Why I've Decided to Self-Publish my Young Adult Novel

Hi everyone! I haven't posted on here in a while, but I wanted to let you know that I'm reviving the writing blog! And I wanted to start by sharing my most recent video in which I tell you why I've decided to self-publish my young adult novel, WE OWN THE SKY. 

 

So the Cliff's notes in case you didn't want to watch the video: 

For those of you who don't know what the book is about, the basic elevator pitch is: A teenage musician falls in love with her Muse, a spiritual being who inspires art, even though no one else can see him. 

Those of you who have been following the blog for a while know that I have been on quite a journey with this novel. I started working on it in the fall of 2012, and I was querying literary agents by March of 2013. After I queried basically every literary agent in America that represented young adult fiction, 12ish requests for my full manuscript, and three offers of representation, I decided to go with literary agent, Marie Brown. She really connected with the book, and I think she really understood me as a writer and the vision I had for my career. While I am still pursuing traditional publishing (we are about to go on submission with a second young adult novel), I have decided to self-publish WE OWN THE SKY. 

I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from both agents and publishers as well as beta readers and critique partners, but a lot of publishers said things like "I just didn't love this enough" or "I don't know how to sell this". Publishing is hard. You have to REALLY love a book to be able to put all of your energy into publishing it--whether you publish traditionally or independently. All of the self-publishing success stories I've heard started with a book that publishers didn't know how to sell or a book that only the author, agent, or beta readers really loved enough to see it through the whole publishing process. So after I thought about it for a while, I realized WE OWN THE SKY fell into that category. 

After I've sat with this decision for a while, I feel really good about it. So the book will be released on September 19, 2017, and by the time it is published, it will be five years since I started it. Waiting this amount of time and getting feedback from so many people has ultimately been really good for the book. It's much stronger than it was. The story is a much more accurate depiction of the story in my head. 

I am very excited about this whole process, and I intend to keep posting vlogs about my self-publishing journey. So subscribe to my YouTube channel if you'd like to stay up to date on those! Ultimately, though, I feel great about this decision, and I'm so excited to finally be able to share my book with everyone!

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