Mini books

An affordable (and charming) approach to distributing full advance copies of picture books.

Enchanted Lion started down the road of “mini books” in the 2010s, before PDFs became not only the generally accepted, but requested mode for book galleys. Before 2020, and Covid, which normalized PDFs, we needed to be able to send physical copies of our picture books to our sales reps and to bookstore buyers. This posed a challenge to a small press like ELB, since we aren’t able to print books a year in advance like many larger publishers, and the bulk shipment of our books usually only arrives 6-8 weeks before publication. We, therefore, had to find an affordable approach to getting full advance copies out to people, since it’s necessary for children’s publishers, unlike adult book publishers, to send the entire book. Everyone cares about what’s in a picture book, how it’s written, where it goes, and what’s being given to a child to read. Full size children’s books are expensive to print for galley copies, and sending a “sample” or “chapter,” just isn’t going to work.

Thus, before the normalization of PDFs, we had to get creative with this (in fact, we’re thinking of doing so again, since scrolling a PDF is nothing like turning the pages of a book), so in order to send out galleys of our children’s books, we decided to make small, floppy zine-like copies of our picture books. These mini books were an underdog move, but proved to be a huge small press advantage — everyone loved them!

Here is a gallery of some of our mini books below:

The Coziest Place on the Moon

The Smallest Elephant in the World, Noodlephant

Chirri & Chirra

Layla’s Happiness

The Flops

The Smallest Elephant in the World

Writing prompts from Enchanted Lion.

Write about a time you had to adapt, creatively. What did you make? What was lost, and what was gained?

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