Many people have come in to our library and asked, “How do you publish a book?” Well, once you’ve gone through the painstaking process of writing it, editing it, editing it again, revising it, and editing it some more, then you begin the next painstaking process:  finding a publisher.

            I am going to focus on three different kinds of publishing. First there is vanity publishing. Vanity publishing is great when you have something you want to hand out to fifty of your closest friends. For instance, before my great grandmother passed on, she chronicled her life and printed copies for each household. She had six children who went and had children, who went and had children, who are now just getting around to having children. Her concise biography is a coil-bound paper back. I’ve also seen that kind of printing become popular with hometown cookbooks, the kind where everyone in the community contributes a recipe or two. I had to contribute to one for a grade in middle school and it still sits on my mother’s kitchen hutch. You cannot find vanity published books here at the library or on Amazon. You have to buy them directly from the publisher and more often than not in large volumes. Lulu.com falls somewhere between self-publishing and vanity publishing but it is what I recommend for projects like cookbooks, family history books, and anything you want to share with your friends.

            Now self-publishing is not what it was seven years ago when I started trying to publish my first book! When I began, it was more like vanity publishing but more costly. I have not self-published so I only know what my friends have told me. With self-publishing, I find the bigger the company the better. I have heard nothing but good things about publishing with Create-a-space dot com! It is owned by Amazon and can offer you paperback books as well as eBooks. There is also Kindle Direct Publishing, which is publishing for free, but only Kindle eBooks. Self-publishing is great if your niche market is very small. For instance, you write for hairless cat owners who run hair salons! I can almost guarantee there’s one out there. Stop looking at me like I’m crazy! I can also almost guarantee there are very few publishers who know hairless cat owners who run hair salons and they will look at you like you are crazy. Maybe you own a hair salon and a hairless cat and have found others like you! Maybe you know people who run salons and a group of people who own hairless cats. Either way, when you’re self-published, it’s up to you to find you niche market and sell to them.

            I do not recommend using self-publishing to put your book out on the market faster. That being said, I had a friend who was ill and self-published her book in the space of a few months. The main problem I have with self-publishing is that the manuscripts released into the market are often unpolished. Even if your manuscript is polished gold, it’s going to be set up for sale next to a book that is decidedly not polished gold. (Think post-apocalyptic angel-vampires and the wrong there/their/they’re.) I know many avid readers who won’t pick up a book because it’s wearing the label “self-published.” When I started, again, seven years ago, I was told self-publishing is not how you begin a long career. I have seen that theory proven wrong more than once! (Go look up The Princess Saves Herself in This One.) I was told that a traditional publisher will not pick you up once they see that you have self-published in the past. I have also seen that theory disproven!

            All in all, I highly recommend traditional publishing with small publishing houses. That is what I did, thus it is the right way! (Note the hint of sarcasm.) I chose to traditionally publish my book because I have every intention of having a long and fruitful career. Is my book perfect? Not by a long shot! When you traditionally publish you have less control over your book, which is not necessarily a bad thing! I could be wrong, but it’s unlikely you’ve been studying cover-art market trends for years, have perfect spelling, grammar, and know people all across the country who have booths at book fairs, conventions, and comicons. When you traditionally publish you have a whole team of people to work with. As with any team you have to give and take. You may not wind up with the cover art you wanted, but you’re more likely to end up with the cover art you need.

One of the easiest ways to tell if you’re speaking to a legitimate traditional publisher is whether or not they ask for money up front. There are scams to the umpteenth out there meant to trick writers out of their hard-earned cash! A real publishing house will not ask you to “invest” $1,000, give or take, to publish your book. A real publishing house will take your manuscript, publish it, and then make you pay for the copies of your own book you buy. All in all, make sure to read your contract carefully before you sign it and send it in.

Another thing you should do to protect yourself and your work is copyright it as soon as you have the funds to do so. Every publisher is different. Some will ask for a summary of your work, some will ask for the whole thing, some will ask just for your query. Either way, the best thing to do is carefully read their submission guidelines and follow them to the best of your abilities.

The best place to find small publishers is to find a list of small publishers! The one I like the best is Poets & Writer's list of small presses. Within the past year, Submittable, a third party site you will be using to submit your work to publishers anyway, has made it possible for you to search through publishers that are looking for books like yours. I have yet to explore it in depth, but it is worth a shot.

