Today we welcome Robert Wright to YABC! Robert’s new book, Witch Way Home, is filled with creatures from myths and stories, and a girl trying to find her way home. This fantastical story is a discovery of friends, foes, and heritage that will leave readers delighted! Robert is sharing a little bit more about his book and more about the publishing process with us!
Meet Robert.
Robert Wright is the new author of a series of books titled Witch Way Books. The first book, Witch Way Home, is now being finalized and prepared for publishing soon. For more information you can go to witchwaybooks.com or visit him on Facebook. Robert lives in Bellingham, Washington with his wife and youngest child (along with his imaginary friend Percy, the dragon) where his second book, Witch Way Back, will be set.
Now meet Robert’s book.
Trials of Indie Publishing for a First Time Author
By Robert Wright
So you are done with your project, your creation, your baby. You’ve spent months, maybe years writing, creating, and, yes, sometimes even destroying whole pages, or even chapters to perfect your craft. Now you are ready to spring this creation onto the readers you know are waiting with bated breath for your literary wonder. You have created the greatest story ever written, you know this in every fiber of your being. So how do you birth this creation? You can get an agent, send out mountains of copies of your work and hope to be discovered. Or you can do it the indie way. Keep control of your words, and fling them out to the world for all to read.
For the first time author it can like walking through a mine field. Sometimes it seems that one small step in the wrong spot and your dreams can come crashing down. For it can be more daunting publishing your book than the actual writing of the story, for many. There is the old adage that there is no such thing as a dumb question. As I learned in this travel through the land of indie publishing, there are as many answers to your questions as there are people you ask questions of. For as in writing styles, everyone has a method to publish that works for them, but it may not be right for another.
What may you ask did I decide to do? Well, thanks for asking! (See, told you there are no dumb questions). I gathered my editor, chief manager, and design maker (my wife) and we went the route of throwing our full weight behind putting out this new creation.
First we started in on the editing of the masterpiece I had created (or as I call it the slash and trash of my baby). You need a great relationship with an editor to walk you through the changes (and, yes, you will make many) in helping make your creation come alive. This can be an agonizing process for the author and, at times, is no picnic for the editor either – as I was reminded a number of times during the editing process of the book. While you are wading through this mire, hip deep, you wonder why what you wrote all those months ago are not the same words on your computer screen today. You will get to hear many helpful ideas from your editor on writing, such as “You do know that there are such things as commas and periods on the computer keyboard,” or “Is that really what you meant? Really?” Seriously though, a great editor will only make your creation better.
Your editing is moving along at a full head of steam, but you can’t sit still and wait for those readers to come to you. This is the time when we started to reach out and let people know that we had a great read on the horizon. First, my wife put on her design and manager hat and we came up with plans for creating a web/blog, business cards, and decided how we would publish this creation.
Simple stuff you say, right? Yeah, not so much, because there seems to be as many choices out there to publish as there are stars in the sky. Careful research and a ton of questions later, we figured out a plan of attack to storm the gates of self publishing. We set our budget (helps to have a web designer in the family) and ran with the site set up. Now we are hard at work shifting through the sands of beta reading the first edit (because you never get it all right the first time), while working on reaching out and finding the readers of the best book series written. As our travels in the publishing world continue, what we
learn on this first book will help create and polish the succeeding books to come your way from this author. So for those of you who toil to write, keep on and bring your creation to life. It may be a long road you travel, but at the end the enjoyment of seeing others read your baby is worth every step you take on the road to indie publishing.
What a great reminder for those of us writers AND readers out there! A big thank you to Robert Wright!
