Sheri Fink | Best-Selling Children’s Book Author

Sheri Fink is an award-winning children’s book author behind the Little series, including The Little Rose and The Little Unicorn. She has been independently publishing for around a decade, and in that time has become one of the people other authors ask for advice - specifically, who should print their books.

Her answer, in this short piece, comes down to three things she names directly: print quality, price, and customer service. The first two are the obvious criteria. The third is the one independent publishers tend to underweight until something goes wrong mid-run, and it is why MCRL keeps its customer care team in North America rather than routing every question through an overseas plant.

Children’s picture books are a demanding format. Colour has to be accurate and consistent across a full print run, because a picture book lives or dies on its illustration reproduction. Board books need thick laminated stock and rounded corners for durability in small hands. Hardcover picture books need proper case binding to survive repeated reading. Those are exactly the specifications offset printing handles well and print-on-demand generally cannot, which is why established indie children’s publishers tend to move to offset once their print runs justify it.