            Someone asked me “what is the most lucrative form of publishing?” Find a different job. Never ever, ever go into writing thinking this is how you’re going to become a millionaire. You’re not. Vanity publishers are how you make Christmas presents, self-publishers often offer higher royalties (50%-100%) but that’s because they don’t expect you to earn back your $1,000 “investment,” and traditional publisher royalties swing anywhere from 10%-15%. That’s 10%-100% of $15.

            All in all, the most important thing is to do your research and figure out what’s right for you and your book. You’re reading this article, so you’ve started somewhere! Good job! Do your research on your publisher, polish your manuscript until you hate it, have someone adept with legal things review your contracts, and understand that publishing a book is a sort of journey. You must play both the roles of artist and businessman. If there is an easy way I have yet to find it! Stay patient yet determined.

           Hey, go easy on yourself. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out! Some days you find yourself trapped behind the wheel of a large automobile for about ten hours. You simply don’t have time or energy to sit down and write a thousand words on those days! That’s okay!

            However, I’m not here to coddle you and tell you you’ll become a better writer by “saving your strength”. There’s not a craft, a talent, or muscle in your body that improves from not being used daily!

            What’s been working for me for about six months now is promising myself “I will write one sentence every day.” And I usually do! Somedays I write my one sentence and fall into bed. Other days I wind up writing three pages or better!

            I’m old fashioned and I like to use a paper journal and a pen. Every day I like to use a different colored pen to track my progress with my Work In Progress (WIP). It keeps me motivated knowing how much I can do even when I don’t have time to do it all. Sometimes it’s just my one sentence and bed. (Sometimes it’s no sentence and bed! Because I’m a bad kid.) But I love to write so I often write over my lunch break and knock out an entire scene while being a stereotype in a café.

            The essential thing is that you try to write every day and work hard to improve your craft. Even God-given talent can be built upon! Setting small goals helps you achieve bigger ones later. Keeping those writing “muscles” in motion keeps them functioning. It doesn’t have to be a thousand words daily (although you’ll finish your book faster) it just has to be something!

            It makes me feel like a product of my generation but having an online presence as an author is paramount. Even if you’re running around doing book signings people want to be able to Google you before you get there. The biggest problem with indie books (an all-encompassing term for self-published books and books from small presses) is that they never reach the hands of people who would read them because those people don’t know they exist.

            Now there is an easy way to combat this. You don’t have to be super computer savvy or a tech guru. (Trust me, it’s taken me years of hard work to get this far.) Goodreads. I highly encourage you to go look into creating an author account on Goodreads dot com. When you sign up you will be able to set your own author page up with a photo of you, a small bio, a list of your published works, and more! If you get really brave you can post blog updates, short stories, and list your favorite books to share with your fan base. Really, a page like that gives the librarians who are making posters for your upcoming book signing enough information to make an informative flyer. *COUGH*

            If you’re a self-published author or a small press owner you definitely want to make sure the information on all of your books is on Goodreads. People like me like to brag about how smart we are and how much we read (I’m kidding). There is a feature on the site that allows Goodreads users to update their reading progress as they go. I often update my Twitter following with every page turn so the books I love can gain more visibility. At the very least, if you’re a published author you need to go make sure your book’s information is true and correct, which you can do as soon as you finish creating your author profile.

            No matter what you do in this day and age, being visible on the World Wide Web as an entertainer is important. Goodreads is a great way to get your feet wet if you’re iffy on the whole computer thing. I swear, I don’t work for Goodreads! It’s just helped my career, and helped me help other authors. That is why I recommend it so highly.

            Writing a book often goes hand-in-hand with researching the subjects you’re writing about. If the character is a mechanic, the author needs to know a decent amount about cars and what a mechanic does to fix them. No writing, except for maybe an autobiography, is without its simultaneous research. (Even stories that seem simple.)

                Research can seem daunting and terrifying, mostly because there’s so much that someone needs to know.  If a character needs to know everything about a subject, it seems like the author needs to know the same amount. But if your story is about a grouchy mechanic putting together an old ’67 Chevy from his childhood, you as the author probably don’t need to know anything about BMWs.

