AUTHOR SILVIA VILLALOBOS ON THE ROAD TO PUBLICATION!

Silvia Villalobos, a native of Romania who lives immersed in the laid-back vibe of Southern California, is a writer of mystery novels and short fiction. Her stories have appeared in The Riding Light Review, Pure Slush, and Red Fez, among other publications. Her debut novel, STRANGER OR FRIEND, will be released by Solstice Publishing and is now available for pre-order on Amazon. 

The Inspiration Behind the Novel

STRANGER OR FRIEND is the culmination of two lives at a confluence of cultures: an Eastern European immigrant—yours truly—married to a California native of Hispanic descent. The result is a fictionalized story, an observation, of intersecting cultures, newcomers, rejection, and acceptance. With the legal field as my background, it came to pass that Zoe, the main character, should be a lawyer, and after much deliberation, would travel from Los Angeles to Wyoming. This is the story of a woman going back home, only to find that home is no longer the place she remembers, or maybe a place she never really knew.

The Road to Publication

The road to publication is full of bends, climbs, and descents, a sinuous path of joy and heartbreak. Mine was no different. As I await release of my mystery novel, STRANGER OR FRIEND, available on amazon, I would like to offer a glimpse at this winding path.

How it All Began

Writing has always been a part of my life. As a child, I idolized Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu, and folk-tale writer Ion Creanga. They set my imagination loose and made it imperative that I put my thoughts on paper. 

In high school, an essay I wrote on Eminescu’s Evening Star, prompted a teacher to offer dreams-propelling praise, and that was when serious writing—mostly blurred thoughts and unfinished stories—began for me.

When family and work demanded my time, I took a break, but the writing bug kept biting. After a long pause, I joined The InternetWriting Workshop—an online critique group, staffed with volunteers and free of charge—the best decision of my writing life. It didn’t take long for the first critique to arrive, one of praise but also criticism and suggestions for improvement. Line by line I worked through my story, analyzing comments, editing, re-writing, learning.

The following year, when I began querying agents, there were requests for a partial manuscript, but never an offer. So, back to my critique group I went, with another novel, submitting chapters over the course of a year, writing short stories at the same time, submitting, editing, and reading. Always reading. Every rejection became another lesson, and to keep it from burning a hole through my heart, another submission went out the day the rejection came in.

It is no secret that agents prefer authors with a built-in following—not always, but most times—so, I decided to turn to independent publications for my short stories, and many were accepted.

After this small but important victory, I began shopping my novel to independent houses, and following months of querying I received an offer from Solstice Publishing. If ever excitement were uncontainable for the writer who began with a high school essay, that acceptance sure was.

Why Not Self Publish

It’s reassuring to know self-publishing is always an option. However, I wanted to step into the publishing business with a team by my side, people who know much more about the business side of things than I ever would, no matter the amounts of material I read on the subject. There are no guarantees for success, but if I were to take this step, I wanted it to be under the auspices of a publishing house. Personal preference.

What I Learned in the Process 

The road to publication is rarely short. Learning from rejections is part of the process. Working on one’s art and craft every day is not only rewarding but crucial. Reading, in and out of a preferred genre, and joining a critique group are essential, because writing is one thing and writing, well, is something else entirely. And please, arm yourself with patience. No editor likes impatient writers who just react to rejections.

Marketing

This part will make your head spin, but with organization, it can be done. Sure, there are publicists who do this, and the big houses hire them, but not independent publishers. They help with marketing, but there is no publicist. My understanding is that big houses also expect writers to work on marketing, publicist or not, so it would serve a writer well to learn and thoroughly practice this part of the business.

Build your name brand (Twitter, Facebook, etc.). Put together a Media Kit or Press Kit. This includes your bio, bibliography, cover art, photo(s) and links, all in one document. More on this below.

Do you have a blog? If you’re reading this, the answer is probably yes. A writer without a blog cuts herself way short. Post interesting articles, stay active within the blogging community. This will come in handy for blog tours. Look into organizing signing events in your area. What about the local radio and newspapers? Many outlets love to support local authors. I have a radio interview scheduled with my local station. This is when you will need a Press Kit. Editorial sites and radio stations expect a Press Kit. Get creative. Marketing is not only a way of doing, but a way of thinking in our service-driven society, as marketing books will tell you. 

Many thanks to Deb for hosting me, and the readers of this blog for reading my story. I’d be happy to answer any questions and elaborate on any points left unaddressed either here, at my blog, SilviaWrites, or website strangerorfriend.

 

 

GUEST AUTHOR C. LEE MCKENZIE ON PUBLISHING, TRADITIONAL AND INDIE!

