R.L. Pope's Blog
June 15, 2024
AWAKENED, Re-release
I was always on the fence about self-publishing my debut novel, AWAKENED, right from the start. The idea of being 100% in control of my work appealed to me. I knew it would be more work, but I didn’t find it intimidating.
Before I had a finished manuscript I decided to join the writing community on Instagram, thinking it’d be the best way to find readers. Instead, I found a great group of writers. They were extremely supportive of other writers and some of them were big readers like myself.
But it’s social media. And as we are all coming to know, social media breeds toxicity. No one means to do it, but watching others you start to compare. You see someone who self-published and realize you don’t love their style of writing. You judge. Maybe you get smug and think you’re better than them. Then you see someone else land an agent and get published the traditional way…
After a while I started to believe that all good writers get published traditionally and self publishing was for the “not so good” ones. (This of course is not true! I know that now.)
So I began to query agents and sent my manuscript to every publisher I could find that didn’t require representation.
I got a lot of rejections, as all writers do.
Then I got the “yes” so many dream about! and it truly felt like just that—a dream come true. It was a small publisher, less well known. But hey, traditionally published is better than self-publishing… Right?
Hindsight is 20-20. But at the time I thought I was making the right decision. I signed the contract. Fast forward a few months and I hadn’t heard from them again. Zero updates. No marketing plan (like they promised). Crickets. Being a brand new mom, I didn’t have too much time to dwell on this and I figured they must know what they’re doing.
Turns out they really didn’t. Finally, I got the “edited” version of my manuscript back to sign off—it was a mess! They changed the spelling of “mumble” to “momble”, “peek” to “peak”. I was horrified. Not to mention sleep deprived with an infant. But I did my best to self edit.
After that there was no marketing plan sent. They sent me the publishing date 10 days before it went to print. I barely had time to self promote.
After the release I sent countless emails to the marketing team and they never responded. After a year of this I decided to cut ties and cancelled my contract. I wasn’t going to put in extra effort of marketing only for them to take 70% of profits!
So here we are, I’m free! And excited to announce that AWAKENED is being relaunched! And this time I can do it my way.
I’ll have a cover reveal, a book trailer, a release date with plenty of notice! And a brand new cover! (not too different, since the original design was my own… oh yeah the graphic design team wasn’t good either.😅)
At the end of the day, I just want to tell stories! So, I hope you’ll follow along as I embark on this new chapter of my writing career. And I hope you enjoy the stories I tell.
Thanks for reading! -Rachel
Before I had a finished manuscript I decided to join the writing community on Instagram, thinking it’d be the best way to find readers. Instead, I found a great group of writers. They were extremely supportive of other writers and some of them were big readers like myself.
But it’s social media. And as we are all coming to know, social media breeds toxicity. No one means to do it, but watching others you start to compare. You see someone who self-published and realize you don’t love their style of writing. You judge. Maybe you get smug and think you’re better than them. Then you see someone else land an agent and get published the traditional way…
After a while I started to believe that all good writers get published traditionally and self publishing was for the “not so good” ones. (This of course is not true! I know that now.)
So I began to query agents and sent my manuscript to every publisher I could find that didn’t require representation.
I got a lot of rejections, as all writers do.
Then I got the “yes” so many dream about! and it truly felt like just that—a dream come true. It was a small publisher, less well known. But hey, traditionally published is better than self-publishing… Right?
Hindsight is 20-20. But at the time I thought I was making the right decision. I signed the contract. Fast forward a few months and I hadn’t heard from them again. Zero updates. No marketing plan (like they promised). Crickets. Being a brand new mom, I didn’t have too much time to dwell on this and I figured they must know what they’re doing.
Turns out they really didn’t. Finally, I got the “edited” version of my manuscript back to sign off—it was a mess! They changed the spelling of “mumble” to “momble”, “peek” to “peak”. I was horrified. Not to mention sleep deprived with an infant. But I did my best to self edit.
After that there was no marketing plan sent. They sent me the publishing date 10 days before it went to print. I barely had time to self promote.
After the release I sent countless emails to the marketing team and they never responded. After a year of this I decided to cut ties and cancelled my contract. I wasn’t going to put in extra effort of marketing only for them to take 70% of profits!
So here we are, I’m free! And excited to announce that AWAKENED is being relaunched! And this time I can do it my way.
I’ll have a cover reveal, a book trailer, a release date with plenty of notice! And a brand new cover! (not too different, since the original design was my own… oh yeah the graphic design team wasn’t good either.😅)
At the end of the day, I just want to tell stories! So, I hope you’ll follow along as I embark on this new chapter of my writing career. And I hope you enjoy the stories I tell.
Thanks for reading! -Rachel