                There are lots of different types of resources, especially on something that involves life experience. There are often nonfiction books explaining the mechanics of what you’re researching (for an example, how an autoimmune disease affects the body), as well as memoirs describing people’s personal experience. If you can’t find a memoir, try reaching out online for people who have similar life experiences to the one you’re planning on writing about.

                With so many resources and so much knowledge available in today’s modern, technological age, it can be hard to decide what your characters need to know. If they are an expert hacker, do they need to know everything about computers, or just the software? If you know too much about a subject, the story can be hard to get through as a reader, but knowing not enough can make it inaccurate and feel unrealistic. Therefore, it becomes a challenge to find just the right balance of research. You can’t have too wide of a field.

                “Everything” is too much to learn, but “just this one part” is too specific and will you’re your character seem too much like a fictional creation. Narrowing down your research can be hard, so here’s some tips:

                Decide what your character needs to know. If your character has cancer, they need to have a patient’s understanding of their cancer, not a doctor’s knowledge of every kind of cancer in existence. If your character is a Shakespeare nut, they probably don’t need to know everything about every playwright of Shakespeare’s time. Let your research only involve what the character needs to know – anything else will be overwhelming.

                Learn about what you’re writing about. Maybe your character is a dancer, but you don’t know anything about the dance world or even how a dance class works. Talk to someone who does, find books about dancing, and ask dance students. Real-life research can sometimes be better than reading books about something. Even if your character doesn’t have explicit information about the world they exist in, the world still needs to feel accurate and real.

                Know just a little bit extra. Even if your main character doesn’t need to know everything about their situation or world, it’s never bad to know a little bit extra. There may be a character, such as a doctor, with a higher level of information, or you may find in editing that you want to add a little extra detail. It’s never bad to know extra, but researching large amounts makes it harder for you to remember what you know.

                As long as you know what you need to know to write your next best-seller, you can research it. Online databases, libraries, and people with life experiences are all great resources for you to learn about the thing that will make your story just a touch more realistic. If you follow the simple steps above and find good resources to match them, you might just find that researching your stories can be fun!

            In this blog post we’re going to talk about feelings. Run while you still can.

             In recent years around this time I get a serious case of the Christmas blues. I have lost a lot of close friends throughout the years, and not so much as sending them a Christmas card reminds me of their absence. Because those close relationships had to end I begin examining myself, asking myself what part of my behavior led to the breakdown of our friendship. Because I try to place the blame on myself I become insecure. When I feel like something within me doesn’t meet the measure I suddenly find myself unable to write.

            Sometimes you need to stop looking for what your characters are doing next and look inside yourself to see what’s holding you back. It’s not what you want to hear but sometimes it’s best to shove through, write some short stories (because giving up isn’t an option), ride out life’s storm’s, and write. Write even if your main character just happens to be intensely studying the wood grain of a table! You can always edit it out later!

            Sometimes it’s not the pen and page you need to look it. It’s the hand that’s holding it.

            Make them suffer. Embarrass them, let them trip in front of their crush, stutter while public speaking, fall and scrape their knees, say the wrong thing to their friend who’s grieving a loss. Make your main character suffer.

            Why? Because perfect characters are boring characters. Have you ever read a book where the main character knows exactly what to say, exactly what to do, and exactly when to do it? Even a supporting character! They’re boring!

            I spoke with an artist once. He told me people like to connect with art so he liked to paint his surroundings. People want to connect with books too. That’s why the entertainment industry is all abuzz with talk of representation in the media. It’s not only demographic matters people connect to. They want to find people going through the same struggles as them too. Take Smile for example! It’s a graphic novel of a young girl between the ages of 11 and 13 who knocks out her front teeth, has to have massive amounts of oral surgery, starts middle school, gets bullied, finds her first crush, fights with her siblings. Really, normal stuff. Kids about in middle school and about to start middle school really connect with that particular book in our library’s collection. And a perfect main character wouldn’t have her little sister running circles around her singing “All’s I want for Christmas is my two front teeth!”

