What I never knew I would have to do and what I never even thought of when deciding to publish.

While I was working on my final copy, I discovered that I had a bit of work to do on my author's center on the Outskirts Press web site.  I had already entered in the general details of my book:  category and number of pages.  Looking closer at the first steps, I realized that I needed to supply information that I never thought about.  Guess I just figured that the publisher would do that.  Oops!  That's me now.

I needed to supply an author bio, a summary of the book, decide what I wanted to be printed in bold on the back of the book at the beginning of the summary, determine the layout of the inside of the book, pick a book size, and decide on the price of the book and on my royalty percentage.

Writing my bio and the summary of my story was not difficult.  These have been done in many forms a number of times.  What was difficult was deciding what words would appear in bold on the back cover.  I worked through several ideas and picked the following:  A princess at 12, but a queen at 13?  I liked it but it will be interesting to see what their scribes do with it as well as with my bio and summary.  I decided to pay the extra ($99) for that as well as the cover($299).  If people do not get beyond the cover (front and back), then it doesn't matter how good my story is.

I decided on a 6" x 9" book and then picked how the first page of my chapters would look.  One thing I have found with Outskirts is that they recommend what they think is best, but you are not locked into that.  The web site carefully explains what you are getting with each option in all areas.  And I have to plug my author's rep here because he has never tired of my inane questions.  In fact he has even called me at home to reassure me when I had trouble uploading my final copy.  But more about that later.

The other thing I needed to take care of was the price of the book and the size of my royalty.  I'm not totally clear on this yet.  Right now I've picked a $9.95 price.  It is a bit high I feel, but it also nets me a royalty of around $.85 per book.  Again, my author rep told me that we can work on that later and arrive at a satisfying price later.

Next time I walk you through my final submission process as well as my limited experience with images for the inside of my book.

The first few entries will catch you up with where I am currently at.

When I first decided to publish my middle grade novel in July 2008 with Outskirts Press, I have gone through many emotions, motions, and doubts.  The main reason I decided to proceed with self publishing is because at the last two conferences I attended, publishers' reps told us that they were working on acquiring books to publish in 2012!

Determined to publish, I signed up with Outskirts for a $35.00 fee and waited.  A few days later, I received my publisher's rep via email.  A nice introduction and what appeared to be a sincere offer of assistance.

I downloaded their publishing catalog which I read thoroughly.  Then I sat back and pondered what I had committed myself to.  Let me insert here that I went with Outskirts after all of their exposure in Writer's Digest  and after investigating other companies.  Still I hesitated to chose the program that I wanted and to pay that final payment.

Finally in August, still only out $35.00, I buckled down and did some final editing and fine-tuning and then sent my novel to my author's rep.  I waited somewhat patiently as he read my novel. 

The day the email came telling me of Outskirts' acceptance of Guinevere was one of joy and doubt.  The review was positive but not without criticism.  As an English teacher who has taught and graded writing for years, I was upset when informed that my manuscript contained grammatical errors.  It was suggested that I take advantage of Outskirts' line editing option.  The cost for this is 1.4 cents per word.  My manuscript is nearly 30,000 words.  You do the math. I chose to spend that money on a custom cover instead.

Determined that I could do the editing, I got together with my friend who has helped me clarify and edit throughout the last 5 years, and we spent almost 3 months going over the book checking and rechecking pronouns, clarity, punctuation, dialogue tags, and much more.  I added additional sections to make the book more receptive to school librarians, teachers, and parents.  The two of us read the entire book out loud twice to make sure that every word was what it should be and that the story did not drag or lose focus. Guess we'll all see how well we did.

During that time, I decided on the Diamond program and paid my balance in September.  The Diamond program is $1000.00.  I also receive some free extras like additional author copies, but right now I can't remember what they are.  Good thing I downloaded and kept my contract.

Next:  What I never knew I would have to do and what I never even thought of when deciding to publish.

It's been five years and numerous rewrites but this weekend I finally sent Guinevere: On the Eve of Legend to the publisher.  I am excited and can't wait to see the first proofs in about 3-4 weeks.  I'll keep everyone posted.

Cheryl Carpinello

November 2008 is drawing to a close and I have to announce that my earnings this month have doubled what I received last month for 5 months of writing for the on-line Suite101.com magazine.  I must be improving and I also have started focusing on more general interest articles rather than educational articles. 

I now wait only on my illustrator to finish to send my middle grade novel Guinevere: On the Eve of Legend to the publisher Outskirts Press.  I am excited and taking a short break before tackling the third rewrite on my next middle grade novel for boys.  I will post when Guinevere is available for purchase.

In the meantime, I am researching articles for Christmas to submit to Suite101.com.

If you are interested, here is the link to my articles

www.suite101.com/profile.cfm/ccarpine

After 5 months of writing non-fiction articles for Suite101.com, I finally received my paycheck.  A wopping $10.60!!  Not much, right?  But with this paycheck comes continued support and constructive criticism, an in-depth review of my writing every 3 months and a stable of 20 articles.  Many writers would not do this, but I encourage writers of all types to find someplace like this to safely write and receive critiques and exposure.