NOW Help Is On Its Way

by Jenna Forrest
(Durham, NC, USA)

Help Is On Its Way

I'm Jenna Forrest, your typical self-published author. I had a career in education, but decided to leave my profession to become an author at age 33. The part that was not all too typical is that writing my book came at a time of upheaval in my life where I was faced with selling my house. I ultimately did sell it, using the funds as a safety cushion to live off of while I wrote Help Is On Its Way full time.

I wrote from many places over a nearly two year period, writing query letters along the way to a few agents that were listed as interested in the subject matter of my memoir. Out of about 15 queries, I received one inquiry and so I mailed in my manuscript. However, this small publisher, Kunati, had taken 8 months to respond to my query and it was suggested that it may take another year to review and publish my manuscript.

I couldn't wait another minute to publish, but I still felt like the story needed more improvement. I paid two professional editors to review the story for its public appeal. It took me another few months to incorporate their suggestions. Right about the time I finished my revisions; I found an author's meetup where Lulu.com reps were present. After that meeting, I decided to self-publish with Lulu.

The process with Lulu was very easy and affordable. I was able to print my book, order it, make corrections to typos, download it again, print it again, order it, and make more corrections. I repeated this process until I'd caught all the mistakes in print. I also was working with a book cover designer at this time to develop the best looking, most professional cover possible. Printing with Lulu really helped us try different versions of the same book cover so we could more easily see what improvements needed to be made.

Once I had all print mistakes and cover art corrected, I switched to publish with Booksurge, an Amazon.com company so that I could choose a more shelf-friendly book size and be listed on Amazon easily. It was very inexpensive to sign with Booksurge because I did all the typesetting and page numbering myself and downloaded the book as a print-ready PDF. Incidentally, this was the time when I bought my second house and got settled again.

After the book was listed on Amazon, I worked to make a name for myself - to develop a website and brand that readers could identify with. I wrote articles, developed professional partnerships, and built a website community until my name became synonymous with the topic of childhood sensitivity. I had the opportunity to be considered a regarded expert, and able to speak and write on the topic of childhood sensitivity.

I re-released a third edition of the book a year later (March 2008) with more revisions to the story based on professional feedback and experience I'd gained from the year I'd spent marketing and studying successful authors in the field. In April of 2008 I ran a one-day promotion to coordinate as many readers as possible to order my book on that day. This was a good way to form lasting partnerships with professionals in the childhood education field. I really went full steam and learned every detail of the industry that I could along the way. I now work as an author success consultant for POD publishers who want to help their published authors sell more books.

Visit Jenna's site.