            What drives a plot line is conflict. You need your beloved fictional friends to experience friction to keep them driven and keep them moving. There’s no such thing as perfect people. Imperfect people don’t want to read about perfect characters. Make them human (even if they’re technically elves, or dogs, or werewolves, or what have you!) and make them make mistakes.

            I asked one of my Facebook writer groups if they had suggestions for topics on our writing advice blog. One of them asked “How does one approach a library for a book signing?” I thought it was a perfect topic! So first thing’s first, I went to my boss, Joan Brinkley, the director of Goshen County Library and we put our heads together to bring you this article.

            That’s the first thing you as an author want to do. Figure out the name of the director of the library you’re going to query. The director of a library is the head librarian. You’ll sound a lot savvier if you use their name and job title rather than calling the library and asking “May I speak to the head librarian?”

            Joan prefers phone calls (I prefer emails but no one cares because I’m not the director). When you call a library, after you know the name and job title of the person you want to talk to, the next thing you need to be ready with is your elevator pitch. All bosses are busy. You need to be able to make someone want to read your book in the time it takes to ride in an elevator with them. If they want more information, great! Just keep it concise. Joan admitted one of the most annoying things an author can do is keep her on the phone for too long. We’re all very excited you got your book published! Truly! But keeping the director on the line for an hour and a half will not buy you brownie points.

            Just after I tell you to simmer down here’s another thing Joan stressed: BE CONFIDENT. To quote Joan herself “You’ve already spent years putting it together. Since it’s published it’s already gone through a lot of editing and criticism. Be excited about your book so we can be excited too.”

            If you’re like me and you hate phone calls with all that is within your soul emails are also acceptable. Just make sure that your email has a hyperlink to your website, your contact information, a summary about your book, and any other information you want us to know about you or your book. One of the most annoying ways to contact a library is just messaging their social media with a link to your book on Amazon and nothing else. Don’t do that but with an email! But do an email. You don’t want to just message the Facebook page (or whatever platform you’re on) because you never know who’s actually going to get it. It’s probably not going to be the director. (In our establishment it comes to me, the web manager.) But again: Make sure your email has a hyperlink to your website, your contact information, a summary about your book, and any other information you want us to know about you or your book.  

            Joan and I agree it’s best to do book tours. You schedule two or three book signings in a row in towns near each other. For instance, you have one in Scottsbluff, then you come here, then Niobrara County Library. Sometimes, no matter what you do people just won’t come out. It’s okay. That’s why it’s nice to have the next one ready to go so you can just have better luck in the next town.

            Once you’ve got the book signing the next thing is to prepare a presentation. At the very least a spiel! I’ve had— I’m not saying it to sound cool, I’ve literally lost track— over 10 book signings. Every library and every event is different. Some want you to do an entire presentation, some want you to sit in the corner and look pretty, and some want to involve you in some bigger project. (In Rapid City the local teens and I got to play with typewriters for NaNoWriMo!) I carried around a folding poster board for a year. There were a lot of places where bringing it out just wasn’t useful or helpful. So from that I learned, always have a backup plan! You can always be cooler than me too and have a power point presentation. Just be prepared to carry a laptop and a projector, and know how to use it. The only thing with tech is that it glitches. So, again. Have that backup plan.

            All in all, if you never ask the answer is always “no”. Be polite, and personable, make us love your book as much as you love it, and have a plan.

            Take 12 ounces of published book
            100-300 pounds of enthusiastic author
            Add a venue
            and some curious bookworms

            Yield one book signing

            If only it were that simple! At the heart of it it is but from being on both sides of a book signing— the venue host and the author, it’s also not. Last month Joan and I discussed how authors should approach libraries to ask about having a book signing. We came up with so much helpful information I felt the need to split it into two articles. Once you’ve landed the book signing, and hopefully several in a row from several different libraries so you can do a book tour, then comes the hard part. The execution!

            You’ve got your presentation planned, right? No? Fret not. It’s not as terrible as it sounds. Public speaking frightens everyone. The trick is to be confident but not conceded, and humble but not shy. One of my favorite quotes is “Writing is show business for the shy.” From Lee Child. That’s why I treat book signings like concert nights. (I also sing and play the trumpet. I don’t make time for either now.) For any performance you dress up, show up early, and have a well-rehearsed plan for what you’re going to do once you have a room full of people’s eyes on you. I even do my preshow rituals in my car. Think of going through your presentation like putting on a show. Not public speaking. (Public speaking burns!)

