Being an author or writer means committing yourself to deadlines, time management, and a life of stress… or does it? Here are some Questions and Answers all about time management and deadlines!
Category Archives: publishing
I Achieved My Lifelong Dream… Now What?
My lifelong dream was to get a book published. Now that I’ve done that (NAMELESS QUEEN, published through Random House 01-07-2020), what’s next? What do I do once my Lifelong Dream has been achieved?
Publish Day! for NAMELESS QUEEN
Here’s all my clips from Instagram on the day my first book, NAMELESS QUEEN, was published! It was a true, true honor to be able to debut in such great company, with all of the other spectacular authors debuting and with the support of so many people. Rewatching this video makes me smile and laugh and cry a little, and I’m so happy I get to keep these memories. I’m sure they’ll come in handy when I need a balm against the ego-burning madness of revisions as I continue to work on my second book!
Unboxing my Author Copies of my Book, NAMELESS QUEEN!
My first book gets published in just a few days, and I got my Author Copies (a box of my own books) in the mail this week! They are GORGEOUS and I am so excited to be able to share it with you!
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INTERESTED IN READING MORE? I read Chapter 1 out loud here!
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My Book:
~ [$] Preorder/purchase NAMELESS QUEEN
~ [+] Add it on Goodreads
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Social Media:
~ Twitter: https://twitter.com/McRebecky
~ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mcrebecky/
~ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/McRebecky/
My Publishing Journey 2010-2020 – How I Became an Author
Happy New Year’s Eve! Not only are we starting a new year and a new decade, we’re starting it off with as many 2010-comparison memes, Gatsby throwbacks, and hope for the future as possible! And for me, the 2020s is starting off with pretty much my dream coming true. My first book, a YA fantasy about a thief who takes the throne, NAMELESS QUEEN, comes out in exactly one week on January 7, 2020!
This is a heck of a way to start off the next decade of my life. I’m so excited! Let’s take a look at how I got here:
In 2010, I was graduating high school and starting college. I had just finished writing my first book, and I had Big Dreams of writing more in college. I wasn’t quite ready for publishing. I knew enough to know I could be better and that my skill level wasn’t where I wanted it to be to debut. So, over the next four years of college, I wrote four more books. Then, in 2014, just as I graduated and started working at my first job, I started writing the first draft of NAMELESS QUEEN. It was my first foray into first person present tense narration, and even as I wrote it, it felt different. I knew as I wrote it that this would be my first time properly trying to get published.
I revised it through the first half of 2015 and was accepted into Pitch Wars, which is a mentorship program with an agent showcase at the end. I worked with the gloriously ambitious and kickass author, Laura Steven (EXACT OPPOSITE OF OKAY; A GIRL CALLED SHAMELESS) for two months. From the showcase, I got multiple offers from literary agents, and I accepted Peter J. Knapp, who is the cheeriest and most encouraging and best agent. Within weeks, we were on submission. Within a day, we had our first offer.
NAMELESS QUEEN sold at auction within a week to Penguin Random House, Crown Books for Young Readers. But then the contract boilerplate was being revised, and it didn’t get finalized and signed until August 2016. Then began revisions! So. Many. Revisions.
A whole lot changed in the manuscript, culminating in an 80% rewrite over two months in early 2018.
Yeah, you heard right. Almost TWO YEARS of revisions with my editor. Oof. It just goes to show that sometimes things move fast and sometimes they move sllllloowwwwww. In the first half of 2018, they finally settled on what the publish date would be: January 7, 2020. We could have *maybe* made it into Fall 2019, but we still had to do line edits and copy edits, and ultimately they really wanted the ARCs to have the final cover design on it, so they pushed the publish date out just a bit farther. This was a long cry from the original aspiration “late 2017” publish date that my agent and I expected back when we sold the book. But life is long and most of it is outside of our control. In some ways, I felt held back and stunted by this drawn-out timeline, but that has more to do with the cultural obsession of achieving “success” ASAP. The book needed 2 years of revisions, and so that’s what it took.
