There are two types of Children book publishers, one is the traditional children book publisher and second is the Self publisher who deal in children book designing and publishing. All of us are aware about how the traditional publishers work, if they select a story, then the Author is given some amount of Money upfront and rest of the money is paid as royalty, after the books starts to sell in the market.
Every publisher does not publish all kind of children story books, there are different genres which various publishers publish. It may be educational, middle grade, picture books, young adult, junior fiction, teen fiction etc. So, while sending your Manuscript to any children book publisher, you must do your research and only send your work to suitable publishers. It is also a universal fact that you don’t hear from the publishers immediately, although if your story is good and the publishers finds it interesting, then yes, you may hear from them.
One must also follow the rules and procedure laid down for submission of the manuscript by the publishers. Usually a query letter is sent and depending upon the publishers requirement, you may send a few chapters from the manuscript. It varies from publisher to publisher.
As far as self publishers are concerned, they will offer you the designing service and a few may also offer printing service. Most of them are offering the marketing service but none of them will guarantee you the physical distribution of the books in the market. While choosing the self publisher, you must work out on a budget plan for yourself, as everything here will cost you money, right from designing, editing, ISBN, cover pages, printing and marketing.
The self publishers usually offer various packages and depending upon the number of services included, the rates are fixed.
You can also make use of the services offered by Createspace, they offer you free publishing, given that you have some designing skills and if you don’t, then you can hire a designer who can help you with everything. The best option is to ask your illustrator do the designing for you as the illustrators are creative and also, they have already created the illustrations for your book.