            For the content of a presentation: Think of some questions your friends ask about writing when they take you out to lunch. Write those down, then answer them confidently in a projected tone that the entire room can hear. Honestly, it helps to pretend you are either friends with or becoming friends with the audience. When CJ Box was here the crowd spoke to him like they all knew him, and he spoke back in the same manner. They were a crowd of people who had been following his work for years, who had been hearing his voice in their minds for years. They did know him well because it was like they had been one sided pen pals with him for years. And he knew them because they had been the ones breathing life into his career. The audience is either your friends or people who want to be your new friends. Tell them about what inspired you to write the thing, what kept you going, which publisher did you use and why, what drives the plot. All of it! They’re all very curious book worms who are very excited to see you.

            One of the things that phased me the most for my first book signing(s) was “Omigosh, what am I going to wear?” What does “dress nice” and “business casual” even mean? At the time I published my first book I was a dewy eyed 20 year old with crazy hair. I had no idea. So a lot like I did for job interviews, I had a book signing shirt. It was white and I paired it with black slacks. A lot like I did for concert nights as a kid. Having one thing I’d wear for book signings made it easier because it was one less thing to think about during the event but the downside was that, unlike job interviews, pictures of you show up on social media. Everyone knows you’re wearing the same shirt. No one’s called me out on it so I haven’t ever changed my evil ways. Really, wear whatever it is you’d wear if you worked in an office (I didn’t at the time so that was unexplored territory). Either way, the goal with your look is to look like you want to be there and meant to be there.

            Another tip: Buy a cash box and keep $50 of $1’s and $5’s. It helps to have someone run the cash box so you can schmooze. It works even better if the person running it isn’t your identical twin. That way people who saw your picture before the event won’t ask your cash-man questions about writing books.

            Don’t do exactly what I do before every event we host at the library. Don’t get stressed up! Go with the mindset that you’re there to have a good time. That’s what the audience wants to have too. They left the comfort of their homes to be entertained, meet this cool person who wrote a book, and have a good time. Go make some new friends!

            All you need to remember is have a plan, have another plan, be a showman, the audience wants to be your friends if they’re not already, show up early, dress nicely, watch the cash box, and act like you want to be there.

            Once upon a time I made a new writer friend. He needed an editor and I had a friend who might have liked to help him. Writer Friend gave me his email address and I said “May I share your contact information with my editing friend?”
            “Of course!”
            “Okay. Great! I just always like to make that verbal confirmation. I am super touchy about other people sharing my contact information.”
            “Oh I don’t mind having mine shared at all! That’s just my writer mentality. Anyone and everyone can contact me.”

            I looked at him like he was crazy. I couldn’t help myself. You do not have to be accessible all of the time. And I actually had to have a good friend tell me that before I believed it.

            Having a relationship with your fans is great! Absolutely do it! But as with every healthy relationship, you need to have boundaries. For instance, anyone and everyone can message me on my War and Chess Facebook page. Anyone and everyone can “like” that page. Anyone and everyone can interact with me and other people who like my writing on that page. It’s when they send my personal page a friend request that I have to say “no”. And believe me, I’ve had to have that heart breaking conversation with a new friend I’ve been chatting with every night for a month on the War and Chess inbox, that “No, I’m not comfortable with adding you as a friend on Facebook yet. Yes, we are still friends.” Because really, the things I post on my personal Facebook page are for my distant relations to keep up with me.

            It’s going to come off as a complaint but someone needs to tell you sooner in your career than later in your career. When you’re an entertainer (you write. You are!) people feel entitled to information about you. There are some people who you tell them “I would accept your friend request but I keep this account for my family.” They say “Great! I would love to meet your family!” and you’re left like “Bro, my boyfriend hasn’t even met my family!” For instance, I had a pair of young boys on Twitter try to harass me into telling them my real name “Helen M. Pugsley is too elegant! It’s obviously a pen name! Tell us your real name!” Back then I had a lot more patience, so after an hour of back and forth I finally blocked them both. One of them made a new account, apologized to me, and then asked again “But seriously, what is your real name?”

