May Self-Publishing and Digital Publishing Series (Week 4: Adina West Guest Post)

By Rachael Harrie; @RachaelHarrie (with guest post by Adina West; @Adina_West)

A reminder: don't forget to stop by Rach Writes... next Monday, June 4, for my next Beta Match, an opportunity for you to connect with Critique Partners and Beta Readers!!!

Today's post is the last in my May series on Self-Publishing and Digital Publishing. It's been so much fun to do, with guests posts by:

Michael Offutt (Monday, May 7, 2012), 

Rachel Morgan from Rachel Morgan Writes (Monday, May 14, 2012), 

Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi from The Bookshelf Muse (Monday, May 21, 2012), and 

Adina West from Stairways and Landings (today). 

I hope you all enjoyed yourself and found lots of useful information and tips! So, for the last time this series, some agent tips/posts and "link love" on the pros and cons of self- or digital publishing:

Some agent thoughts on self-publishing

(Former) agent Nathan Bransford: Traditional vs. Self-Publishing is a False Dichotomy

And this one: On Self-Publishing and Having a Chip on One's Shoulder

Other "link love"

Why do so many Hate Self-Published Books? by Tracey H. Kitts

3 Tips for Assessing Self-Publishing Companies by Andrew Chapman of Curiosity Quills Press

David Robinson: One Author's Experiences with KDP Select

Where will Self-Publishing get Quality Control?: Roz Morris

How to Self-Publish an E-book by Chris Gaylord

The Domino Project: Using Ebooks to Promote Ebooks

Joel Friedlander: Self-Publishing on Unwavering Faith

Hope these are all interesting and useful! Now on to the digital publishing journey of one of my original Writers' Platform-Building Campaigners, Adina West from Stairways and Landings:

Guest Post by Adina West of Stairways and Landings

Campaigners rock!

Adina West

Rach and I have shared time in the trenches. We’re both Australian, and even though we originally met online, we’ve been lucky enough to meet up in real life. We started blogging around the same time, (though I am MUCH less prolific) and in 2010 and 2011 I participated in every one of her early platform-building campaigns, and met some wonderful bloggers and writers.

My fellow campaigners were there for me back in 2010 when I was angsting over my search for an agent. (if angsting isn’t a word, it should be!) Recently, they’ve also shared my exciting news; after an eighteen-month-long search, I’ve finally signed with a publisher! So it feels appropriate that my first ever guest post is for Rach Writes..., our campaign headquarters.

New beginnings

My book, Dark Child, will be published by Momentum, the brand new, digital-only division of Pan Macmillan Australia. Working in collaboration with industry professionals to edit and revise the manuscript is really exciting. Many minds are better than one, and I’m confident that all our hard work will result in a better book. 

My work space

Here’s a picture of where all this is supposed to happen: my new writing space. My husband and a friend rescued this desk from the roadside for me one rainy night...

I wrote my first book while sitting at the kitchen table. Or with the laptop in front of the TV. So I’m not sure if this special desk-of-my-own thing will work. But at least now I have a safe place to charge my computer away from my son’s grasping little fingers!

Down the track, I’ll be very glad to have the expertise and support of my publisher’s marketing team behind me. And other people doing the cover, and layout, and organizing an ISBN, and a myriad of other tasks that I’ve probably never even heard of. I’m very grateful to be able to share the workload with other professionals who can do their various jobs so much better than I could.

The digital publishing model makes a lot of sense.

Publishing a title digitally is less expensive than the print alternative, so it’s easier for digital publishers to take a chance on someone new. My book straddles the line between young adult and adult. And it blends genres, with paranormal elements, and suspense, and romance, and a touch of epic fantasy.

I’ve found Momentum keen to use the flexibility and responsiveness of digital to market my book to as diverse an audience as possible, which is great, because marketing to cross genre audiences can be tricky. And by publishing new writers, they’re playing their part in nurturing the best selling authors of the next generation. I believe the ultimate winner in this scenario will be the reader.

(Source)

I’d like to thank Rach for hosting me today – and I hope you’ll share my journey in the months to come. I’m also more than happy to answer any questions you have in the comments.

About Adina

Adina West grew up surrounded by trees, on a remote property on Australia's east coast, in country New South Wales.

"As a child, I was never afraid of the dark," she says. "The night, for me, was filled with infinite possibility."

Adina wrote her first story at age eight. "I typed it up on my parents' old typewriter," she says. "I knew I wanted to be a writer."

Though her subject matter may have matured, that desire has remained unchanged.

Adina lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband and two children.

Some random facts about Adina in no particular order:

• She occasionally drinks tea and coffee to be polite, but prefers rooibos. Or hot chocolate. Or chai (which doesn't make much sense, because it has tea in it)
• She loves vintage and hand crafted and made-from-scratch. She's also a recovering Etsy addict.
• She has scraps of paper and computer files and notebooks full of jottings and song lyrics and bad poetry, but Dark Child is her first completed novel.
• She can't whistle to save her life, but she can whittle.
• She can dance the Heel and Toe Polka and Pride of Erin. But can't manage a normal waltz.