Deb asked me to address some questions that might help others when they go through the publishing process the first time. I think this is a great idea. I could have used some answers from those who preceded me, but I was so new to writing and publishing fiction that I didn’t even know what to ask.

Anyway, here are my answers to Deb’s Questions  

 Question: What was it like going through the various stages of editing?

My first and second young adult books (Sliding on the Edge and The Princess of LasPulgas) were traditionally published, and I was fortunate to have a fantastic editor for both. She had twenty-eight years of experience in the publishing business, and she was a published author whom they hired to acquire and edit books for them. She suggested one change in the structure of the novel Sliding on the Edge, which I did because it was a great suggestion and because she knew what she was doing. Also the change was a matter of writing an Epilogue, which took me only about half an hour because I knew exactly what it had to say. Why I didn’t write it before is a mystery to me, but as I already explained, I was very much the novice.

With these two books, I did three rounds of line edits using Track Changes. The goal was to have no comments left in the document. For Sliding on the Edge, I estimate I spent a total of 30 hours stretched over two weeks. It’s hard to tell exactly how much time I spent on this, because I had questions, and after asking them, I had to wait until the editor got back to me. With The Princess of Las Pulgas there were only a few edits and they took about three hours in one sitting—well, I took some short breaks. Between communications with her, I remember a lot of waiting and worrying. But I do that about anything I’m uncertain about.

With Alligators Overhead, the book I published on my own, I’d asked an editor friend to do the final edits for me, but she was called away on an emergency, so I foolishly did those final edits myself. The first edition had errors, and I was horrified. I quickly fixed those, but hated that my first Indie book initially went out with at least ten typos. Never again. If I go Indie for another book, it will be professionally edited up to the publication.

Question: I’d like to know how you went about deciding on a cover, or did your publisher help you with that, too? Did they find you the artist for the cover, or were you on your own?

For my first traditionally published book, the publisher chose the artist and then sent me three concepts for the cover. I asked friends and family to weigh in, and we all chose the same one. Personally, I love my cover. Sliding on the Edge has the idea of a girl in crisis and alone. It has the horses and the rural setting of the story. It’s not sexy or glam like some YA fiction, but the story isn’t a sexy one, and the only glam in it is a beautiful horse, so the cover made sense to me. For The Princess of Las Pulgas, the publisher presented the cover already chosen. I had no input.

Question: What headaches did you suffer, what surprises came up, and what, if anything, went easier than you expected?

The editing was a bit boring, but I did it chunks. I had to chunk it because if I didn’t, I’d make more mistakes. I estimate my on-task time for each editing period was about an hour. Then I’d take a break. Choosing the cover was painless. The whole pre-publishing process was relatively easy. It was the post-publishing process that gave me headaches.

During my debut launch, Sliding on the Edge didn’t arrive in time for a major bookstore event. Then when book two was published, I arranged to present a paper at a Florida National Council of Teachers of English, so I could sign The Princess of Las Pulgas. Those books didn’t arrive, so I wound up signing Sliding.

One thing most new authors should expect is to pay for a lot of travel expenses. As it was, I didn’t mind paying to go to this event because I wanted to go and had planned to anyway. The issue was that the publisher didn’t support me as an author who was just starting out.

To read more about that experience, see THE WRITE GAME. So, I guess you could say this was the time the real headaches happened, and I was constantly surprised by the publisher’s choices. They wouldn’t do a paperback or an eBook. The only format they made available was a hardcopy. They wouldn't create the “Look Inside” feature that Amazon has as a marketing tool. My hands were tied until I asked for and got my rights back.

 Question: What did they tell you might be your sales outlook/projection (or do they

stay out of that), and do they offer any promotion help or at least ideas?

Their job is to choose titles they think will sell, so I assume they had confidence that my book would appeal to their readers because they paid me a healthy advance for each book. PW would say my advances were “good,” especially for a new author. This publisher was going for a contemporary/realistic niche in the market. They didn’t do speculative or dystrophic fiction, so I think they hoped to carve out sales from those who weren't interested in angels and fairies and zombies. I had nothing to do with sales projections, but a lot to do with marketing. I just didn’t understand how much at the outset. It was never stated how much or exactly what I was expected to do. The publisher suggested I hop on Facebook and Twitter, and that was about it.

When I realized I had much more work to do if I expected Sliding on the Edge to do anything, I contacted bookstores, libraries, and local schools. My best support came from my local newspaper, and articles they printed netted me several book signings in my town. Later those book signings led to annual writing workshops and high school visits. I was building my network in person, while I was building it online. This paid off for my second and third books, because I had the contacts and they emailed me to visit their schools or appear at book signings.

