It Doesn't Just Happen

By  Amy McCorkle

Let me first say the moment you open that acceptance letter, whether it’s by email or snail mail is overwhelming. I was thirty-five when my first book was accepted. I cried. I had been writing since I was five and trying for publication since I was eighteen. It is a moment to rejoice, to celebrate. You’ve come a long way, but you should know, it’s a whole new publishing world out there and my journey is simply my experience and I hope this will be of some help.

In May 2010, I wrote Another Way to Die. In November, my best friend’s father went into the hospital for a liver transplant. As he struggled to recover, I realized my book was sitting on my hard drive going nowhere. Feeling my own mortality as he deteriorated I knew my career wasn’t just ‘going to happen’. So as my own clock started ticking I submitted my manuscript and got notes to revise and resubmit. I decided I had to do it and rewrote the whole thing. If I can offer any one piece of advice, it is this, start building your platform early. What is a platform? In your career as a writer, your platform is you. At a free online conference given by Savvy Authors called Digicon, publishers were invited and I pitched Another Way to Die to every one of them. They all accepted. I chose to go with MuseItUp Publishing, an epublisher. I learned what you needed for a platform. Basics, Facebook, Twitter, Official Author Site, and a blog.

Turns out Muse prides itself on cultivating and nurturing new talent. Muse offers Yahoo groups to join, and has a database of other sites valuable to writers. But Muse is an epublisher and you want a New York deal. I can only give you the benefit of my experience. I have three books out at Muse and each one has sold progressively more than the last. How come? Well one is readership, but I gained that readership by blogging, tweeting, and facebooking and updating my website from time to time. Yes, that dreaded P word. . So how do you promote an ebook?

Because I write dystopian/scifi and dark romantic suspense I go to Cons, they’re relatively cheap and you can usually get in free if you sit on panels. But if you have ebooks and I have four out now (I’m also with the small press Promotion  online is your market. And when I say promote I don’t just mean tweeting your book incessantly. You have to build relationships with your following on Twitter and FB.

Does a career in epublishing really work? Well I’ve done everything above; I have 12 contracts, two writing awards, and several blogging awards. Am I rich? Only time will tell. One thing I know for certain it doesn’t ‘just happen’, you have to make it happen.

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Amy McCorkle is an award winning author from Kentucky. Her newest book, Bounty Hunter releases this month. She is a 2012 Moondance International Film Festival,Semi-Finalist for her short story.