When I finished my first draft of Bondwitch, I googled “how to publish a book”, and boy, did I have a long road ahead of me. After lots and lots of editing, comments from beta readers, and more editing, I had a choice to make: query an agent, query a small press, or self-publish.

Querying an agent seems to be the more traditional path. Once an author signs with an agent, their agent will then pitch the author’s book to a publisher. If the publisher accepts the book, then the book gets published. The publisher has an editor, artist, and marketing team to help with the process

Going with a small press is very similar to the above, just minus the agent. The author acts as their own agent. They query the publisher, the publisher either accepts or rejects the book. These publishers are called “small press” because they either don’t publish as many books as “The Big Five” publishers per year, or they aren’t as well known, or they don’t offer the “whole package” (for example, one author friend is with a publisher who requires its authors to hire their own editor and cover artist, and the publisher covers everything else). Even with the label of “small”,  some are still pretty large. 

Self-publishing is where the author does everything on their own: editing, cover art, formatting, and marketing – or they pay someone to do it.

Of the three, self-publishing is the only one that guarantees your book will get published. If you want a publisher to publish your book, they have to accept it. That is often a long and painful road of rejections before someone believes your book is marketable. 

Regardless of which path an author takes, marketing is something the author must be heavily involved in. We have to create ways in which potential readers will come across our book and hopefully buy it. 

At first, I thought I wanted to go the agent route. As I researched agents who repped fantasy and romance, I discovered something. Most agents don’t accept a broad genre. They have something called a Manuscript Wish-List, which specifies what kind of stories within a chosen genre they are interested in. For example, one agent may list “Urban Fantasy with a strong female protagonist”. See how more specific that is than just “fantasy”? So as I looked at agents’ MSWLs, very few of them were asking for the kind of story Bondwitch is – or, at least it seemed that way to me. And the ones who did, wanted to rep authors from marginal backgrounds; and as a straight white Christian, that’s not me. Now, I want it understood that I am not victimizing myself here. I completely respect those agents for wanting to give diverse authors a better chance in the publishing world. It just simply meant that I needed to choose a different publishing path. 

As I started looking at small publishers, I came across a similar problem with agents. Many of them are so small, that they publish a very specific type of story, that once, again, Bondwitch did not fit into. Bondwitch falls under “mainstream” YA Fantasy, and many small publishers pride themselves on publishing more “unique” stories. 

At the same time that I was researching agents and small publishers, I started getting feedback from beta readers. Many of them couldn’t finish because they said they didn’t care for romance. I didn’t think I wrote a romance. Yes, there is a strong romantic subplot, but the main plot is not a romance. But, if the subplot was that big of a deal to potential readers, I needed to look at my genre categories differently. This led to a lot of research that I’ll talk about in a future post. But long story short, I was able to find a list of small publishers that had fantasy lines and romance lines, that way Bondwitch could fit into both. 

I actually found The Wild Rose Press by accident. Several of the stories I read on Readict  had “Published by The Wild Rose Press” at the end. I looked them up, and they didn’t require an agent for an author to query them! The stories I had been reading fell under the same aesthetic as Bondwitch, and I felt deep in my soul that The Wild Rose Press was the publisher for me. (My experience querying them can be read here.)

After all that research, and lots of thinking and going back and forth, I decided that querying a small press was the route for me. I like the idea of being my own agent, but I also need help with everything beyond writing the story. So the small press seemed like a great choice for me. I also believe in my story enough, that if all the publishers I queried rejected me, I was going to self-publish. While I queried, I created a self-publishing plan, just in case. Luckily I didn’t have to implement it, but at least I have it on the back burner if I ever want to, or if a future story doesn’t work for traditional publishers. 

I am very happy with The Wild Rose Press and I hope to stay with them for a long time. They will always be my first choice.