My Road to Publication, by Cassandra Carr

One question I get asked a lot is, “How did you come to be published?”. Everyone has a different road, and I was extraordinarily lucky that mine wasn’t as long as some others’ have been. I started writing seriously in 2008. I wrote a contemporary romance titled Should’ve Known Better and started shopping it to agents and editors. I attended a conference in Connecticut (CT Fiction Fest – highly recommended) and met some more agents and editors, some of whom expressed interest in my novel.

After a while, though, as a writer you need to move on. So while I continued to shop Should’ve Known Better, I began another book. This one was started in July 2009 and was an erotic romance. I titled it Talk to Me, and that’s the book that I eventually sold as my debut novel. I actually wrote much of the first draft over a three-day writing retreat in early August 2009. I went back to CT Fiction Fest in April 2010, but still wasn’t ready to submit Talk to Me, so I pitched Should’ve Known Better then too. I got some more interest, and I continued to work on Talk to Me.

A writer friend of mine, Miranda Baker (hi Miranda!) read Talk to Me and suggested some fairly major changes. I pored over the changes in my mind for a little while and made those I felt comfortable with. In late September 2010 I submitted Talk to Me to a couple of publishers. I also continued to query agents.

In October 2010 Loose Id contacted me, asking for my full manuscript. I sent it, and in early November Loose Id contacted me again, offering me a contract. I jumped up and down and hyperventilated, and then told Loose Id I had to let the other publishers know about my contract. This is accepted and even expected in the publishing world, and they were fine with it. In the end, I stayed with Loose Id, and Talk to Me was released on March 22, 2011.

I never did statistics about how many agents and editors I sent the manuscript to – there are only a few that are important to know , most notably Loose Id, who bought the book.

What questions do you have about the process of getting published? Ask them below and I’ll do the best I can to answer them!