Category: Self-Publishing

It’s a big, big, big day!

It’s a big, big, big day!

I always assumed that my first book would be a traditionally published one. To that end, over the years, I spent a lot of time researching query letters, synopses, and pitch contests. And I wrote a book. I revised (and revised and revised) it. My amazing beta readers and critique partners told me that my novel about a teenage barmaid in a world filled with Elementals and royalty, was ready to meet the world. So, I began querying, jumped into pitch contests, and waited. And waited. And waited. While I waited, I closely followed the paths of Leigh Ann Kopans and Jamie Grey, who both self-published their debut novels last year. Game-changer. I saw that they were putting out quality novels. I heard about the speed of self-publishing, the control that’s available to them, the decisions that they get to […]

The Importance of Having CPs

The Importance of Having CPs

Sometimes, when I browse writing and publishing blogs, I see excerpts of blog readers’ work– whether it’s a query submission or first pages, or anything else. Sometimes, the work is strong, sometimes not so much. But sometimes, they make mistakes that make me blanch and wonder “Why didn’t their Critique Partners or beta-readers catch that?” And sometimes, I can guess the answer to that question: They don’t have a CP or beta. Because here is something else I see in the comments of those blogs: complaints about the difficulty of finding a CP or a beta. First of all, to those people, I say: you are wrong. Involve yourself in the writing community or in the community around your genre and it becomes easy. I met one of my CPs, Alex, in an online YA writing class on Litreactor. My […]