            Really and truly, I’m telling you, you do not have to be accessible to everyone at all times of the day. Bottom line. You’re absolutely allowed to say “No.”, mean it, and most importantly stick with it. In next month’s blog we’ll talk about how accessible you should be. You need to establish boundaries but you don’t have to be J.D. Salinger. (Salinger is the author of Catcher in the Rye. He was an extremely private man. In his career as an author he did a maximum of three interviews and lived in a cabin, in the woods, high up on a mountain.) Keep your private stuff private and keep your public stuff public!

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Do you have a burning question for Helen? Feel free to email her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

            In last month’s blog post, You don’t have to be Accessible All the Time, we talked about our rights to privacy as entertainers. What feels like, in the same breath, we’re going to talk about people actually being able to find you and your glorious books you poured gallons of blood, sweat, and tears, into to be able to share with the world.

            Once upon a time I was lucky enough to be able to write full time. I was told the number one thing that kills indie authors (like you and I) is remaining unknown. So I’d spend my day marketing on social media, establishing connects within the industry, and figuring out where the people who liked to read young adult fantasy novels hung out. Publishing a book is not one of those “if you build it they will come” type deals. You need to market. You need to put yourself, and more importantly, your book out there. Or else your gallons of blood, sweat, and tears are for nothing.

            So! For starters, one thing I didn’t think about until I went to that Wyoming Writers Conference is having a website. I started with a Facebook page and assumed that everyone would be able to find me that way. Now this is going to blow your mind… Not everyone likes using Facebook! It completely blew me away. Honestly. I met a very successful author who built her own publishing press. During a presentation she said “Most of you will be daunted by being told you need a web page.” The room nodded. “But you need a web page.” The room was daunted. “You don’t have to update it once a week. You can do what’s called a business card page.” Which is what I have. A business card website is exactly what it sounds like. This is the author, these are their books, here’s some links to every book seller ever, and every social media site the author is active on. Really, bare minimum you just need something so everyone can find you. At least the author part of your life.

            I don’t suggest having any sort of feed or blog on your website unless you’re actually going to generate enough content to update it at least once a month. It really turns people off when they come to your website, saying “Wow, the book I read by this author was really good. When are they due to put out the next one?” and they find a happy Thanksgiving message from 2017 first thing. I find people will get just as invested in your career as you are. Invest in your career.

            And when I say “invest” I don’t necessarily mean financially. When I was writing full time, selling my book was my main source of income. My secondary income was my Etsy store. All in all, I didn’t have much money to invest. So I found every free venue I could use to put my message out in front of the public. You know what that often is? Social media. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Goodreads, Tumblr, and many more. Wherever the people you want to reach are, and whatever you’re comfortable using. No matter what venue you use the goal is to reach the people who would be interested in your book, and start a relationship with them. Yes, a relationship.

            What I mean by “relationship” is that you actually check in with them like you do your distant family. I used to make videos on my Facebook page once a month-ish. (I am so awkward on video. It’s painful.) Post pictures of you working, your work, or quotes from your work in progress. As you use your platform more and more you’ll get those five guys who like everything you post and laugh at all of your memes. When one goes on vacation you’ll find yourself inboxing them to say “You still okay, over there?” I often compare success on social media to growing a garden. Let it grow. It’s an investment of time.

            It is also wise to set up an email account that is exclusively for business. These days you can usually butt-up your email accounts into one inbox. Dig around your email provider, so that way you don’t have to remember 50 passwords. Either way, no one wants to do business with someone whose email address is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. It makes people uncomfortable. I’m glad your friends have cute nicknames for you but keep those among your friends. Unless you want the guy you’re negotiating a contract with to slip up and call you “Grandma Blipsy Bunny”. The fail safe formula for a professional looking email handle is first initial, last name, like This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. (Go John Smith! Live your dreams of being a famous author!)

            At any rate, it’s important that you’re accessible. It is also important to your mental health and well-being that you establish boundaries. There is nothing wrong with having a public life and a private life. Keeping the two separate works best when you have two accounts for everything. There is a balance. Your fans love you and want to interact with you, but you still have to be the one to decide what you want out there.

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Do you have a burning question for Helen? Feel free to email her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.