Polishing the Story

The publishing process began with editing the text.  Bethany had done a good job on her assignment, so there weren't many spelling or punctuation errors.  However, there was still room for some improvement.

Word Alive provided a professional editor, Kerry, to work with Bethany to hone the wording of the story.  Bethany began by putting her questions in comments in the Word doc containing the text, and sending it to Kerry. Kerry responded with her suggestions, and Bethany and Rebecca implemented some of those and responded with further questions about others.  At each stage, Kerry would create a new version which included the changes everyone had agreed on.

The biggest change made to the text was expanding the ending.  Initially, the story closed with a sentence or two.  Bethany rewrote it to make it about as long as the introduction, so the story felt more balanced. Another significant change was adding a sentence explaining why the three princes suddenly entered the story.  A few other sentences were rearranged or rewritten to make them clearer.

At this time, Bethany and Rebecca also worked on the summary for the back of the book, and the author bio (the sentences about Bethany on the back cover).  They decided not to include an author photo for privacy reasons.

After a few times going back and forth with questions and suggestions, Bethany, Rebecca and Kerry were all happy with the final text, and Rebecca sent Word Alive the official approval to move on to the next stage in the process.

From Thought to Reality

Six months or so later, Rebecca, Bethany's mom, was unemployed and looking for ways to earn some money, and she remembered Bethany's teacher's suggestion.  Maybe publishing The Lotus Princess would be a good way to stay busy and earn money.

At that point, Rebecca started researching different ways to publish a story.  There are lots of guides out there on "how to get your story published," but there are two main ways of doing it.

The old way was to send your story to publisher after publisher and agent after agent, hoping one would find it worth working with.  This was difficult in the old days, when stories could be rejected hundreds of times before being accepted. These days, it is hard even to find a publisher who accepts manuscripts directly from authors!  In this way of publishing, the publisher has a lot of control over the final product, and the author gets paid royalties for their work.

The new way is called "self-publishing."  In this way of publishing, you pay lots of money to a company who then publishes your book for you.  You have to sell it yourself.  There are also lots of self-publishing companies out there, and they all offer different options for how your book is published and distributed.

While Rebecca was doing this research, a teacher in Bethany's school published a children's story book (Sunbeam Music by Sarah Froese). Rebecca decided to look into the company that published for her, and eventually decided to go with that company for Bethany's book.

The Lotus Princess is published by Word Alive Press.  They provide editing and professional illustrations, and they make sure people can order your book from Amazon, Chapters (Indigo), Barnes and Noble, and other book stores.  This is called "distribution" and it's very hard to do on your own, since most book stores won't take books that don't come through their own channels.

The final step in starting the process was paying for the services of Word Alive.  Rebecca's Oma (grandmother) was willing to loan Rebecca the money to pay for the publication of the story.  Money was exchanged, legal contracts were signed, and the publishing process began!

(By the way, if you are considering publishing your story and you decide to go with Word Alive Press, be sure to mention Bethany's name so she can receive a referral bonus.)