Rebecca Roland is a 2007 graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop (and chief correspondent for this blog).
She is the author of the Shards of History series, and The King of Ash and Bones, and Other Stories, all published with World Weaver Press, as well as The Necromancer’s Inheritance series. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Nature, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Stupefying Stories, Plasma Frequency, and Every Day Fiction.
You can find out more about her and her work at rebeccaroland.net, her blog Spice of Life, or follow her on Twitter @rebecca_roland.
This post is a bookend to our June essay by Eileen Wiedbrauk, Editor-in-Chief of World Weaver Press.
When I was offered the chance to write a guest post on what it was like to work with a small publisher, I jumped at the opportunity because I’ve been wanting to write this up for a long time. I’ve had a great experience working with a small press, and I want to share that so people can figure out if a small press might be a good fit for them.
My first published book came out in 2012 with World Weaver Press. To say I was nervous about the entire experience would be like saying that Bruce Banner might have a teensy anger issue. Although I knew what the process was to take a book through all the steps of publication, more or less, I was scared of somehow messing up.
But the nice thing about being a brand-spanking-new author with nervous tendencies 
and working with a small press is that I worked directly with editor and publisher Eileen Weidbrauk. She answered all my silly questions and guided me through the process of edits, line edits, cover reveal, social media posts, and so much more. Her business partner, Elizabeth Wagner, works in marketing and set me up with a blog tour. She gently nudged me into starting a blog of my own and walked me through what to do on social media. Eileen designed bookmarks for me to hand out, and she pointed out a podcast opportunity I never would have noticed on my own.
Initially I thought the novel they published would be a standalone, but a couple of years later I wrote a sequel and approached them with it. I didn’t have any sort of obligation to write the sequel, and I certainly didn’t have a deadline other than the one I imposed on myself. This worked out extremely well for me since I wrote the sequel in snatches of time here and there, while working part-time and while my son was a toddler.
Speaking of a standalone novel, one of the cool things about small publishers is that they’re often more willing to publish a standalone, where big publishers have a tendency to publish series. So if you have a strange, niche novel, or if you have one that will stand by itself, then you may be able to find a home for it with a small publisher because they often have more flexibility.
I anticipate publishing with one of the big publishers some day. I definitely believe that working with a small press will carry over in terms of discipline (I strive to work within deadlines when they do exist… even my own self-imposed ones), professionalism, feeling confident with putting my ideas forward for the project, marketing, and designing a timeline/career for myself.
I have to admit, one of the coolest things about working with WWP from the time they started publishing was watching them grow. And yet, they’re still small enough that it feels like a family. My publisher sends me holiday cards and cards commemorating the release of my books. She knows that I adore corgis and chocolate, and I enjoy her stories of brutal Michigan winters (as I am usually enjoying a temperate Southwest season, ha ha ha! Ahem.) I cheer for other WWP authors when they publish something new, I host them on my blog (or they host me on theirs), and best of all, I get to read some great stories by great authors before they even come out.
Working with a small press is a great way to ease into the publishing world. You learn the ins and outs of publishing, and you meet some fabulous people along the way who will support you and your writing career for a long time to come.
