Minnette Meador, a fellow writer I know through the Fantasy Writing Yahoo group, has recently gotten two books signed up for print. The first, pictured above, is the fantasy novel Starsight, published by the small press Stonegarden Publishing. It's already available. Her historical romance, The Centurion and the Queen, was originally going to come out as an ebook with Resplendence Publishing, but will now also be released in print, although the cover and exact publication date are not yet available.
While I got my start in the midlists, starting in the small presses is an equally viable career move, especially for novelists. Minnette is working in two highly popular genres, fantasy and romance. In fact, half of all fiction sales in North America are romance. Too bad I'm not a very romantic guy! Here's hoping Minnette will leapfrog straight over this midlist writer and land a major deal. She says of her writing success:
"When I first completed Starsight, I really wasn't certain in which direction to go. I had sent it out to a few large publishers, but was not getting anywhere. I did research on publishing with smaller houses and decided that might be a way to go. Piers Anthony, a man who I highly respect and admire, had a website called HiPiers where he honestly rated the milliard of POD, e-book, and other small publishers available out there, with warnings, ravings, or reviews for each. In the list was a small publisher from California called StoneGarden.netPublishing. I joined their forum, got to know the other authors, the publisher, and the readers.
After reading through their communications, I decided to submit Starsight and it was accepted a few weeks later. I am very comfortable with the decision and StoneGarden has been
incredibly supportive and helpful in getting me started.
Some people have asked me why I went with a small publisher; Piers has some wonderful advice in his column about this and I took it to heart. Honestly, I have an incredible amount to learn about the industry; how to sell my books, how to edit, how to promote, etc. I thought starting out small would be a great opportunity to learn what I needed and then apply it to other books. In the past year, I've been extremely fortunate to have three of my books accepted
for publication and one short story added to an anthology. Whether I am with a small or large publisher, I still have to promote my own books. I can't think of a better way of learning how to do that than jumping in with both feet. Now I feel I'm a little wiser and more prepared for any publishing experience I may encounter."
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