Needless to say, however, I don’t want to repeat that timeline, if at all possible. So, at my editor’s suggestion, I’ve hired a lovely freelance editor to work with closely on the first and second draft of my next book under contract. In late 2018/early 2019, I got a pitch approved for my second book. I wrote the first draft between August 2019 and October 2019. Now I’m working on the second draft after some revisions planning with my freelance editor, and I’m aiming to go into the New Year with a plan to finish Draft 2 by the end of January. As of now, I’m 17% through the manuscript. It’s a totally different world than NAMELESS QUEEN, so it’s a lovely stretch in a different direction after spending *checks watch* over half of the decade working on a single book.
I’m swinging into the New Year with A LOT of determination and ambition. I can’t wait to share NAMELESS QUEEN with you, and I can’t wait to continue on this Author Journey. Books are a joy, and I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to have a life where I get to write and share them with you!
Happy New Year’s Eve, my friends. And Happy 2020!
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- You can add Nameless Queen on Goodreads
- Preorder NAMELESS QUEEN here
- Reach out with any questions over my social media.
Starting Draft 2 of Book 2! (Writing Vlog)
It’s weird to be working on Draft 2 of Book 2 before my first book is published, but here we are! My first book, NAMELESS QUEEN, is out on January 7, 2020. And my second book is well underway in drafting! 🙂
What is an Edit Letter?
If you’re researching what it’s like to be an author, the process of writing and revising, or just the publishing industry in general, you may have heard the term “edit letter.” But what does that mean? What does it entail?
Check out the above video to find out!
NAMELESS QUEEN Cover Reveal & Publish Date Announcement!
Great news! The NAMELESS QUEEN cover is live, and it is as gorgeous as it is real. And come on, guys, it’s real! It’s finally real!
NAMELESS QUEEN tells the story of Coin, a thief who suddenly inherits the throne of her city when the king dies and speaks her name.
Everyone expected King Fallow to name his daughter the next queen of Seriden. No one expected Coin, a Nameless street thief, to have the magical crown tattoo emblazoned on her arm.
Coin is a sassy, bold heroine who is torn between her life on the streets where people like her have been going missing for months, and is pushed into the world of the royals of the palace, which is somehow even more dangerous.
If she wants to keep the throne, she’ll have to fight for it. But in a city where everything is stacked against her—including her own magic—will she survive long enough to make a name for herself?
NAMELESS QUEEN WILL BE PUBLISHED ON JANUARY 7, 2020.
And even better news: the pre-order is live! You can pre-order it right now! Here is a super convenient hub of all of the Pre-Order Links so you can find your favorite retailer!
And, as always, you can add it to your TBR list on Goodreads!
If you want to help boost awareness of the cover reveal and publish date for this book, please retweet the Twitter reveal, share the Facebook post, and check out my Instagram (@McRebecky)!
My Writing Process, and SECRETS about my book!
Hello! Check out my new video that just dropped on YouTube. In it, I share some insight about my writing process—why is my backpack so heavy?—some SECRETS about my forthcoming debut novel, NAMELESS QUEEN, and some hints about what my next book is going to be about. Plus, a certain advanced copy of a certain someone’s book might get some screen time!!
Secrets abound, and I want to share them with you!
How do Authors Make Money? More than just advance/royalties!
You’ve written a book. You want to make money. Here’s how. A lot of people talk about how advances and royalties work, but there’s more to it! (Note: Most of this will be described as if you are getting traditionally published (aka the literary agent and publisher route), but it ALSO applies to non-traditional routes such as self-publishing.)
- Advance & royalties
- Selling foreign rights
- Selling movie rights
- Selling merchandize
- Paid appearances
- Online presence and traffic
- Tax deductions
Advances and Royalties
I could do a whole post on advances and royalties. But here’s a quick and simple guide. An advance is money the publisher gives you upfront. Royalties are monies earned over time as the book sells copies. However, you only start getting royalty payments once you’ve earned royalties equal to the amount of the advance. They’re the same method of earning money (selling books), but it’s just a question of when you get the money. And if you don’t earn enough royalties to equal the initial advance amount, don’t worry. You don’t have to pay it back.
