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Monday, July 25, 2016

Self-Publish or Traditional Publish? Why not Both?



September asked me to write a post about my experience with being a hybrid author, which (for those not in the know) means being both self-published and traditionally published. Many well-known authors are now hybrids, having years ago made their name as bestselling, traditionally published authors, and have recently released their backlists through self-publishing. Other authors make it big on their own and then are offered mega contracts by big New York publishers who can help those superstars achieve things that are difficult to attain through avenues open to self-published authors.

Monday, July 18, 2016

Insights on the Traditional Publishing Life




Today I have a guest, author Shallee McArthur here to tell us about her experience with traditional publishing.

***

Ah, the Land of Traditional Publishdom. So many of us want it, but those gates are closed pretty tight. I started knocking on the gates—AKA querying my book, THE UNHAPPENING OF GENESIS LEE—with trepidation. Querying is no picnic. Except…for me, it kinda was. Within a week after I started querying, my agent offered. Within another week, I had two more offers. I accepted my agent Hannah Bowman’s offer with glee.

This was it! The hallowed gates of Publishdom had opened to welcome me, and what a welcome! My publishing path was paved with gold!

But here’s the thing. There is no path of gold in Publishdom. Sure, it only took me a week to get an agent, but it took me almost a year to get a publisher. And then I did, and I squealed and twirled my kids around the kitchen! I signed a shiny contract and had a shiny editor! Which, honestly, there are few better things in the world than that moment. Then, many other moments came.

Monday, July 11, 2016

Traditional Publishing: What it is, How it Works, and How to Do it




Two weeks ago I did my post on self-publishing, and now it's time for its counterpart: traditional publishing.

Traditional Publishing


Traditional publishing is when a publishing house publishes your book. Here in the U.S. (sorry, I'm not researching every country) there are four (used to be five) large publishing houses called "The Big Four," they are Simon & Schuster, Harpercollins, Penguin Random House, and Hatchette. Each of these publishing houses have what are called "imprints." An imprint is a trade name the publishing house prints under. So, you may have noticed books published by Knopf (such as Eragon by Christopher Paolini). Knopf is actually an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Monday, July 4, 2016

My Reasons for Self-Publishing




For the next month, I'll be blogging all about publishing, particularly for beginners. Last week I wrote an article, Self-Publishing: What it is, Who it's For, And How it Works, and next week I'll write about how to publish traditionally. Today, I have self-published author Lucinda Whitney here tell why she chose self-publishing.

Lucinda Whitney was born and raised in Portugal, where she received a master’s degree from the University of Minho in Braga in Portuguese/English teaching. She lives in northern Utah. When she’s not reading and writing, she can be found with a pair of knitting needles in winter, or tending her herb garden in the summer. She also works part-time as a substitute teacher. You can check out her books here.