The evolution of the publishing team

The recent Avengers film does not only show that a great selection of Superheroes can pull audiences. It also highlights the importance of working in a team to achieve your goal, even if you are a superhero. When Kia Garriques first began her publishing journey, she was alone, working on her manuscript day and night. The minute she realised that she could do with a helping hand, her dreams started to materialise...

We all have great ambitions whether it is to achieve international success as a recording artist, find the first miracle cure for cancer or seeing the world in 80 days. But ambition can often be blind and it presumes that you can achieve your dream alone. Our dream is only important to us; we do not need anyone else to make it happen.

Kia loves reminiscing about back in the day:

“I never thought that anyone would be interested in helping me achieve success as an author. I just believed in the normal route of submitting proposals to editors that I respected. My story ideas have always been over the top – I suppose it comes with being young and wanted to see the world in a different light.”

But, of course, why would any editor just accept any proposal, no matter how good it is? If it was really as easy as that then the publishing industry would not be as competitive. Editors are very subjective creatures and their acceptance of a story idea can depend on their personality, their mood and whether they personally feel that you idea would sell.

It is easy for prospective authors to criticise editors for not accepting their proposals but have they ever tried building a personal relationship with the editor? Editors in publishing are similar to editors in the print industry. When you start freelancing for them, you do not expect them to accept your first idea and it is all about tailoring your idea to what they would like to see. Once they know you better, they are willing to take a chance on other ideas you might have.

So who did Kia start building her relationship with to get her ‘publishing team’ started? She began with getting an agent.

“I knew of his work previously and was impressed, “Kia says. “ He had great contacts with editors, journalists and PR people as he had also published books before. I thought he would be the perfect person to take me on. He did not make it easy though... he wanted me to work further on parts of my script before he felt it was really for editors”.

After much persuading and preparation, her agent found a new, yet upcoming publishing company to take her on.

She says, “They understand me as a young author really well. They learn things from me as I do from them.”

So, in addition to her agent, Kia now worked with an editor to get her perfect her novel, a marketing and publicity team to sculpt her image and to start profiling her work to the public and a design team to create her new websites, blogs and products.

Over the new few weeks, you will be provided updates on how Kia is working within her teams as she gets closer to her book launch in October. Although writing comes easy to her, it helps to have people around you who are also focused on taking your dream and making it their own.  

The Evolution of Kia Garriques: small beginnings

In the previous blog posts, I wrote about how you can achieve publishing success. But, it is now when things get more exciting as Kia gets closer to D – day and her first published novel. So how has she evolved and got to this point, you may ask?

Creating your alter ego is a great way to reinvent your image. It allows a writer to show a different side of their personality or developing their second self. In a way, the writer performs their latest character so that their audience can gain an ever better perspective into their newest publishing venture.

Kia Storm was born out of a need to showcase a new breed of fantasy fiction writer. Although she was new and yet to make any noise in the fantasy fiction arena, Kia knew that writing a great novel or story does not always come from your previous experience of being published.

It comes from a passion, a yearning to inform readers of worlds beyond their imagination, especially in the case of fantasy fiction.

She understood how hard it was to get published when you are a novice and wanted to change this by transforming into her alter ego who could create magical storylines, all with the touch of her imagination.

Kia says:

“It wasn’t hard to think of an alter ego. Not at all. When at school, I always sought solace in the fact that I could escape to magnificent worlds where I could meet beautiful characters. I felt that I could relate to them as like me, they always dreamed bigger and better.”

She wanted to be a star through tantalizing others with material. But who was going to take her seriously, especially when they knew she was a young writer? The only way to publish her fantasy fiction stories was to become a character that, some would say, emerged from the stories themselves. And so Kia Storm was born.

But Kia Storm was not always going to be a transcendent character. Remember when I talked about taking small steps to achieve your publishing dream? Storm formed the building blocks of an author who had bigger aspirations.

When making waves in short story writing, Kia noticed that the publishing world and the writers in it had become boring. Writers were famous for writing great books but when it came to socialising and thinking of new ideas for the new generation; they were all the same.

They were nothing more than brainiacs who were not interested in reinvention or shaking things up.  Their audience could expect them to write the same genre of material with no controversy.

Kia felt that this media generation in this new technology age needed someone to shake up the current literary world and show people that writing is an art and can be exciting. That someone would be her confident but still young self.

She had written her novel and was now on her way to publishing it with the backing of professionals behind her. So she had now evolved into Kia Garriques, who not only wanted to write but to inspire others through the written word.

She says:

“Writing is also a healthy way of expressing yourself especially in diaries which are not redundant after your childhood. We need to be inspired and encouraged to get excited literature again. Video games kill a healthy imagination. The imagination is something that I am passionate about instilling in the younger generation again when I write my novels.”   

So keep following her and get the latest know – how on how exactly this young author did it. It wasn’t easy but she will help by starting you off with the basics.

Till next week....