I didn't set out to self-publish. That's worth saying upfront, because people sometimes assume that choosing KDP means you couldn't get a traditional deal, or that you're settling for something lesser. That wasn't my situation. I chose it. And three books in, I'd choose it again.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start where most writing decisions actually start: at the kitchen table, staring at a spreadsheet I didn't understand.
The query letter phase
After I finished the first draft of what would become Colours of the Rainbow, I did what everyone tells you to do. I researched literary agents. I wrote query letters. I rewrote query letters. I bought a book about writing query letters, which felt like a particularly cruel form of recursion — needing to publish a book about how to publish a book.
I sent out about thirty queries over four months. Most came back with form rejections. A few didn't come back at all. Two agents asked for the full manuscript, which felt enormous at the time. One passed after reading it. The other never responded, which I've since learned is common but at the time felt like being stood up at a restaurant.
The rejections weren't cruel. They were mostly polite variations of "this isn't right for our list at this time." One agent said she loved Poppy but didn't think there was a market for another dragon series. Another said the board book market was too crowded. Both were probably right, from their perspective. Agents are running businesses, and they need to pick projects they're confident they can sell. A debut author with a glitter-sneezing dragon doesn't scream "safe bet."
What made me look at KDP
I stumbled onto KDP partly through frustration and partly through Rosie, who was four by then and had started asking when she could hold the Poppy book. Not read it. Hold it. She wanted a real book she could carry around and sleep next to and accidentally leave in the bath. That question — "when can I hold it?" — did something to me.
I started reading about self-publishing properly. The costs, the sacrifices, what you actually get. KDP kept coming up because it's the simplest path to getting a physical book into someone's hands. You upload your files, set your price, and the book exists. No print runs, no warehousing, no minimum orders. When someone buys it, Amazon prints it and ships it. When nobody buys it, nothing sits in a box in your garage.
That last part mattered more than I expected. I didn't have a garage full of capital. I had a laptop, a picture book manuscript, and a daughter who wanted to hold something.
The trade-offs I actually made
I want to be honest about what self-publishing costs, because the glossy "anyone can do it" messaging leaves out the hard parts.
You do everything yourself, or you pay people to help. I hired an illustrator, which was the single biggest expense and the best money I've ever spent. I found a freelance editor who specialised in children's picture books and who caught things I'd have missed entirely — like the fact that one spread had Poppy looking sad in the background while the text was meant to be cheerful. That's the kind of thing a traditional publisher's team would flag. When you self-publish, you have to build that team yourself.
Layout and formatting took me weeks. Picture books are deceptively complicated — the text and images have to work together across page turns, and the technical requirements for KDP printing are specific. I made three different versions of Colours of the Rainbow before I got one that looked right in the proof copy. The first proof had the colours completely wrong, which sent me down a rabbit hole of RGB versus CMYK that I wouldn't wish on anyone.
Marketing falls on you too. Traditional publishers have sales teams and catalogue placements and relationships with bookshops. I have a website, a small social media following, and the hope that if enough parents read the books, word of mouth will do some of the work. It's slower. It's humbling. But it's also honest — nobody is buying Poppy books because a marketing budget told them to. They're buying them because they read one and thought their child would like it.
What I gained that I didn't expect
Control is the obvious answer, and it's real. I chose the illustrator. I chose the trim size, the paper weight, the font. When Rosie told me that Poppy's left eye was "a tiny bit more happy than her right eye," I could actually do something about it. In traditional publishing, those decisions belong to the publisher. That's not always a bad thing — publishers employ people who are very good at those decisions. But for Poppy, I wanted to be in the room.
Speed surprised me. From final manuscript to holding a physical copy took about three months. Traditional publishing timelines for picture books run twelve to twenty-four months, sometimes longer. I'm not patient enough for that, and more importantly, Rosie wasn't patient enough for that.
And the economics work differently than I expected. KDP's royalty structure is straightforward — you set your price, they take their cut for printing and distribution, and you keep the rest. For a colour picture book, the margins aren't enormous, but they're better than the standard royalty rate most debut authors get from traditional publishers. More importantly, I keep the rights. If Poppy takes off (and I think she might, slowly, the way good things do), those rights stay with me.
The things I miss
I won't pretend it's perfect. I miss the idea of a team behind me — a publicist who knows which reviewers to contact, an art director who can look at a spread and immediately see what's not working, a marketing department that has relationships with the big bookshops. I've had to learn all of that as I go, and I've made mistakes. The first print run of Count to 10 had a typo on the back cover that I somehow missed through three rounds of proofreading. I still cringe thinking about it.
Getting into physical bookshops is harder as a self-published author. Most shops order through distributors that favour traditional publishers. Libraries are more open-minded, thankfully, and I've had lovely conversations with children's librarians who were happy to order copies once they'd seen the books. But walking into Waterstones and seeing Poppy on a shelf? That hasn't happened yet. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want it to.
Why it was right for Poppy
Every book is different, and I don't think self-publishing is right for every author. But for the Poppy series specifically, KDP made sense because the books needed to exist on a timeline that a toddler could understand. Rosie was three when the idea started. She's six now. If I'd waited for a traditional deal, she might have been eight or nine before she could hold Colours of the Rainbow. That's too late. Not for the market — for her.
There's also something freeing about building something small and seeing if people care. No big launch, no hype cycle, no expectations beyond "I think this is good and I hope you do too." Four books in, people do seem to care. Not in a viral, everyone's-talking-about-it way. In the quiet way that actually matters — parents writing to say their child asks for Poppy at bedtime, teachers using Count Along with Poppy in reception classes, grandparents buying copies for Christmas.
That's enough. It's more than enough, actually. It's exactly what I wanted when I sat at that kitchen table with a spreadsheet I didn't understand and a three-year-old asking when she could hold the book.
She sleeps next to it, by the way. Every night. Even now that she's "too old for baby books" (her words, not mine). The spine is cracked and there's a jam stain on page seven and she won't let me throw it away. I don't think she even reads it anymore. She just likes knowing it's there.