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The Substack for M Pepper Langlinais/Amanda Innes that discusses writing and publishing
Kauai Writers Conference Presentation
I have just returned from the Kauai Writers Conference, where I was invited to speak about one of my books and talk about the publishing process I used and what I learned from it. I had prepared my remarks ahead of time but, while I did give the gist of my presentation, I chose not to read it verbatim. So here is the written version that I did not read:
My name is Amanda Pepper, and I write under the names M Pepper Langlinais and Amanda Innes. I hold a Master of Arts in Writing, Literature and Publishing from Emerson College, and I worked as a project manager for Houghton Mifflin and a development editor for Pearson Custom Publishing before exiting to focus on my family and my own writing.
I’ve self-published some books, had a couple put out by smaller publishers. I’ve had a couple of agents that didn’t work out. But the book I want to talk about right now is The Ghosts of Marshley Park. My pandemic book. We all have one, don’t we? And this was the book I thought was going to be IT. We all have at least one of those, too—the book we are so sure is going to be the breakout. Usually it’s the last one we wrote, or the one we’re currently writing.
GoMP (as it is affectionately called) came close. I had many interested agents, a request rate of almost 20% on my queries. But then the rejections came trickling in. One said that ghost books were too hard to sell, which surprised me. But the one that broke me said this:
“You have written a solid manuscript that was a delight to read. Unfortunately, I am reluctantly going to have to pass.”
What more could I do than write a solid manuscript that was a delight to read?
After nursing a broken heart for a few months, I self-published GoMP in October 2021. I commissioned original art and had a designer use that art to create the cover. I did a Goodreads giveaway. And the book did well, relatively speaking. Almost 400 copies sold within its first year, and it remains an evergreen title around “spooky season.” I’m proud of it.
But what I learned is: you CAN write a solid manuscript that is a delight to read, and it still may not be considered marketable. Agents and editors can read a book and love it and still say, “But I don’t know how to sell it. I don’t know how to position it in the market. I don’t know an editor looking for something like this right now.”
I walk into every story I write knowing I’m going to write the story I want to write—and that it may not be a story more than a few people want to hear. That’s a choice I make every time. Jimmy Buffett has a song called “Makin’ Music for Money” about how he writes his songs for himself rather than money and feels grateful when others love them, too. Well, I’m writing my books for, not myself, but my characters. And I’m grateful when readers join them on their journeys.
You can choose to write to market. There’s nothing wrong with that. The key, no matter your choice, is to be honest with yourself about why you write, who you write for, and the likely outcomes of that.
Find Amanda’s full bibliography here.