Hello! My name is Heather Kirchhoff. I am the Young Adult author of Fading and The Last Night. Today I’m doing a collaboration with Jacinta Hudson. We are talking about the mistakes we made when we first started out with our writing career. Don’t forget to check out her great post.
Self-publishing started to become a thing when I was a teenager. It’s super easy to do, so I decided to jump in. I realize now that I should have waited. I should have researched and talked to other authors about their experiences. But I didn’t do that. When I published The Last Night I didn’t stop to think about the fact that I should do some research where self-publishing is concerned. It’s important to research everything—from the editing process, to marketing, to beta readers. Book structure is another good one. I’ve had plans to write a book about suicide in hopes of saving some lives since I started writing. It wasn’t until I almost lost someone to suicide that I decided I should get to working on a book that’ll show readers what can happen to someone after one commits suicide. Once one of my classmates killed himself sophomore year of high school—about eight months after I almost lost someone to that—I realized I needed to get to it as soon as possible. I wasn’t following any of the YouTubers I am now for advice. I didn’t know that what I was doing was wrong. I didn’t have anyone in my corner in the publishing world. I was young and didn’t know any better. I was just so excited to publish a book dealing with depression, anxiety and bullying. Now I wish I didn’t jump instead of crawl. The only thing I can do, though, is fix my mistakes. I went through all of my books and fixed them up. I’m slowly learning about how to make an author platform and market my books. I made a lot of mistakes when I started this journey. Not only did I fail with researching, I also didn’t market my book. I talked about it a little on my author page and in a few groups, but that was about it. That doesn’t cut it. You need to have constrictive feedback, and a lot of it. That’s something I didn’t do before I published. I sent TLN to beta readers, but didn’t get a response back from any of them. I figured that meant I was good to go. I was wrong. Next time I publish a book I’m going to be doing things differently. I’m going to market it like it deserves. I’m going to make sure I get plenty of feedback. I’m going to get reviews and people interested before the book is available. If you’re thinking about self-publishing, I strongly encourage you to do your research. You won’t be sorry. Also, make sure you get feedback. Make sure you put your book through critique partners, beta readers, a cover designer, formatter, and a professional editor. Don’t take the short cut. You’ll regret it in the end. Trust me. It’s what I did, and now I’m correcting it. Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it! I post every Wednesday. My debut novel is about a girl struggling to cope after a love one dies. It deals with mental illness. You can check out The Last Night here! Feel free to check me out on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I’d love to interact with you!
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About Me:Hello! My name is Heather Kirchhoff. I am a Young Adult author. I want to give out writing advice and help other authors avoid the mistakes I made. I post twice a month for now. Archives
April 2020
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