One thing to note about advances and royalties, as well as foreign and movie rights below, is that any money made from this will exclude a commission paid to your agent. Their job is to help you sell, so they get a cut of the profits.
Selling Foreign Rights
Your contract with your agency will state that your agency will help you sell not only your book to a publisher in your own country, but also to publishers in other countries/languages. If this happens, you’ll get paid the same way as above: an advance and royalties. The payments typically go through the agency, which takes care of any conversion concerns and commission/credits incurred by your agency. For example, if your agency pays money to ship your manuscript overseas, that money will come out of the next paycheck you get. (Take note of this for the tax section later!)
Selling Movie Rights
Selling movie rights is a bit different than foreign or publish rights. Firstly, it doesn’t come with an advance or royalty. A producing company will pay you for the rights to your book. These rights typically come with a time limit, which means it may expire after a certain amount of time. This is why buying movie rights is actually called “optioning the rights.” For example: “Studio X has optioned Awesome Book.” This means that the studio now has the ability to make a movie if they want to. The author gets to pocket this money (via their agent who takes their commission). And then if the option expires, it can be sold again. This is because studios typically buy up a lot of options but don’t necessarily make the movie for a lot of different reasons (for example if the book doesn’t end up doing well or if the right director or actors don’t come together).
Selling Merchandize
If you have a great quote from your book or you’ve made some additional art or swag, you can sell these! You might not have a big audience for the merch, so not a lot of authors do this. Many others make swag and give it away for free as part of preorder campaigns to entice readers to preorder their book. And the authors pay for this swag out of their own pocket and don’t make a profit. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t an option! You’ll have to look carefully at your book contract though, because your publisher may have also bought merchandizing rights along with the book rights. But if you’ve maintained them, there’s no reason you can’t look into it as an option to make some more money.
Paid Appearances
Once you have a book out, you can work to schedule appearances. If these are at schools, events, conventions, or stores, you can set it up as a paid appearance. It may be a signing, a reading, or a speech. In most cases, the author is responsible for setting these events up, though you may end up working with your publisher if you want to take some of your books to sell.
If it’s an appearance at a book store, you can call (several months ahead of your visit) to make sure they will have stock of your book. Then, if the event is marketed and attended well, you may make some money by selling your book! A lot of book signings though, especially early in an author’s career, are rather small and don’t have a significant profit, if any. And your publisher may or may not help set up these events.
This is where business acumen and networking come in handy. You should be encouraged to connect with local booksellers and librarians, and schools if that’s an appropriate audience for you.
Online Presence and Traffic
This, like merchandizing, may have a smaller audience or range of effect. And you’ll want to think twice to make sure it’s a good path for you. If you have an online presence (like a website or a YouTube channel), you can consider monetizing it by selling ads. If you do this, you’ll want to be careful about what types of ads are running on your content. When you become an author, you’re building a brand. And with your online platform, the wrong ads can reflect poorly on you as a creator.
Tax Deductions
First things first: getting a tax deduction isn’t the same as making money–it just means that you get to skip paying tax on some things, so it effectively costs less for something. So, deducting taxes doesn’t MAKE you money, but it does SAVE you money. It feels appropriate for this list about making money.
Remember the commission you pay your agent on advances, foreign rights, and movie rights? You don’t have to pay taxes on that commission, because it isn’t money that you are netting.
Money you spend on merchandizing, whether it’s something you sell or give away for promotion? That cost can be deducted as well! Travel to and from paid appearances? Some of that cost can be deducted as well. The cost of maintaining your website domain or paying for designers to work on it… these can be deductible as well.
Being an author and publishing books is a business, and you should do your research about what is and isn’t deductible, because you could save a lot of money! I really want to stress the research side of this though, because it could be easy to deduct a cost you’re not supposed to, or to deduct 100% of something when you only use it for business reasons for a percentage of the time.
Rebecca McLaughlin 