Guest Post: What Happens After NaNoWriMo?: by Hank Quense

If you’ve been following the blog for a while, you’ve met Hank Quense before, on numerous occasions. He’s shared information on kids’ writing workshops on more than one occasion, as well as on self-publishing and web page creation. Today he’s taking us through the writing challenge that is NaNoWriMo. Enjoy!

What IS NaNoWriMo?
For those who don’t know (and according to its own promotional materials), National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Now, each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with 50,000 words of a brand new novel. They enter the month as elementary school teachers, mechanics, or stay-at-home parents. They leave novelists.

NaNoWriMo officially became a nonprofit organization in 2006, and our programs support writing fluency and education. Our website hosts more than a million writers, serving as a social network with author profiles, personal project libraries, and writing buddies. NaNoWriMo tracks words for writers like Fitbit tracks steps, and hosts real-world writing events in cities from Mexico City, to Seoul, to Milwaukee with the help of 900+ volunteers in thousands of partnering libraries and community centers like… well, like nothing else.

Today, NaNoWriMo is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that believes in the transformational power of creativity. We provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people find their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page.

The Guest Post: What Happens After NaNoWriMo?
by Hank Quense

Once your NaNoWriMo project is completed, it’s time to start thinking about what to do with the manuscript you just finished writing.

Of course, the first thing you have to do is revise it (right?).  And keep revising it until it’s a polished gem.  Once those revisions are completed, it becomes decision time: what happens now?  There are several possibilities here.

• File it and forget it.
• Try for an agent and/or a traditional publisher.
• Sign up with a service company 
• Self-publish it. 

Let’s explore each of these options.

File it and forget it: 

What?  After all that hard work and sweat during an entire month?  You have to believe in yourself!  You have to believe your manuscript is great and that someone (even lots of someones) wants to read it.  I recommend you don’t stick it in your sock drawer and forget about it.  Try one of the other choices listed.  You can have a successful published book!

Try for an agent and/or a traditional publisher:

This is popular option and many writers try this as their first choice.  This route can take a long time, possibly years.  Some of the big publishers now accept submissions without an agent and that simplifies matters if the publisher is a match for your manuscript.  Indie publishers offer a slightly different path.  Most of these smaller publishers don’t rely on agents so it’s easier to get in touch with them.  Generally, the smaller indie publishers are more open to new authors and have much shorter intervals

The big advantage with this option is the publisher does all the work and incurs all the expenses involved with producing the book.

Sign up with a service company:

These service companies seem to be a growth industry.  They’re popping up all over the landscape and they have some controversy surrounding them.  Their basic method of operation is you pay them to produce and publish the book.  That is the exact opposite of the previous option.  The cost to the author isn’t pin money either, its thousands of dollars.  Granted for that money, the service company does a lot of work.  It comes up with a cover, edits the manuscript, formats the book and attends to all the other details involved in the publishing process.

My concern about the service companies is this: vanity presses do the same thing.  So why are service companies different from vanity press publishers?  I haven’t heard a satisfactory answer to this question and until I do, I won’t be a service company fan.  I guess if you have the money to spend on this option, it’s something to consider although I’m more than a bit leery of the whole concept of services companies.

Before you decide to use a service company, make sure you read all the fine print on all the web pages and especially on any contracts.  If you have a question, don’t sign until the question is answered to your satisfaction.  Don’t accept any fancy double-talk.

Self-publish it: 

This option is increasingly popular with authors, both newbies and established.  

An inexperienced author who considers self-publishing her book will often take to the internet to the research the process.  That’s when problems set in.  There is a lot of great information available on the web.  Unfortunately, there is also a lot of mis-information and other material that is simply wrong.  The issue for the newbie author is figuring out which information is accurate and which isn’t.

An example of wrong information is the advice to take your unrevised and unedited manuscript and upload it Kindle.  This produces the kind of book that gives self-publishing a bad reputation.  It also indicates a complete lack of understanding on what self-publishing is all about.  In a nutshell, self-publishing means that the author is the publisher and as such must do all the work a publisher would do if the author sold the book to the publisher.  Here is a short list of the work involved in self-publishing the book: getting a unique cover, having the manuscript professionally edited, designing the layout and formatting the book.  This last item is especially important in the case of ebooks because what you see on your computer screen is most likely not ebook compliant.  Ebooks must be formatted in accordance with the Epub3 Standard and word processor default settings assume you will print the material.  Hence, these settings aren’t complaint with the Epub3 Standard.

Another nasty situation that can arise is with the scam artists that cruise the internet searching for new and/or inexperienced authors.  The scammers will make attractive offers that do nothing except drain your wallet.

One solution to this information conundrum is to get a mentor: an experienced self-published author who can offer advice on a number of issues that will pop up during the publish process and will help with the decisions that have to be made.  Another solution is to ignore most of the internet information and read a good book on the subject.  

Speaking of books and mentors, for NaNoWriMo (and other first time authors) How to Self-publish and Market a Book is a great option.  It uniquely integrates both the publishing and marketing aspects into a unified project and will take you through the process step by step.  As an ebook or print book, it’s available at Amazon.  For a video course, go to Udemy. (NB: In October 2021, J-E.com was notified that the course had received 8.5/10 stars by Coursemarks, an independent evaluator of online educational programs. Coursemarks is one of the largest digital course review sites with over 61,000 independent reviews. For more information and the in-depth rating, visit: https://coursemarks.com/course/how-to-self-publish-and-market-a-book/)

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