Indie Writing and Publishing

A lot of people want to know how we got our book published and what it was like to write it. So, here's the inside scoop! You can either read the entire article or you can skip to the section that interests you. Enjoy.

The five of us met on a message board for divorced women under the age of 30. After healing and moving on from our own mini marriages, we felt we had a calling of sorts to reach out to other young women going through divorce. Because our message board was the only resource that we found helpful while navigating young divorce, Karen Jerabek had a vision of writing a book to reach out to even more women. When she shared her vision, Michelle J., Dana, Michelle N. and Michelle P. jumped on board, excited to share their experiences and to shed light on the truth about mini marriages. Together, we wrote the book, The Mini Marriage: 5 Bite Sized Memoirs of Young Divorce, and launched the movement known as the Divorced Sisterhood.

Writing, Part 1
Searching for a Literary Agent
Going Indie
Writing, Part 2
Editing
Choosing a Book Cover Illustrator
Choosing a Website Developer
Creating an LLC
E-Book Formatting

Writing, Part 1

Each of us was given a writing assignment to write our story about our marriage and divorce in 20 – 25 pages. Each of our stories were drastically different and we each took unique approaches to writing our memoirs. There were no rules except to be as honest and accurate as possible. We were newly divorced and our memories were fresh in our minds but so was the pain. Karen Jerabek took two days off from her job to write her memoir and she cried the entire time. The tears blurred her vision and she typed on as they splashed down on her keyboard. Michelle Nicolet procrastinated, not wanting to get back in touch with the painful memories that haunted her. We overcame those obstacles and poured our hearts into our memoirs, providing a very open and honest look into our mini marriages. The writing process turned out to be very liberating and healing. We then wrote an introduction and compiled our rough draft memoirs into a working manuscript.

Searching for a Literary Agent

After a few months spent drafting our memoirs, we had a working manuscript in hand. We switched gears and started thinking about getting our book published. This was several years ago when self publishing wasn't as accessible as today. None of us had published a book and none of us had any close friends or family that had been published so we were completely in the dark. We read books and internet articles about getting published and realized getting a publisher on our own was going to be an uphill battle. We decided to try to get a literary agent to represent us instead.
We launched into research mode, looking for any agent that had an interest in self help and women's nonfiction. Karen Jerabek and Michelle Joyce spent countless hours finding possible agents and mailing out query letters, which is basically a one page introduction that is supposed to hook the agent's interest. We read the statistics that most agents either ignore your query letters or send you a polite rejection letter so we were prepared for a lot of them. And we certainly got our share of them. However, we did get some agents who requested more information and one even urgently called Michelle Joyce while she was on a train.

The agents that did take the time to learn more about our project were definitely intrigued by our book. They all had the same concern though, there wasn't another book like it. That meant, that it was going to be hard to sell to a publisher when the market for it wasn't proven. They suggested we publish articles and write blogs to create a platform for our book. They needed statistics that people were interested in our ideas before they were willing to try to sell it to a publisher. They also suggested we take a more self help approach to our writing.

Excited that we had actually gotten personal feedback, we ventured out trying to create a platform for our book. We found it more daunting and challenging than we had thought. Blogs weren't as common as they are today and that was only a few years ago. Karen Jerabek had an article published in Dog Living Magazine about how her dogs helped her overcome her divorce and Michelle Joyce was featured in an article about surviving young divorce which also announced our new website. Karen Jerabek ventured onto MySpace which was the popular online social media choice at the time and started a page to connect with friends and publish a blog. She received a lot of positive responses from women and from quite a few men too.

We reworked our query letter and created a book proposal in line with the earlier feedback and tried again to get an agent that would take on our book. We had several agents request more information and several give us personal feedback. A few even called Karen Jerabek to discuss the book further. They loved the book idea and thought our writing was very good. But once again, they were concerned that there wasn't any other books like this on the market and that was going to be a hard sell to a book publisher. It was great to get the affirmation that our idea was good and our writing didn't suck, especially from industry insiders. But, without representation, we knew the traditional publishing route was out of the question. Most publishers won't consider an author that isn't represented. With these roadblocks, it stopped making sense for us to pursue the traditional publishing options.

Going Indie

In just a couple years since we hatched the idea for our book, there had been an explosion of social media, blogging and opportunities to self publish. Suddenly, writing and publishing your own book became a real possibility. We loved the idea of having total control over our book and the freedom that being Indie Authors allowed us. The payout was going to be significantly higher than if we had gone the traditional publishing route too. Even though there wasn't a proven ground for our book, we believed in it passionately. We had an intense desire to reach out to other women going through divorces and we believed our book could inspire them and be the light a the end of the tunnel. Going Indie was definitely the right path for us.

