Amazon announced today that children’s book authors have a new way to get their stories in front of young readers without the involvement of a traditional publisher. The Kindle Direct Publishing Kids program allows authors to sell their books for children straight through the Kindle Store without needing an editor or agent to step up and publish their book.

The move is a big step for kids’ authors interested in self-publishing their work. The adult version of KDP has helped launch the careers of several authors, and there are plenty of people out there who want to make it big by writing books for youngsters.

In addition, Amazon sees this as a way for authors who have already had their books published in paper form to bring them to an e-book platform and reap the additional profits available by providing an electronic version of their work. Books uploaded through KDP Kids can also get included in the KDP Select program, which will make them eligible for Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited subscription service as well as marketing tools like Kindle Countdown Deals.

Authors will be able to set recommended age and grade ranges for reading their books, so that parents can get guidance about what texts to pick up for their young ones. Of course, parents probably want to take a look at the books they’ll be reading before opening them up in front of the kids.

Amazon also announced the Kindle Kids’ Book Creator alongside the new platform. As the name suggests, it’s designed to make it possible for children’s book authors to produce their own digital picture books for kids to read. The software will make it easy for authors to take advantage of Kindle features like text pop-ups. Users can import their books from a variety of file formats including PDFs, JPEGs and TIFFs.