One Author’s Journey…

 

*waves* Big thanks to Lauren for letting me stop by today! I thought I would share a little about me before we get to chitchatting!

I’m Stacey Kennedy. I write urban fantasy/paranormal and erotic romance. I’m published with quite a few epublishers and have two new releases coming out this year with Ellora’s Cave and Loose Id.

I started writing as an escape from dirty diapers and screaming kids. As a stay at home mom—which all moms I’m sure will agree with me—it became a necessity to be creative and keep my brain active. What better way to do that then get lost in another world for a little while.

Originally, I had tried to go the agent route but rejection after rejection told me something was amiss. Clearly, right?! Now looking back, I can see I was in no way ready to submit to agents and had a lot to learn. Luckily, for me, an editor at an epublisher saw potential in my story and took me under her wing. From there, I wrote and wrote…and wrote some more. I submitted to different epublishers to work with new editors to learn as much as I could. I soaked up all the knowledge they had to offer and over the year I have been published, my writing improved and I owe all my editors a huge thank you for that.

After about eighteen ebook releases—some novellas—I had written an urban fantasy romance that I submitted to a few epublishers, only to get the “BIG R”. Bummer! Yes, I pouted, cursed and would not dare look at the story. I let it sit on my hard drive for a good four months until I got over the rejections, and then decided I needed to do something with it.

That story introduced me to self-publishing. I did a lot of research, talked to other self-published authors, made connections to find an editor, cover artist, etc. Then I went for it and uploaded my book to online stores. To my utter shock, the story went straight to Amazon Kindle’s bestseller list and stayed there. By far this is my bestselling book so this tells you that just because your story is rejected doesn’t mean there is no potential there.

Lastly, just this past week I signed with the lovely agent, Lauren Ruth to start another journey in my writing career. To say that I’m excited would be a huge understatement. I’m thrilled and eager for see what the future holds for team, “Lauren and Stacey”!

So where am I going with this all?

Whatever choice you want to make for your career is your choice. No matter what you’ve heard—and we’ve all heard many opinions—there is no “right” path to take in publishing.  I have done nearly all of them, epublished, self-published and now I have an agent. All three I have loved for different reasons and plan to continue using these methods of publishing.

If you want to have an agent represent you, go for it. You want to self-publish, go for it! You want to epublish, go for it! If one doesn’t work out for you, write another story and try something else. That’s what is so fantastic about the publishing world, we as authors have so many options.

Personally, I think as long as you are doing what you love and capture that in a story then readers will take notice. At the end of the day it’s not really about how you get your books into the hands of readers, it’s only that they read the story you’ve slaved over and is your baby.

I’d love to hear from you all, what method of publishing have you used or what’s your “dream” publisher?

 

Stacey Kennedy blogs here and maintains a website here.