The publisher held two book signings for me. The one in Florida that I’ve already mentioned and a second signing in L.A. at the ALA Conference. In L.A. they had a booth, and I met many authors in person that I had only contacted via social media. It was a good experience in that I visited a lot of different publishing houses and got a sense of their books and their style.

Question: How much time goes into your own marketing of your books, and is it more or less than you expected, and how much time does that leave for writing?

With book one, I was unprepared for marketing and all that it required. I blogged a bit and I signed up for Facebook and Goodreads (which still confuses the heck out of me). I even started Tweeting, something that baffles my family. “You do what?”

But I was behind the learning curve on marketing, so I didn’t do a great job, and I was hacking away at book two, The Princess of Las Pulgas, so what had been a wonderful writing experience with book one, turned into a real job with this second one. I was up at four in the morning to write until at least seven, then doing social media and trying to find time for the rest of my life. Sleep would have been nice.

Question: What would you do differently in the future?

I would be more savvy at marketing. I would spend more time building my network of followers and concentrate on how I want to be seen by readers. I think I would invest in a truly good marketing firm. But realistically, back then when I was dealing with book one, I didn’t know if I’d sell that book. I was paddling in a very large sea without a clue about how deep it was or how far I might go. It seemed ill advised to spend so much money before I had an inkling about how my book would be received. With book two I’d at least found a paddle for that boat and I had something of a following online. I was being asked to contribute to anthologies, so I did that and I garnered more attention for this second book. I paid for two ads on FB (they did nothing for my sales). I did a giveaway on Goodreads and started getting good reviews. I’d do more on Goodreads if I had it to do again.

Since that first publisher, I’ve already moved through a different publishing experience. As I said, with my middle grade novel, Alligators Overhead, I went Indie and used Outskirts Press. I chose them based on a friend’s recommendation. They provided editing (this was about the same experience as with the traditional publisher), interiors (dingbats and fonts to enhance the look of the page) that were interesting, photo galleries for me to choose the basic cover, then they had artists enhance the cover to suit my story. You have marketing options with them as well.

The downside is it’s expensive, but the upside is that when you don’t know anything about how to publish a book, you can learn. I didn’t have time to do everything myself, so Outskirts Press was a solution at the time.

My third young adult book has just been accepted by a small press, Evernight Teen. So this next experience will be different again.

Double Negative will come out as an eBook, then if sales support it, they will do a POD paperback. I like this idea and it makes me think this publisher has a smart business plan.

They have a strong social media presence, and they will help with sending the book out to reviewers. They will also contact bloggers and do some online promo which looks like giveaways and contests linked to some of their other books.

I will do a blog tour on my own, and I’ve already started asking for help. Since the pub date is July, I’m scrambling to pull everything together fast. Fortunately, I now know a little more about what marketing is expected of me and how to do it.

While they’ve suggested some marketing strategies, they’ve not given me a specific “must do” list outside of posting their logo on my website, visiting their FB page for authors regularly and contacting reviewers.

I just completed the editing process. Again, they use Track Changes and there were few edits, mostly at punctuation level. I seem to forget commas pretty regularly.

See C. Lee McKenzie at http://cleemckenziebooks.com/

C. Lee McKenzie is a native Californian who grew up in a lot of different places, then landed in the Santa Cruz Mountains where she lives with her family and miscellaneous pets. She writes most of the time, gardens and hikes and does yoga a lot, and then travels whenever she can. 

She takes on modern issues that today's teens face in their daily lives. Her first young adult novel, Sliding on the Edge, which dealt with cutting and suicide was published in 2009. Her second, titled The Princess of Las Pulgas, dealing with a family who loses everything and must rebuild their lives, came out in 2010. Her short stories appear in the anthologies, The First Time and Two and Twenty Dark Tales. In 2012, her first middle grade novel, Alligators Overhead, came out. This year Double Negative, her young adult story about a functionally illiterate teen, will be out as an eBook.

