How I Became a Traditionally Published Author: A 5-Year Journey

I offer an in-depth perspective of what the writing and publishing process looked like for me as I wrote though my first job, graduate school, and a pandemic.

Here’s a fun fact: 80 percent of people say they want to write a book, but only 3 percent finish their first draft, and less than one percent actually get published.

CRAZY, right?

This post is going to be much longer than my others, but my intention is to offer as much value and detail as possible around how I personally beat these odds and, overall, what is required from an aspiring author if they want to see their project through to the end.

It All Started with Yellowstone

I spent two summers living and working in Yellowstone as a housekeeper and decided to write a memoir about it. I was 20 years old when I decided to follow in my dad’s footsteps and become the second member in my family to work seasonally in a national park.

For a total of six months, I scrubbed hundreds of toilets and changed hundreds of bedsheets for nine dollars an hour. There wasn’t really any internet service either because Yellowstone is located in the most desolate region of the continental U.S., so I spent the majority of my free time reading books and hanging out with new friends.

I was at the tail end of my second summer, just shy of my 22nd birthday, sitting in the sunroom of the Lake Yellowstone Hotel, when I got the idea to document everything I’d experienced. Not only were there hardly any narrative books on peoples’ experience in national parks, but after reading Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, I wanted to see more books on the shelf of women in the wild.

The Balancing Act of Writing and Working

I didn’t have a degree in creative writing or anything in the arts; I was a graduate of the College of Education at my university. At the ripe age of just 23, I moved back in with my parents and got my first real adult job as a sixth grade teacher (and yes, it was just as scary as it sounded).

This job was harder than anything I’d ever done before—even cleaning hundreds of rooms during peak tourism season in Yellowstone. Not only was I managing a classroom of over 20 twelve-year-olds, but the school had a very, very small budget, so our curriculum was bare-bones. Consequently, I was balancing my writing efforts with 12-hour days.

For ten consecutive months, I was both a teacher and a writer, constantly trying to play catch-up with both parts of myself. I was spending my mornings waking up at 5am to write and my days teaching, planning, and managing my classroom.

At times, the pressure got to be too much that I actually tried abandoning my manuscript multiple times. But each time, I found myself plugging away at it again because I had this feeling inside that told me there was a reason I needed to write it. I still have yet to understand my Muse’s reasoning, but I continue to trust the process. :)

Getting Serious About Publishing

Naturally, the more progress I made on my book, the more I realized I had no clue what I was getting into. I didn’t know how to format a manuscript or write a synopsis, much less publish a book. So while I was writing, I began doing a little more digging into how everything worked. That way, when an opportunity presented itself, I would know exactly what to do and how to do it. (The Roman philosopher, Seneca, said that luck was preparation meeting opportunity.)

It wasn’t long before I came across a woman named Jane Friedman, whose blogs I devoured. She explained everything so well, answering questions I hadn’t even asked yet and preparing me for my own next steps. I began taking classes, webinars, and buying books to learn more about how to craft the best memoir I could.

I soon learned, unsurprisingly, that there was way more to it than just writing a great book, especially if I was wanting to traditionally publish. If I wanted to do it right, I’d need to have 3 things working in my favor: money, connections, and credibility.

The money part was a little difficult since, after finishing up my first year of teaching, I moved to Chicago for graduate school. I had just gotten my first apartment and my own life. Jobs were a little hard to come by since it was the peak of the pandemic in 2020, so I got creative and found a way to kill two birds with one stone: do some freelance writing to earn a little side cash and credibility.

I earned 20 bucks for writing a 100-page tourism book on Missouri, which was relatively easy since I grew up there. Later on in my fall semester of classes, my writing was selected to be featured as a blog on the International Institute of Islamic Thought’s website. The next spring, I found a new, indie magazine on the shelf at my local Barnes & Noble and submitted a piece to them that got accepted for $150.

The Development of My Platform & Brand

“Credibility” didn’t just mean showing off your writing, I eventually realized it also meant having a focused, online presence, especially if traditional publication was my end goal. So I fired up my Instagram (after having an off-and-on relationship with the app), made a simple website on Squarespace, wrote weekly blogs, and then used them to outline YouTube videos.

My focus was originally going to be on personal growth and self-help, since that was a big theme in my coming-of-age memoir. However, I came to find that…

1. Going deep all the time was exhausting

2. Not everyone wanted to go deep

3. It made me feel vulnerable in a way I didn’t love

After a few months of consistent efforts and seeing minimal growth, I decided to put a pause on my brand’s development until I could figure something else out. Casually, I began posting lip syncing content on my Instagram stories (I made a lot of videos like that back in high school) and started getting some positive reactions. A friend of mine eventually reached out, encouraging me to turn them into reels.

As nervous as I was, I gave it a go and started getting more attention. I naturally fell into a groove of creating lip-syncing content that mostly related to books and writing, which worked out well, considering it was at the height of the BookTok/Bookstagram craze.

