you should not have to split your book's royalties with the artist.

Custom Illustration Packages from Outskirts Press

Introducing 14 different styles, 3 different pricing plans, and one extraordinary solution to children's book writers everywhere. Authors publishing with our full-color Pearl Publishing Package now have an easy, affordable way to add professional, full-color illustrations to their children's books.

Visit the Outskirts Press Custom Illustrations page here.

Get 10 free books with your Pearl package through February. See our promotion information below. Hurry! Mother's Day is right around the corner.

Get started in your author's center today.