Valerie Willis on Her Self-Publishing Journey

For author Valerie Willis, the self-publishing path was not something she initially intended to pursue. After completing her first manuscript in the Cedric the Demonic Knight dark fantasy series, Willis queried over one-hundred literary agents and received almost as many rejections. But, within those rejections were a few requests to see if she had work in other genres to submit. Agents showed interest in her writing style, but felt her story mixed too many different genres making it a hard sell to traditional publishers. Some even suggested she consider self-publishing. While this feedback was confusing to Willis, she was also inspired to research self-publishing to see if it was worth pursuing. She found that her background in graphic design and computers made Amazon's CreateSpace (now called Kindle Direct Publishing) an ideal fit for her self-publishing needs. The one challenge she faced early on in the process was having money to support marketing initiatives. Willis now funnels any book profits right back into promoting her work, creating a self-sustaining business.

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