We researched several Self Publishing options that allow an author to publish their book without requiring much up front cost. We chose CreateSpace through Amazon. This gave us the greatest profit per book, was going to bring us access to all of Amazon's patrons and our book would be eligible for free shipping. After doing a quick informal survey of our friends and family, we found that most people buy the majority of their books through Amazon and they only buy books that have free shipping. Anyone can walk into any bookstore and have our book ordered for them. We paid a nominal fee for this service but it also gave us access to a higher profit margin. When we realized publishing as indie writers was a real possibility, we quickly switched gears to finish the book.

Writing, Part 2

We had the meat of the book – 5 memoirs about our mini marriages. The original introduction was depressing and we scrapped that immediately. We needed to write a new introduction and we needed to figure out how to wrap up the book. We decided to incorporate the feedback from the literary agents we'd talked to and incorporate some helpful hints into our book so people could see the steps they need to take to conquer their mini marriages. We also decided to provide updates on our lives 5 years later so our readers could see that it doesn't take forever to have a totally different life. All of us dove into writing our follow ups, some more quickly than others. Karen Jerabek, Michelle Joyce and Dana Zamrik then worked together to create the other chapters that would tie it all together.

Editing

We celebrated when we had a fully complete draft of our book. But, we needed a black and white copy for editorial purposes. We hopped on CreateSpace and added our draft so we could get printed copies for editing. It also allowed us to see their process and see the final product of their work. We were impressed with the quality and I couldn't distinguish it from most paperback books I owned. We started redlining the book and working through the changes that we wanted made. It had been years since we'd written or read our memoirs and it was at times painful to see how much heartache we had gone through but it was also liberating to see how far we'd come so quickly. The 5 of us were on drastically different paths but all of us were happy with our lives. We had conquered our mini marriages and had become young, divorced and fabulous!

Editing is extremely tedious and labor intensive. It certainly isn't sexy or glamorous. If we could have afforded an editor, I would have gladly handed this job over, but our budget was small so Michelle J. and Karen tackled the job. Between re-writing and editing, I think we went over the book more than a dozen times. Editing continued up until the day before we published our book.

Choosing a Book Cover Illustrator

While we were editing, we went out in search of a book cover illustrator. We knew that the cover will either make or break whether people will buy our book so we needed to find a designer that was both talented and affordable for our budget. We didn't like the book designs that were offered through CreateSpace and they weren't going to allow us to use the design for any other purpose so we felt like it was best to contract with someone on our own. That's when we came across Sam Wall's website. She's an incredibly talented artist and illustrator and when I sent her an email inquiring about her process, she emailed me back the next day. I LOVE that kind of service. She worked with us on creating our vision for the book and had lots of great ideas. She did several revisions and ended up creating a book cover that was so much more than what we were hoping for. It was perfect! If you want to see her talented work, please visit her at www.samwall.com

Choosing a Website Developer

We also knew we needed a website for our book. We were looking into sites where we could design it ourselves while we were searching for possible graphic artists that might be within our budget. That's when a friend of mine from college offered us a deal we couldn't refuse. Ben Nash is one of the most talented website developers that I've seen and his work is more like art than a website. Realizing we could afford his services, we jumped at the chance to work with him. He set up a great online interface tool for us to collaborate on the project and spent a lot of time understanding our goals for the website as well as educating us on the best use of our site before he even started designing it. I LOVE someone that takes the time to really get to know us BEFORE starting the job. He does a variety of web design and creates sites that not only puts your dreams into reality but surpasses them. If you want to see his amazing work, please visit him at www.creativebushel.com

Creating an LLC

Since there are several authors, we decided to create an LLC to handle the inflow and outflow of money. Dana Zamrik established the LLC, got a tax id number, and set up a business bank account for us. Then she drafted contracts for all the authors and is responsible for the distribution of information.

E-Book Formatting

We had to reformat the entire book to allow it to be published in digital formats for all the e-readers. Basically, we removed all formatting and followed different rules than how Word typically formats so the book file would be accepted and could be uploaded for electronic distribution. We chose to use Amazon's Kindle Store for all the Kindle readers. Then we chose to use Smashwords to generate all other electronic copies to maximize compatibility. Smashwords makes our book available in e-book format to Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Sony, iTunes and many more.

~And that is our fantastic journey on how we took our book idea and turned it into a published book. We're really proud of our hard work and love being Indie Authors!~

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If you enjoyed reading our publishing story, pop over to Amazon and sample a chapter of our book, The Mini Marriage: 5 Bite Sized Memoirs of Young Divorce – we're 5 women who met online while going through our divorces and we came together to share our stories of conquering young divorce and embracing our second chances. http://tinyurl.com/minimarriagebook