One reel of mine would go viral about a year after my brand’s redesign, racking up over a million views and attracting 1,500 new followers. Another would go semi-viral four months later.

My New, Book Launching Job

I finished up graduate school at the end of 2021 with a master’s in educational policy and was beginning to look for my next new big-kid job. None of the gigs I saw appealed to me until my partner mentioned to a good friend of his that I had recently written a book. Coincidentally, she happened to be three months into a new job as a book marketer and introduced me to her director.

Long story short, I became the company’s newest member as a part-time contractor. My job was to manage all the elements of multiple book launch campaigns for various nonfiction clients. Many of these people were hybrid-published authors who hired us to help digitally market their book prior to its publication; that way, everyone would know about it and want to buy it once it was released.

In other words, I helped “launch” books.

At the same time, I also managed to get work as a part-time editorial intern for a Chicago-based press (since I had no publishing experience) and part-time video editor for my partner’s boss who ran a trademarking company. For three months, I was back working 12-hour days again for even less pay than my teaching job.

I eventually dropped everything but my new book launching gig, going full-time in March of 2022. I not only loved the work I did (and was very good at it), but I also had a literal GOLD MINE of book marketing and publishing information at my fingertips—hundreds of documents explaining trade reviews, identifying your ideal reader, social media tips, qualities of a great website, marketing funnels, podcast placements…

Within six months, I had developed an in-depth understanding of the digital book marketing landscape and more. Not only that, but I was also co-leading strategy sessions with dozens of potential clients with the CEO herself, contributing my own thoughts and ideas to the conversation. I had also just signed up for Jane Friedman’s The Hot Sheet, which emails out bi-weekly trend reports and news on the publishing industry as a whole.

I was in my best season yet. Everything I lacked with my personal knowledge of books was remedied by my professional knowledge. Anything the company didn’t know about publishing, I would contribute from my collection of books and newsletter subscriptions.

My First Writing Retreat

In a relatively short amount of time, I had gained credibility and more money, but I was still lacking the most important component of the “Publishing Trifecta”: connections. My line of work quickly taught me that relationships were one of the key indicator’s of a book’s success. Who do you know and how can you authentically collaborate?

I decided to take what I’d learned professionally and apply it to my personal efforts by signing up for a 3-day writing retreat. It was being hosted by a woman that my therapist had introduced me to about a year prior. During my time there, I attracted numerous potential prospects for my company (after telling them what I did for a living) and met two influential professionals: one who had a series of successful book marketing services for high-dollar clients and another who was the co-owner of a small, Chicago-based publishing house.

I not only came back to my CEO with potential clients, but also a potential collaboration between the publisher’s co-owner and us, a book launching service. We had similar clientele, values, and mission of spreading impactful messages.

Getting Published

By now, it had been over 4 years since my book’s conception. I had written and edited four or five different drafts of my memoir through a pandemic as a student, teacher, student again, and now book marketing professional.

It was the tail end of 2022, and I was getting some work done at a local coffee shop. I’d been strategizing my next steps for traditional publication when I had a thought: why couldn’t I just ask my new connection to consider it?

The co-owner of the small press I’d met at the retreat agreed to take a look and a month later, I got the offer for publication—un-agented.

In total, it took about 5 months to sign the contract and get the book edited, formatted, designed, and produced—a record speed for any traditional press. (It can take two-plus years to get published by a large press.)

My memoir, The Finer Things Club, went on to become an Amazon #1 bestseller in multiple categories and has since been featured in KDHamptons, LUX Lifestyle, and more.

Flash Forward to Today

There were so many lessons and tricks I learned throughout my 5-year journey, but most importantly I learned that it can feel nearly impossible to get a book published if you have minimal connections, money, and credibility. However, I also knew that I wanted to do it right, and I was willing to put in the time and energy needed to make my own version of success a reality (i.e. traditional publication).

After all that, I now offer education, advice, insight, and commentary on the publishing space for aspiring authors as both a content creator and publishing consultant.

This is two-fold: one the one hand, my goal is to help writers beat the odds and rise up to the challenge of getting published. On the other, I’m attempting to create an open dialogue around the publishing business, shedding light on the lesser-known aspects of the industry, and I believe aspiring authors deserve to know what they’re getting into.

As unpredictable and convoluted as it was, my publishing journey as a whole is replicable because I started from ground zero, but I make it a million times more efficient by providing custom 90-Minute Strategy Sessions for aspiring nonfiction authors who need straight-forward guidance to achieving their publishing goals and beyond.

To learn more about the specifics of the publishing process, feel free to…

• Watch this video on the 3 Main Pathways to Publication

• Read this blog on 6 Hard Truths About Writing & Publishing Your First Book

---

Thanks for reading! If you found it useful, consider subscribing to this newsletter. Otherwise, follow me on Instagram and check out my YouTube!