My daughter published a novel!

[disneysteve]

I don't know if I've mentioned this before but my daughter wrote a novel. She started it about 2 years ago when she was 16. When she finished it, she tried to get it published through a literary agent but got 40-some rejection letters. She sat on it for a while, did some further editing and rewriting, and then decided to self-publish. The books arrived yesterday so she is now a published author. She started selling them today and already sold several at school. Of course, we are promoting via Facebook and numerous friends and relatives have already ordered copies. She did an initial run of 100 copies. She needs to sell about 73 to break even on production costs. She will also be putting it out as an e-book. That isn't going to cost her anything because she won a contest to have it done for free, so once she gets that up, any e-book sales will be all profit (which will lessen how many paperbacks she needs to sell to break even).

None of us expect her to make significant money from this but you never know. I think it will be exciting if she just gets to a point where she makes a profit (or even breaks even for that matter).

The moral of the story is to encourage your kids. Let them dream and help them fulfill those dreams. You never know where it might lead.

[creditcardfree]

Good for her! Both of my daughter's have spent some time writing novels. The oldest actually has a sequel written to her first. Right now only a few friends have read them (and liked them), but I'm not sure she wants to publish them. I hope your daughter gets past that breakeven point!

[rennigade]

Thats awesome. Im guessing she has the book in a word format or some other word processing format? She can convert it to an ebook in a couple seconds: http://ebook.online-convert.com/convert-to-mobi

.mobi extensions are for kindle....epub are for the nook I believe. Of course if she does it this way the ebook is not protected. Meaning if she gives a copy out that person can pass it around to as many people as they want and it will work on their device...assuming its the correct format.

[disneysteve]

DD has actually since at least started and gotten pretty far along on 3 or 4 more books, one of which is a sequel to this one. I'm encouraging her to stick with it because you just never know. It only takes one hit to get her a big payoff.

[disneysteve]

Thats awesome. Im guessing she has the book in a word format or some other word processing format? She can convert it to an ebook in a couple seconds: http://ebook.online-convert.com/convert-to-mobi

.mobi extensions are for kindle....epub are for the nook I believe. Of course if she does it this way the ebook is not protected. Meaning if she gives a copy out that person can pass it around to as many people as they want and it will work on their device...assuming its the correct format.

I'm not sure what format this company uses or how they protect it. It certainly doesn't make sense to put it out in a way that lets people freely copy and distribute it.

[kyoko]

That's so amazing! 18 years old and published a book! Even though rejected by many publishers, she did not give up, but pursued her dream, and found an alternative to do self-publish. What a determination!
With the privilege of internet and social media, it is getting a lot easier to promote your products, but you still have to put a lot of effort, which, she is doing amazingly!

I hear a lot people start writing and self publishing. They sell their books online, including amazon. Sure, it may get easier to publish your book, but your daughter's story is very inspirational. I used to have a lot of dreams, but lost a lot on the way as I grew older...

Sometimes, we adults learn valuable lessons from youngsters...
Never give up your dream.

I truly wish her book will be sold and she will make a profit! But the most important thing here is she accomplished something big. That would give her a great confidence, and I'm sure she will not easily give up when she comes up some obstacles in the future.

Thank you for sharing a wonderful story!

[JoeP]

I'm not sure what format this company uses or how they protect it. It certainly doesn't make sense to put it out in a way that lets people freely copy and distribute it.

If you're saying that it doesn't make sense for your daughter to give it away, you might want to reconsider. It doesn't sound like she is dependent upon the income, so it might be a good idea to make this work available for free to establish a following. Maybe make a paypal donation optional. Then, once she has a fan base, start charging for this novel and the sequels, and then sell in both print and ebook. She might even be able to convince publishers to take her novels by showing the number of downloads and the reviews.

[rennigade]

If you're saying that it doesn't make sense for your daughter to give it away, you might want to reconsider. It doesn't sound like she is dependent upon the income, so it might be a good idea to make this work available for free to establish a following. Maybe make a paypal donation optional. Then, once she has a fan base, start charging for this novel and the sequels, and then sell in both print and ebook. She might even be able to convince publishers to take her novels by showing the number of downloads and the reviews.

You're right. The quickest way to build an audience is to give them something for free. Scott Sigler...a pretty famous and becoming more famous author allows anyone to listen to his books online for free. He has a short audio commercial in the beginning of each chapter...its brilliant. He says usually it only takes someone 1 or 2 audio books before they get hooked on his work and start buying his hard/electronic copies. And even if they dont its still expose for him, and of course word of mouth. http://podiobooks.com/title/ancestor/

[llckll]

Congrats! What's the title of the book? What is it about? Fiction, non-fiction? Has she tried selling on Amazon? I'm interested to see what the topic is on.

[NetSkyBlue]

That's wonderful! Does she participate in NaNoWriMo? National Novel Writing Month, in November? It's a really fun event.

[jeffrey]

Stories like this make me smile

[ActYourWage]

That's great! The thing that stood out the most to me was being rejected 40 something times and still determined to make it work.

[disneysteve]

That's wonderful! Does she participate in NaNoWriMo? National Novel Writing Month, in November? It's a really fun event.

This novel is a direct result of her 2011 NaNoWriMo participation. That's when she started it. She didn't achieve 50,000 words in 30 days. I think she got to about 19,000. But she liked what she had and decided to continue working on it until it became the finished product that was just published.

[kork13]

This novel is a direct result of her 2011 NaNoWriMo participation. That's when she started it. She didn't achieve 50,000 words in 30 days. I think she got to about 19,000. But she liked what she had and decided to continue working on it until it became the finished product that was just published.

Cool, I've never even heard of such a contest, though I expect this is the entire hope of doing such events -- inspire young people to push themselves creatively and grow to love writing. Great success.

[savingmama]

NaNoWriMo is awesome! or for the youth: (http://ywp.nanowrimo.org). You have to do all the writing in one month. Ahead of time you can do an outline but that is it. Youth commit to 30,000 words and adults commit to a minimum of 50,000. Then in November you just write and write. If you complete your goal you get to publish 5 copies for free (you pay shipping, which was $5.95 total). After November you can do editing before you publish your novel. So my daughter got her book (five copies) in the mail a couple weeks ago and was so excited to have published a book. I was pretty impressed since she is only 11. It is a great program at a great cost.