Renea Winchester is the award-winning author. In November, 2011 Make Your Mark Publishing will release Stress-free Marketing: Practical Advice for the Newly Published Author. She is the author of In The Garden With Billy: Lessons About Life, Love & Tomatoes. A two-time winner of the Appalachian Writer’s Award, in 2010, she was awarded the Denny Plattner award. Her work has appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Georgia Backroads, Smoky Mountain Living, Long Leaf Style and Georgia Magazine.
She is a frequent radio guest, appearing on many radio stations, including Georgia Public Radio 90.1 FM. Her memoir, In the Garden with Billy: Lessons about Life, Love & Tomatoes (2010, Little Creek Books) earned a SIBA and GAYA nomination.
She is currently working on the sequel to In the Garden titled, In the Kitchen with Billy and her fourth book titled: Backroad Folk: Everyday People Who Matter
Renea believes in the power of relationships. She believes the best way to increase sales is to develop relationships with readers, fellow authors, and booksellers. Contact her here
Pam at Hope-the secretdose.blogspot.com
/ October 18, 2011Hi Renea,
How did you go about getting your first book published? did you find an agent?
Thank you,
Pam
adviceforauthors
/ October 18, 2011Pam,
Thank you for visiting my blog, and for asking this question. I did approach several agents with my first book. Some who kindly responded that they they didn’t feel In the Garden With Billy: Lessons About Life Love & Tomatoes would “sell” outside of the south. So when I made my first sale in Australia and Europe I had to smile. Today, more than ever, agents are under tremendous pressure to find specific “niche’ markets.” This means several veteran authors (who have penned multiple titles) have been dropped by their agents.
The agent is responsible for securing a publishing contract. Publicists receive compensation (from you) each time they schedule an event (radio appearance, television appearance etc). The industry standard now is for authors to do approximately 80% of the marketing themselves.
That being said, I boldly approached every publisher who accepted submissions without an agent and eventually found a traditional small press. Find a listing of them in the Writer’s Market, which is available at most libraries in the reference section. For this book, Stress-Free Marketing: Practical Advice for the Newly Published Author, a friend referred me to Make Your Mark. They accept a wide variety of manuscripts. You can learn more about them at this link.
Thank you for your comments.