Part II - Action

Adventures of a Self-Published Author

Part 2 – Action

Sorry, it’s been a while since the last post, but I’ve been a little busy with the self publishing business. The last time we were together I shared the beginning of my journey into the literary field – The Plan. You always have to have a plan. The next step is putting your plan into action. Believe me when I say, THIS IS EASIER SAID THAN DONE.

The most frustrating part of my journey was determining where to go once my first great master piece was complete. The 50 pages I told you about last time turned into 800 plus pages. The large number of pages didn’t bother me because I was telling a story. As long as the story flowed it didn’t matter how long it was—right? WRONG! The number of pages did matter, or so I found out. I digress; let me go back a little.  

After completing my master piece, I began researching where I should go from there. The answer was The Writer’s Market. It’s a book that is published every year on where & how to sell your fiction novel, or short story. It has a wealth of information for anyone that is looking for an agent or a literary home. It tells you who handles what type of stories. For example, if you are writing a romance novel you wouldn’t want it to go to a publishing house that handles science fiction. You want it to go to a publishing house that handles romance. Here is the main lesson for this blog, DO YOUR RESEARCH.

Research? Hum, what are you trying to find you ask. Good question. You are trying to find a good fit for your master piece. You are trying to find the right publishing house and/or agent to market your novel. Some publishing houses have different imprints, so you need to research that also. For example, an imprint could be sweet romance, suspense romance, urban romance, erotica, or Christian romance. If your book is erotica, you don’t want to submit it to the Christian imprint, though the visual of the Christian agent reading your submission would be interesting, you are setting yourself of for a rejection. So take the time to research where and who you want to submit your master piece.

My research was in lighting, to say the least. There are hundreds, if not thousands of publishing house out there. But I persevered and found several publishing companies that I wanted to submit my novel to. Did I mention THIS IS EASIER SAID THAN DONE? Oh, I did—okay. This is where my problems began.

To submit a manuscript, to an agent or publishing house you have to do two things, other than write the book. You have to write a synopsis and a query letter. WHAT? WHY? Don’t they understand I’ve written a 190,000 word master piece? I don’t have any words left to write a letter or a synopsis. He--, (four letter word) I don’t even know what a synopsis is, for real. Sigh—, more research!

According to Webster a synopsis: a condense statement or outline; an abstract. Yeah, that helped—not. In the literary world a synopsis tells the major point and events of your book in a concise and accurate manner. In other words tell someone what your book is about without re-writing the entire story. I am going to be very honest here; I still have not acquired this skill. This is probably the number one reason why I self-publish. But I did try to write the synopsis.

Then there is the query letter. Well, this is a little easier than the dreaded synopsis, but still a difficult task for me. A query letter, as I understand it, is the attention getter. This letter is sent to an agent or publishing house as an attempt to get them interested in your novel. If your query letter is done well, the agent or publishing house may request your complete manuscript for review. So, what do you put in a query letter. Ahhh—more research.  You definitely want the opening statement to catch the interest of the reader.  Agents and publishing house received thousands of letters each day from eager new authors, and some of us not so new authors. Their time is limited, so you need your letter to capture their attention with the first line or two. Paraphrase the word you use when you are telling a friend about your book. How do you get them excited and eager to read your book? Do that with your letter. Then tell them about you—your experience or your connection with the topic of your novel. Most of all remember, you are trying to get them to believe in your story as much as you do. Sell it to them. Okay, I did that.

Now, it was time to submit my master piece. I sent the query letters, the synopsis and the first three chapters of my book to the top three publishing house of my choice. Now, all I have to do is sit back and wait for the bidding wars to see who would have the honor of selling my novel. LOL! Ahhh, that was so funny.

Let me tell you, when I received the first rejection letter, I shrugged it off saying, “they just didn’t see the greatness.” The second one came, I simple said, “oh.” The third one gave a little more than “I’m not interested.” It stated the general story was good, but the word count was off the chain. You may want to consider making it two books instead of one. Hence, the creation of Once You Touched The Heart and The Heart of Him.

Writing the next great mater piece is one thing. Getting it into the readers hand is another. Publishing is a business, whether you are with a publishing house, or self-publishing. Like any other business you have to work, and I do mean work hard at succeeding. The first step is learning all you can about the world of publishing. Take the time to research any and everything about how to get your great master piece into the hands of the reader. That, after all is the goal—right? 

Well, let’s see. We talked about planning and action. So what’s next? Ahhh yes, making the decision—Traditional or Self-publishing.

Until the next time,

Iris

Adventures of a Self-Published Author

Adventures of a Self-Published Author

Part 1 – The Plan

Where should I start? The beginning is always a good place. I was born the daughter of a share cropper……..screchhhhh. We don’t want to go that far back. LOL! Just a little humor to get your attention.

As those who write knows, it always starts with putting pen to paper, or pulling up the computer and putting fingers to keys. It really was just that simple for me. I needed a stress break from work. The job had deal some harsh blows, and I needed an escape, so I did what I always did, grabbed a romance novel. (Might as well escape with a good looking man that loved me beyond belief.) At the time it was a Brenda Jackson novel. My son was watching television in another room and I could hear President Bush (the son) in the background. The thought occurred to me that we need a President that cared about the people, the country, the world, anything but himself. “Can’t you find something better to watch on TV?” I asked my son, who has been heavy into politics since he was eighteen. “There’s nothing else on,” he replied. Understanding, I nodded in agreement. “The only thing on TV now is reality shows. Whatever happened to dramas?” Then he said something that changed our lives. “You have a wired imagination. Why don’t you write something and send it to the networks.” I stood there in the middle of the floor just staring at him with the romance novel in my hand and thought, why not. From the mouth of babes.

     I went back to my office, but my feet up and tried to continue reading my book. But my thoughts drifted back to my son’s suggestion. I put the book down, moved over to my computer and begin writing a story about a politician the cared about people, family driven and fine as Denzel Washington. At first I wrote about 50 pages and stopped. When I read it, I thought it was pretty good. So I called a friend over and asked her to read it. She came over, sat in my office and begin reading. I went in the kitchen to start my Sunday dinner. An hour or two later she emerged from the office, (I almost forgot she was in there) took a seat on my sofa in my living room and began asking a series of questions about the characters. To my surprise and hers, I was able to give her all sorts of details about each character in the very short story. It was funny because from there we talked for hours about what I had written. Her parting words were, you need to finish that book. “Book? What book? I was supposed to be writing a script for TV.”  

From September to December 2005, those 50 pages turned out to be the outline for 800 pages of what you now know as The Heart Series.  I put the information my friend extracted from me down on paper which gave me the family and friend structure. Then I put together a flow chart showing how and where each story connected to the next. Here’s the original layout;

  

As you can see, when I began my adventure in writing, it was never about just one book or just one series. From the very beginning the plan was set for The Heart Series, plus a few more. 

Why am I sharing this information you ask? That’s simple too. When I started on this journey, I knew nothing about writing, publishing, marketing or public relations. Even worst, I had no idea where to gather the information. Therefore I tapped into the only resource I knew, the internet. I began researching my favorite authors, how they got started, what motivated them and how they learned. Since Brenda Jackson, Beverly Jenkins, Francis Ray and others shared their experiences to help me with my journey it is only right for me to do the same for others. You know the helping hand theory.

This is the thought I want to leave you with. If you are truly interested in doing something, not just writing, but anything, make a plan. Take the time to research the area, don’t think because you have a little talent, a contract or offers are going to fall into your lap. Learn all you can, from whomever you can about the craft. Remember even bad information can be helpful. We learn the best lessons sometimes from failure.

Until the next time,

Iris