 

 

 

 

GUEST AUTHOR JORDAN McCOLLUM on WHY I REJECTED MY PUBLISHER

If you’ve poked around my site or been a subscriber for a while, you might remember that in November 2011, I received an offer of publication from a regional publisher, with a 2013 anticipated release….Like any publishing offer, it was a long time coming.   Three years and two weeks after I started the novel. Two years after I submitted it to the same publishing house the first time (obviously they rejected it, and with good reason). Eighteen months after an editor at the publishing company told me not to bother resubmitting the revised, newly-award-winning manuscript. Almost nine months after I went ahead and did it anyway.   I got the good news at a writers’ retreat and I was so excited to share with my friends there. After seeing other friends have contracts fall through, I’d always vowed that I wouldn’t make any announcements until after the contract was signed. But the contract would be months in coming….   While we waited on that contract, they assigned me an editor, who happened to be someone I’ve wanted to work with for a long time. They asked me for the “final” submitted version of my manuscript (although editing was at least a year away). They requested an author photo, then a release from my amazing photographer. They needed tax documents. I got it all turned in.   Finally, the contract came in the mail. I held my breath as I opened that big white envelope and read through those pages with my publisher’s name and mine. And I cried.   But they weren’t tears of joy.   …With a friend’s recommendation, I consulted with a lawyer who specializes in contract disputes and intellectual property law. He spent looong billable hours reading the contract and writing me an extremely thorough analysis. And, yeah, it was as bad as I feared.   Worse. The deal breaker In the olden days (ten years ago), a book had a fairly short lifespan: a few months to make or break its print run, languish on the shelves a few more months, then the bargain bin, then it went out of print. After a certain period of time “out of print,” the rights to the book reverted to the author. Hundreds of authors who had trade published books revert to them now have those same books for sale forever as ebooks.   Naturally, I was very worried about the possibility of a book never being declared “out of print” because the publisher had an ebook version on the “shelves.” I might never get the rights to my backlist back unless the publisher was feeling very generous. (We actually did reach a minor compromise on this issue, for shared rights.)   But my lawyer was more concerned with another issue, one that I was anticipating, but didn’t think it would be as bad as the reality. The contract demanded the right of first refusal on basically everything I might write for the next 21 years. If I submitted any work anywhere else, it would be deemed accepted by this publisher, and contractually obligated to them first. There was no timeline in the original contract, meaning they could spend three years sitting on my manuscript, before granting me one year to try to find someone else to take it (after which the time frame and rejection process would start over). …. After consulting with my lawyer on how best to proceed with negotiations, I did what I could….I offered options, options I knew other authors had gotten added to their contracts with this company, and options I knew other publishers used. I gave some, and they gave a little.   Ultimately, however, they wouldn’t budge on the most important issue. They did tell me that if I had a book under contract with another publishing house, they’d revise that ROFR clause (of necessity). I didn’t. My contract with this publisher went on hold while I pursued publication for another book. My editor left publishing for law school. I took my publication year, 2013, off my blog and social media profiles. Then the publisher’s name. The emotional side Yes, I did cry when I read the contract the first time. But when it came down to it, this was a business decision. There was no way I could sign over control of my entire career for more than two decades. Even if this was to be my one and only chance, if it came down to a choice between never, ever publishing a book, or taking that contract as it stood, I would rather never publish…. The end I spent literally years holding out for a better contract. I self-published that second novel I wrote since receiving the offer and the novella and a sequel to each. Both novels were named finalists for the most prestigious award in that regional market (being 2 out of 5 of the finalists). Even after all that, I sent a final message to the publisher. I told them I didn’t want to burn any bridges, but I would need to see changes to these clauses of the contract.   They said no.   So I said no.   I did the unthinkable: I walked away from a publishing contract. I rejected my publisher and published myself. I didn’t (and don’t) need a publisher to turn out top caliber books or even get them to bookstores. I didn’t have to sacrifice my control over my career, my vision for my books or my artistic integrity. It was nice to have the external validation of a publishing offer, but in the end, I didn’t need them to share my stories, and the costs of using their services instead of contracting my own far exceeded the benefits, especially when it came to my career….   An award-winning author, Jordan McCollum can’t resist a story where good defeats evil and true love conquers all. In her day job, she coerces people to do things they don’t want to, elicits information and generally manipulates the people she loves most—she’s a mom.   See more on this topic at Jordan’s site, which is one of my favorite blogs to read. http://jordanmccollum.com/2014/06/rejected-publisher/ Jordan holds a degree in American Studies and Linguistics from Brigham Young University. When she catches a spare minute, her hobbies include reading, knitting and music. She lives with her husband and four children in Utah.   Because she’s a true professional, Jordan refrained from naming the publisher in this article, as her intent is not to punish the publisher, but rather, to make a point: “Authors need to be careful of contracts and guard their rights, and be willing to walk away from a publisher who won’t do that.”   http://JordanMcCollum.com   To save her secrets and her country, CIA operative Talia Reynolds must sacrifice the man she loves. I, SPY, 2013 Whitney Award Finalist   CIA operative Talia Reynolds's new boss is her ex-boyfriend. And that's just the beginning of her problems. SPY FOR A SPY, 2013 Whitney Award Finalist