Today I have a guest post from a young teenage author! Please join me in welcoming Elisabeth to book briefs! She is only 16 and her second book, the Secrets of the Vanmars, is already published! Today she is going to talk about the internet and publishing.
It is an exciting age to be alive, isn’t it? Cell phones, computers, libraries, instant messaging, planes, and my absolute favorite, that magical network, the Internet. The Internet has changed the world. The way the world works and the way we connect and communicate. Why wouldn’t it effect our literature as well?
When my first book was published, I was fifteen and had just learned about that thing called “Facebook.” Thanks to parents who encouraged my time be spent with the printed word rather than in Cyberspace and a shoddy local internet connection, I was suffering severe technological impairment. (It’s better now, but I’m learning yet.)
Before my first book was picked up by Chengalera Press, we (myself and my business-minded father) started doing research into the publishing industry. We found that there were a lot of things that the Internet and online resources had changed the publishing dynamics. We found resources like CreateSpace, Smashwords, PubIt!, and Kindle Direct Publishing. And don’t even get me started on blogs or else I’ll be talking for pages and pages about how much I love them!
It still amazes me how people from all over the world can meet and talk without ever leaving their laptops. With the click of a button we can share our views, ideas, and lives with an unlimited number of people. (It’s magic, isn’t it?) But enough of my awestruck rambling, we were talking about publishing. 🙂
The old method of becoming a published author was as follows: write book, get agent, get publisher, go to book signings, go to events, hope for the best. As an all-knowing fifteen-year-old, I was certain that was how the world still worked all the time. I was proved wrong. Today, the internet offers other options than the old way with online book venues like Amazon and eBooks for devices like the NOOK, Kindle, and Kobo. It is now easier than ever for a writer to subvert the whole “system” and self-publish to millions. (Even though I went a more traditional route and got a publisher, I’m still a fan of those rebel writers. =) The big publishers—Random House, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin, Bloomsbury, etc.—have had a near-monopoly for awhile now. And if I don’t stop there I may start an economics lecture, so I’ll stop and just say that the publishing world is changing and becoming more accessible.
Being a sixteen-year-old author learning to navigate the Internet isn’t so bad when the Internet is so fun to navigate. I get to meet all sorts of awesome book people in places as far away from my native Texas as the UK and India that I would never have met otherwise. And now you’ve gotten to meet me! =D
Find out more about Elizabeth’s series here: http://www.argetallam.com/
The Secrets of the Vanmars by Elisabeth Wheatley
After her adventures with the Key of Amatahns, sixteen-year-old Janir Caersynn Argetallam returns home to find Brevia on the brink of war with a neighboring country, Stlaven. Her foster-father and even Saoven—a brave young elf warrior—think it will be safe at the castle where Janir grew up. However, while trying to unravel a looming mystery, Karile—self-taught wizard and Janir’s self-appointed best friend—becomes certain that there is danger in the mountains surrounding Janir’s childhood home and that it has something to do with Stlaven’s most powerful family, the Vanmars…
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The old method of becoming a published author was as follows: write book, get agent, get publisher, go to book signings, go to events, hope for the best. As an all-knowing fifteen-year-old, I was certain that was how the world still worked all the time. I was proved wrong. Today, the internet offers other options than the old way with online book venues like Amazon and eBooks for devices like the NOOK, Kindle, and Kobo. It is now easier than ever for a writer to subvert the whole “system” and self-publish to millions. (Even though I went a more traditional route and got a publisher, I’m still a fan of those rebel writers. =) 
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