Hello and welcome to blog number four! Today, I want to share my experience with the editing process and how I chose a publishing company—along with the lessons I learned the hard way.
When it was time to find a publisher, I did what most people do: I turned to Google. I simply searched for publishing companies, not even specifying the UK, and contacted several that showed up in the results. Only one company reached out to me, and I was beyond excited. At that point, I had written almost half of Unequally Yoked, so when they offered to have someone critique my book to see if it had market potential, I jumped at the opportunity.
Before I knew it, I had already paid for the critique—everything happened so fast that I barely processed it. But I reasoned that having a professional eye review my work was valuable, so I went ahead. Thankfully, the feedback was quite positive, and I took their suggestions to heart, making the adjustments.
However, looking back, I now realize I was so eager to move forward that I didn’t ask enough questions. The publishing package they offered was relatively cheap, and while that seemed like a great deal, I should have questioned why it was so inexpensive. The saying “you get what you pay for” is absolutely true in the publishing world.
So, for any aspiring writers out there, my biggest advice is: do your research. Writing a book is the easy part—everyone has a story inside them. But the process of publishing, marketing, and everything that comes after? That’s where it gets complicated. There’s so much I didn’t know, like the importance of having a website. Now, here I am, writing this blog to help you avoid some of the mistakes I made.
In the next blog, I’ll go into more detail about what I learned from this journey. Stay tuned!