Publishing Myths!

I’ve been spending some time on Threads recently. I like it, mostly. One thing I’ve enjoyed is that the algorithm is showing me a lot of posts from authors, and I like reading about others’ experiences, especially as I navigate self-publishing a novella this week. (More on that below!)

One puzzling phenomenon I see in online author spaces are posts that pit indie and traditional authors against each other. And a lot of these posts, especially from indie authors, contain a lot of misinformation. I don’t blame the authors posting this stuff for it! I think there are just a lot of misperceptions and bad information out there, and people are just sharing things they’ve heard.

So, for example, it seems to be a common misperception that traditional publishers won’t even consider your book unless you have a big social media following. This has never been true in my experience, and plenty of editors have said on social media that, while a big platform is certainly a plus, if the editor likes the book, it doesn’t matter.

I cooked up this workshop months ago. My plan was to debunk some common writing myths (kind of an expanded, workshop version of this post). Stuff like “show don’t tell” and “write what you know,” etc. Then I would debunk some publishing process myths. (Aside from being an author, I’ve worked in publishing for more than twenty years. My whole professional life is making books. So I have expertise here!)

A lot of my subscribers here have taken workshops with me before. This one is kind of an experiment to see if it’ll work, but I think it’ll be fun and informative.

Sign up for the workshop here!

Other news, in brief:

I’m working on a few longer posts about inspiration and thinking outside the box that I hope to send out soon.

Most of my writing energy has, however, gone toward NaNoWriMo. I will likely hit the 50,000 word mark today! (NaNoWriMo as a national organization has gotten some flak for not acting fast enough to stop bad behavior by a moderator on their forums. I only just found out about this a few days ago because I haven’t been using the forums, but if you’ve heard about authors quitting, that’s probably why.) Regardless of how you feel about the national organization, I still think the quest is worthwhile and I intend to finish the novel I started this month, time willing, and I’ve enjoyed chatting with other writers in my region’s Discord.

And I self-published a novella this week! I’ll have more to say about that soon, too. This is the first time I’ve self-published an entirely new story (I’ve put out six books on my own prior to this, but they’ve all been reissues of previously published books/stories for which I got the rights back). This is also the first time I’m trying out putting a book in Kindle Unlimited. So it’s been an experience so far. (I’m using this space to talk about writing, but if you’re interested in checking out the novella, it’s a friends-to-lovers romance called Love 101.)

Anyway, I know the workshop timing is not ideal given the Thanksgiving of it all, but if you’ve got time, or if your friends do, I’d love to get some more people in the workshop.