Case Studies

Case Study: How The Coat Check Girl Came to Life

By Laura Buchwald I began writing The Coat Check Girl many years ago, without knowledge of what the path to publication entailed or whether that was even my goal. I’d been a writer since I learned to hold a pencil and had dabbled in short fiction. The idea for a longform project came to me…
Case Studies Issue Six Hundred Twenty Six Special Feature

Case Study: Pivoting to Publishing — That Summer She Found Her Voice: A Retro Novel

By Jean Burgess Despite joining writers’ organizations, taking multiple webinars, reading a plethora of online articles about getting my debut fiction published, I fell into the many traps that novice writers succumb to when too eager to get their “baby” published. Through learning from my mistakes, being open to the advice of veteran writers and…
Case Studies Issue Five Hundred Eighty Three

Case Study: How Discount Ceremony Was Published

By Timothy Day This is part of our ongoing series on how authors published their first book. You can read our other stories in this series, here, here, here, here, here and here. What a unique relief to be writing about my short story collection Discount Ceremony from this perspective. After many years of wondering if it…
Case Studies Issue Five Hundred Forty One

Don’t Change Your Debut

By Grace Bialecki I was nearly finished with my first novel when I met up with an author acquaintance to ask for advice about getting a literary agent. It was a bitter New York winter night, and I felt icy and invigorated as I slid into the bar. Soon I would send out my manuscript…
Case Studies Issue Five Hundred Thirty Three

My Journey from Self Publishing to Traditional Publication

By Rachel Presser Back in 2015, I started my own consulting business and soon added writing for hire services. With a goal to have a flexible income source that paid more than my last salaried job at a tax law office and let me focus on game development, I knew I couldn’t rely on grinding…
Case Studies Issue Five Hundred Twenty Three

How a Reprint and a Long Held Story Got Published

By Nancy Julien Kopp Some years ago, I had written a personal essay about how my father, who had a problem acknowledging disabled people, learned to accept his first grandchild who was born with spina bifida and hydrocephalus. Those two disabilities proved a big burden for our sweet baby girl but also the catalyst for…
Case Studies Issue Five Hundred Twenty One

Case Study: How “A Long Walk with Mary: A Search for the Mother of God” Was Published

By Brandi Willis Schreiber This is part of our ongoing series on how authors published their first book. You can read our other stories in this series, here, here, here, here, and here. I’d been driving solo for a few hours. Long, golden stretches of West Texas blurred into New Mexico, and as I scanned the thin…
Case Studies Issue Five Hundred Nineteen

Case Study: How I Published My Debut Novel Off the Yoga Mat

By Cheryl J. Fish This is part of our ongoing series on how authors published their first book. You can read our other stories in this series, here, here, here, and here. I am writing about what happened to me, at the threshold of publishing my debut novel. After fifteen years, after realizing there are notable paths…
Case Studies Issue Four Hundred Eighty Six Special Feature

Case Study: How I Published My Debut Book – Into the Dragon’s Lair: A Supernatural History of Wales

By Chris Saunders I’ll always remember the expression on the teacher’s face when I told him I wanted to be a writer. It was a look of amusement and mild shock, with maybe a touch of sympathy. Years later, it dawned on me that he probably thought I was being sarcastic. I wasn’t. I was…
Case Studies Issue Four Hundred Sixty Five Special Feature

Case Study: The Potrero Complex’s Journey to Publication

By Amy L. Bernstein When poet Robert Frost wrote about two roads diverging in a yellow wood, I doubt he had in mind all the writers striving to get happily (and traditionally) published. But my own publishing journey thus far suggests that there are indeed divergent roads a writer can take to reach the same…
Case Studies Issue Four Hundred Fifty Six

Case Study: How Claudette on the Keys Got Published

By Joanne Culley  The story I’d been working on had gone through multiple evolutions, from a strictly factual account, to a blend of fact and fiction, until it had reached the point where I was calling it a novel. The story was loosely based on the lives of my grandparents, a two-piano four-hands team who…
Case Studies Issue Four Hundred Forty

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