In this webinar, Fiona shared her self-publishing adventure which started when she was creating materials for her own after-school classes, working with stories and crafts for young learners. Not using coursebooks with these groups meant that she spent a lot of time sourcing materials and then adapting them to her own environment. From there, the natural step was to create her own resources.
What are the benefits of self-publishing?
“I’m making what I’m using” – if you’re selling resources you’re creating for your own classes, it’s fairly low-risk and it’s satisfying to see others making use of your materials
- there are no external pressures of deadlines and second drafts
- it enables you to build a portfolio which you could use to approach publishers in the future
- it’s a way of earning some money alongside your teaching hours
- you can get direct feedback from the people using your materials
- you have 100% creative control and are tied to the type of exercises, structures or vocabulary which you have to include
- it widens your skill set if you take on the website design as well or make your own clipart packs – Fiona is self-taught and suggests checking out YouTube videos to find out how to do things or check out sites like FutureLearn and Udemy which often have courses for graphic design, web design, coding and so on
- there are no content restrictions in terms of what you provide – Fiona mentions differentiated packs which she offers, allowing teachers to use the same storybook with different ages
- you don’t have to be so concerned on selling to a wide market as coursebook publishers often do
One thing Fiona suggests doing if you’re thinking of selling your own materials is to set up a focus group with people who can trial your materials and get feedback from them.
How is it different to creating things just for yourself?
The aesthetic quality (‘prettiness’) is a big aspect of materials to think about when trying to make them appeal to other people and as well ensuring that your instructions are clearly communicated to those who will be using the resource.
Another aspect is to think about copyright as using content for commercial purposes is different to using something within the confines of your own class.
Here are some open-source image sites – remember to credit the author when you use an image:
- pixabay
- freepik
- unsplash
- rawpixel – you can download a limited number free each day
- dribble – there are some free packs of illustrations here too
You can use a programme such as GIMP – which is similar to PhotoShop but free. You can use it to adapt images, make colour images black and white in order for them to be photocopied more easily and it was also suggested for making memes.
Fiona also suggests using PowerPoint for creating materials – it allows you to layer, move and manipulate things much more easily than Word. PowerPoint also has some tools for allowing you to change the colour of images.
How did Fiona build her brand?
There are certain things to think about, such as creating cover pages for packs and a logo – Fiona has Winston, who she can easily adapt to have him holding scissors for the craft packs, for example.
Other aspects are the fonts you use and your colour palette so that you can be consistent across platforms and people will associate certain colour or a particular font with your brand. It’s important to think about whether you can use fonts in different programmes. Fiona uses dafont – which allows you to donate to the font creator – and you can then upload that font to use it different places.
It’s also important to think about how things will look as a thumbnail or when you share things on different social media sites. You can easily google the best dimensions for different sites. If you get a premium Canva account, you can resize content easily (110€ a year – not cheap, but if you’re sharing a lot of content, it’s a timer-saver). In PowerPoint you can also change the size of your ‘slide’ so you can create thumbnails easily there too. Handy tip is that you can type in px after the number so give you the size in pixels rather than cm. In PowerPoint you can also create a jpeg to use as an image for your marketing – this creates a better quality image than if you use an image-snipping tool.
If you’re thinking of sharing craft resources, an important tip which Fiona shares is to document the process of creating your materials, either by videoing or photographing yourself making them, as these can be useful for marketing the product too.
You can of course rebrand at a later date!
Where can you sell things?
The benefit of using a platform is that you can reach a wider audience.
Teachers Pay Teachers is a big one. You can create a basic seller account which gives you 65% of the price or you can get a premium seller account which gives you 85% of the sale. This site also allows you to see who’s buying your resources – Fiona found that a lot of her customers weren’t in ELT, but perhaps working in speech therapy and other areas.
TES is another one – though it’s trickier to show good previews on there, making it difficult to showcase your resources.
boomcards are digital tasks, allowing you to create interactive activities for your learners to use which you can then sell.
Etsy is also another possibility – although it’s largely craft-based, people are starting to sell worksheets on there too.
One thing to be aware of is how the taxes differ: Teachers pay teachers is a US-based platform whereas TES is UK-based.
Another question is around who your target market is so it’s worth seeing who other materials at the site are aimed at (e.g. VYLs, Business English, etc.) to see if it’s the best place to try and sell things.
In terms of thinking about pricing, it’s worth having a look around at what other people are charging. Think as well about the amount of time you spend on creating a material as well.
One aspect to be aware of if you’re looking to sell on different international sites is whether teachers will be using American or British English – another benefit of self-publishing, as mentioned above, is that you can have differentiated versions for language variety too.
Other places for sharing resources include liveworksheets, ESLprintables, iSLCOLLECTIVE and teachermade – though these are sites which don’t charge for downloads, it can give you an idea of how interested people are in a material and you could also include a link to one of your ‘selling’ sites within the download.
What about setting up your own site?
When Fiona first created her site, Kids Club English, it was more a place for her to curate materials for herself and to share resources with parents to use at home so she has lots of great lists of YouTube videos and songs by theme, as well as her materials.
Easy digital downloads and WooCommerce are two ways you can sell materials from your site. Be aware that if people are paying through a third party, such as PayPal, you may also need to pay commission on the income and that you’ll also need to look into how to pay taxes for any earnings.
In terms of setting up a site, WordPress is a popular option and Fiona also said she’d heard about the free website guys but hadn’t used them herself.
If you’re interested in using one of Fiona’s resources, send her a message and she’ll send a free download – she’d love to get your feedback on how useful the resources are, what works well and constructive criticism on how to improve.
Just came across this blogpost from Nik Peachey with the pros and cons of self-publishing: https://peacheypublications.com/to-self-publish-or-not-to-self-publish-that-is-the-question