Ella Medler on Publishing

5 Essential Things I Wish I Knew Before I Published My First Book by Ella Medler

I entered this profession as gently and gracefully as a hippo learning to bob-sleigh. I probably looked as elegant, too. The fact that I decided to start publishing at the worst possible time, right when the publishing industry began to self-destruct, didn’t help either.

Still, now that I can at least tell which way is up, I can look back and laugh. I only wish I’d had a friend who might have told me a few little truths, all those years back. I wouldn’t have listened, but weathering a storm with friends by your side always makes drowning more fun.

I wish I’d known…

1) That I would have to fight for every minute if I wanted to write.

This applies both before and after publication. I was naïve enough to think that asking my family to indulge my crazy hobby – that of actually writing a book – for two or three months would be enough. That once written, that was it – the book would skip along into my readers’ hands and make me enough money for a yearly holiday in the Bahamas. Pffwt! What a load of!

For a start, it took me three months to write the first three chapters. And then I panicked and took three more weeks to write the other forty. Hey, it was my first book; panicking took me no effort whatsoever at that stage.

What came as a surprise was the amount of time all the post-publication promotions and general networking would take. Naturally, my family felt cheated when I began taking more and more time to deal with caring for my author platform and actually making people aware that I had produced a whole 90,000-word book. So know this now: Writing is a small part of the time you need to devote to being an author, and your loved ones will resent every minute you allocate to something that is not them. No pressure.

2) That one novel would not be enough.

Honestly, it had never occurred to me that I would need to publish another book, ever! Never mind one that was supposed to ride the coattails of the first. I was so removed from the realities of modern publishing, I kept getting shock after shock. But every hit came with a lesson. First on the list was: you cannot rest on your laurels. No matter how pretty said laurels might be.

3) That writing TO SELL is not as easy as writing. And writing is work. Hard work.

The next realization that took me by surprise was the idea that maybe – just maybe – my readers might want to read something other than what I wanted to write for them. Fancy that! I started writing because writing made me happy. I wrote a certain type of story because that genre came easily to me. When the book sales proved that my product wasn’t what people were searching for, despite the wonderful reviews, I figured something had to change.

For the first time since I’d left my teens, I decided that I had to be mature about my decisions, starting with taking a big hard look at what buyers were looking for. The current publishing industry is a buyers’ market. Your readers hold the power. Their attention is scattered. So many people don’t even bother with books anymore.

But even if there was one reader – only one! – and the market was saturated with sellers, all hawking their products, if you had the book that lone buyer was looking for, guess who would go home happy?

Once you have assessed what your readers are looking for, you’ll have to adapt your style, concepts and final product to fit that need. No, it is not easy. I learned that first hand. Writing is hard work at the best of times. Adapting it to suit a requirement can seem impossible. Cruel. Diabolical.

Call it that and move on. Writing to sell means producing something that will fill a need. Otherwise, you’ll be just writing. You might get lucky, but then again…

4) How to read TO LEARN.

Do you read? What’s that? You don’t have time? Well, then you’re not likely to learn something new, are you? Oh, you do read? How? Just get lost in a story? Nice.

That is not enough.

If you are determined to improve your skill, you are probably already looking for ways to learn from every source you can get your hands on. You may be reading tons of online articles and attending every seminar under the stars. You may have taken writing courses and met up with five different critique groups every week. But the information you gather that way is too fragmented, and often duplicated at nauseam. Way to waste valuable time!

The easiest and most effective method, by far, when you are trying to progress in your own genre, is to pick up a few books in that genre and read them. That is all – read books in your genre, paying attention to the particular aspects you want to develop: the structure of the novel, characterization, description, foreshadowing, themes, a certain turn of phrase, etc.

As a writer, you no longer have the luxury of just reading. But being involved with the writing process puts you in the best position to learn. I call that a win.

5) That I was not the only one on this road.

There will be days when you will question your sanity. You will wonder why you are putting yourself and your loved ones through this nightmare. No normal, reasonable person could possibly see any point in continuing along this path. You will feel alone and picked on by fate, and your senses will make you believe you are the one person covered in tar and feathers standing in the middle of a mocking crowd.

But know this: every single one of us has been that person, in our own minds. We all go through tough times, we all struggle, we all question our decisions and our sanity. Some give up, and that’s okay. There are plenty of professions out there that will make you react in the same way, given enough time and effort.

Look around yourself, really look, ask your friends, ask complete strangers. No one ever goes through life free of doubts and insecurities. No one ever gets to the top of a mountain without walking up the slopes, even for a little while. Stay on your path, and keep working toward your goal. Everyone around you will be working toward theirs. And when the going gets tough, stop for a moment, glance left and right, and you shall see: You are not alone.

Trial Run by Ella Medler
Genres: Romance, Comedy, Adult
Length: 340 pages
Release Date: October 31, 2014

Synopsis

“Trust me, he says. You’ll be safe with me, he says.”

Amelie Watts is sick and tired of being treated like a child. She might be willowy and delicate, but she has strength of the kind that doesn’t show on the outside. Plus, she learned all she needed to know so she could cope on her own. Now, if only her big brother would finally release her inheritance! She would fly to the Bahamas and kiss the backwater she grew up in goodbye.

Jason Watts is fed up with picking up the pieces of his little sister’s life. If only she would grow up already and learn to live life without stabilizers! Her latest idea is insane, and bound to be her most enormous failure to date. But how to make her understand?

Enter Rob Tyson, incorrigible bachelor and Jason’s best friend. For a laugh, they make a bet. Two people, a hastily acquired boat, and a tropical paradise. What could possibly go wrong?

About the Author

Ella Medler is a U.K. author and editor who lives in a corner of Heaven, on the south-west coast of Ireland, overlooking the Atlantic. She writes fiction in many genres – some after her own tastes, and some to make her readers happy. Sometimes, those two happen to coincide. Whatever the genre, her books are action-driven, and well-developed characters are her forte.

A fierce supporter of genuine talent, Ella Medler founded Paper Gold Publishing because she believes there are authors out there who deserve a chance to shine, authors who would otherwise fall between the cracks of a crumbling, forever-shifting industry.

Feel free to join the site to access free resources, take part in competitions and enter your work in box sets and anthology collections.

As an editor, Ella Medler has the tendency to nit-pick on plot issues while ignoring the type of rule that doesn’t allow for a sentence to be finished in a preposition. If you want to win her over, make sure your books are action-packed, your characters real, and you bring chocolate.