 Let me start by saying, I'm not a literary agent and one of the best things you can do to protect yourself and your rights is find a professional who you trust to help you. One of the other nest things, is to know the following information.
We have a lot of advice on here for indies, but the fact is, there are a lot of options to authors today and trade authors are not the only ones who need to be weary of contracts.
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 I've been thinking about ways to share the unique tools and people I've found in this industry over the last several years. I still have plans for a pretty epic giveaway but I want to provide this information now. There are so many amazing tools and so much information out there, it can be difficult to know who to listen to and what to do. So here are the people I listen to.
 Congrats on those 70K words you just wrote! Now condense them into 200.
You’d think writing a book is the hardest part of being an author. However, as anyone who has tried will tell you, writing the description is far worse! If you haven’t finished your book, don’t even think about your description. You might find things change or pieces that weren’t important before are now key plot points. I like to wait until I’m finished with my first big revision, just before line edits.  There are a lot of misconceptions about self/indie publishing. The one I hear most and possibly the most annoying is how easy it is. How you're not a "real" author if do it yourself. Well, I'm here to tell you, not only are you a "real" author, you're also a badass. And I want to help you in all your badassery.
 Up until this year I’ve had good experiences with my editors--and I’ve worked with five professional, paid editors. I’ve always been someone who is pretty good about understanding the difference between a good, tough edit and subjective choices and almost always err on the editor’s side when it comes down to it. I might love my book, but I know when someone is working with me to make it the best it can be!
 photo from pexels.com As a mother of three listening to the Being Boss podcast about how to manage your business with children was… frustrating. It’s not their fault. The transition from no kids to one is a huge change and learning to adjust your time and priorities is challenging. For me it was actually easier after I had my first child. He put me on a schedule and always napped at the same time but that’s not necessarily normal. I had my... son when I was twenty and decided to follow my passion for writing fiction about seven months later, after the PPD subsided. The change from one child to two is harder than the change from zero to one. If you have a child and are running a successful creative business, writing or otherwise, there are steps you’ll want to take to ensure your success and help save you from burning out. If I sat down and thought about my business and my life the way I’m about to lay it out for you here earlier in my career, it would have taken off sooner and I’d be in a very different place. Of course without the lovely ladies at Being Boss, I wouldn’t have looked at my life as hard as I had to to find the solutions. I’m not the kind of person to listen to advice and think “Well that’s great but it wont work for me because of X, Y, or Z.” I listened to the podcast and realized a lot of what they were saying would not work for me, but rather than accepting my fate and deciding to give up and trying to find work/life boundaries I started working through the problem. Here’s what I learned through that process and talking to other successful entrepreneurs with multiple children.
 I started studying marketing and business in 2011. I was a new mother and finally had my little boy on a decent schedule. My friend (and future business partner) Sara was gearing up to find herself an agent and get published. I was just getting back into writing myself and decided I’d help her hunt for agents since she was in school still and surfing the internet is really easy while feeding a baby or trying to stay quiet while he naps.
 Success is a tricky beast. That’s why I decided to talk about it today. I’ve been reading a lot about mindset and chasing success. In Joanna Penn’s Successful Author Mindset she gives you tools to maintain or redirect your mindset given certain situations. I truly enjoyed this book and revisit it frequently. However, as I'm going through my goals and plans for my business and finding myself more and more frustrated I realized something. I was losing the mindset battle. The mind is a powerful ally if you have the right mindset but it can also be a powerful foe. "Whether you believe you succeed or not, you're right," is a famous Harrison Ford quote for a reason. I was drowning in my own mind.
 Being a successful author is dependent on so many factors, but the first and foremost is you. What you put into your work will show in its quality and its success. When you decide to become an author--even if you take the traditional route--the first thing you need to realize is how much it is going to take. And the first person investing those things will be you. The three most important things to invest are your time, your money, and yourself.
 First of all, if you have a good beta reader who you feel benefits your writing, disregard this post.
OK, for the rest of you, lets go over what a beta reader is. Beta readers are people, usually authors who read your work, chapter by chapter and offer suggestions about your story. A lot of first time authors feel they are a necessary step in the publishing process. I felt the same way when I was new to the business. The problem I have with with are as follows (if you stick around till the end I’ll offer you an alternative that I feel will benefit your writing much more than a beta reader: |
PublishingThere a lot of steps to go through before pressing that ever coveted Publish button! There are also a few things to think about before you choose where to publish. Click here for a free 30 minute publishing consultation. If you're ready to edit we can help! Click here for more information.
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