Getting your first book published, at 64!

Many years ago when I was just a teenager I started writing short stories and was able to get some published in the local paper.   Along came marriage, babies and career so writing was stored away in the back burner for ‘some future date’, but I never gave up hope of one day writing ‘the great novel’.

Years down the track, after raising my two daughters and now divorced I was working as a self-employed Remedial Massage Therapist and at night started working once again on a novel, it was hard work and at times writing was once again put aside, then three years ago due to circumstances I retired from work and went back to writing, finally finishing my novel, I had dreams that publishers would be begging me to let them publish my novel, I would be rich and famous and never have to worry about money again!  Well so much for fairy tales, the truth is much harder, I tried all the Australian publishers that were listed, all  the comments were the same ‘love the novel but we are not taking new authors at present..’ or something similar.  I became despondent and seriously thought of chucking the whole idea, then one day I saw in an advertisement that an Independent Publishing Company in America were looking for authors, America??  gee I don’t know seems like a bit of long shot, hell what have I got to lose, so I dutifully emailed my manuscript off to them and waited, and waited, thinking once again that it was all a bad idea.

Well guess what, they liked the book!!  We came to an agreement and part of it was that I would have carte blanch over the design of my book covers which being an artist was just what I wanted.  I thought that it would be easy – not so, there were numerous requirements for submitting the novel all had to fit in with their criteria and at times I felt like just saying ‘to hell with it’, but I persevered and my first novel was finally published!!  ‘The Sabbath’ a horror story with a “twist” – how proud I was and how excited, I finally had my book in print.  A second novel soon followed ‘The Life of a Massage Therapist’ a very tongue-in-cheek look at massage.  I am currently working on my third novel a murder mystery.

Getting a book published is not an easy thing to do and you have to look outside the square at times, it was just by sheer chance that I happened to find an Independent Publisher willing to take on my novel after years, yes years, of rejection my advice to anyone who has a dream of publishing is to persevere never give up no matter how many rejections you get, look at other options, getting published in Australia is probably one of the hardest things, unless you are a ‘name’ it is virtually impossible- Stephen King and J.K. Rowling were not discovered ‘overnight’ both had been with Independent Publishers before they were ‘discovered’ by their current publishers.

If you think you might like to write a book and have it published, there are some important things to consider when you

are submitting your novel:

1) Make sure you have a good story line, and that the characters are believable.

2) A story has to have three things, a beginning, a middle and an end.

3) Edit your manuscript – if you are not sure then it is worth the money to get a professional to edit it.

4) Presentation, there are many help sites out there that outline submission format for manuscripts – use them, as most manuscripts will only be accepted if they are on a professional format.

5) Enjoy your writing, if you don’t no-one else will either.

6) All publishers will require that you have a Authors Biography attached to your manuscript – take time and think about it, if you are not sure get some books from your local library and check out what other Authors have written, short and to the point is the main criteria (I have added mine to the bottom here)
Proudly, my books are available online from Amazon.com  and are also in e-book (The Sabbath only) from Barnes & Noble.

Images: Provided by Theresa Hollis.