Becoming an author was one of the most impactful decisions I have ever made.
I've had a few questions about my author journey over the years and realized I didn't have anywhere that shared the full story and the transformation I went through along the way.
It has transformed my happiness, confidence, income, and life. It is fun, challenging, and something I don't plan on stopping anytime soon. Publishing is the perfect creative path for me as it combines my love for learning and let's me explore the ideas rolling through my head.
One thing that many people don't realize is that writing a book and publishing a book are entirely different processes and skill sets. As is marketing! Being a neurodivergent author helps me balance and learn about all these different areas of authorship, giving my brain different focuses depending on my mood.
In this post I'll share my writing origin story, the origin of my different pen names, and answer a few common questions I receive in my DMs.
If you are considering authorship, I hope my story inspires you, and that you find it helpful. I'll do a part two of this story to share what tools and resources I use in publishing next, so make sure to subscribe to my mailing list to get the next post straight to your inbox.
P. S. I'm cross-posting this blog post on all three of my brands since I publish in multiple genres and names, so you'll see it on my Rebecca K. Sampson, R. K. Sampson, and Rachel H. Drake websites.
Have I always been a writer?
Yes and no. I remember writing my first short story when I was seven years old. It was a romantic knight story where he saves the princess and they ride away together on a pegasus. Very adorable. But after that story, I wrote little. It was a sporadic hobby. And when I did write, it was poetry.
I was always creative, however. My main art form was collages and paintings. I even went to magnet schools for art and photography from fifth grade - junior year of high school.
Currently, I don't have plans to publish my poetry, but I'd love to in the future. Technically, poetry was my publishing debut. In fourth grade, I won a poetry contest and my haiku on love being a garden was published in a small printing of work by young writers.
However, even though novels weren't my focus in my early life - the way that I have always recognized patterns throughout my life contributed to my art when I was young and then my novels.
I even started blogging before I started writing novels. It is now my fourteenth year blogging! Check out my 13 Lessons from 13 Years Blogging to learn more about that part of my journey.
So have I always been a writer? No, but there were clues that this would make sense for me.
When did I start writing novels?
My first genuine attempt at novels was in November 2014, when I heard about NaNoWriMo.
NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month - a challenge where thousands of writers around the world work to write 1,667 words a day to complete 50,000 words in a month. 50K is about the size of a small novel, so this challenge encourages people to finish their first draft.
I heard about the challenge and fell in love with the concept. This month was also the month I got married, but I was still able to write about 30K words in that first story between wedding events and my honeymoon.
That first novel was called Juniper Collins and the (Kind Of) Zombie Apocalypse. Still love the idea of this novel and the title was very cute. The premise was a young teenager dealing with anxiety in her day-to-day life in high school, with daily nightmares surrounding zombies. We would see her day at school, then follow her in her nightmares, until she worked through her fears.
For a few months after, I worked on that story and another one called Hayley, the Imperfect Girl, which was a novel told in verse about a high schooler who was changing her identity to become one of the popular girls. Think Easy A, meets Mean Girls, meets poetry.
I didn't finish either of those novels, but I still have those drafts and occasionally look through them.
Finishing my First Novel
Fast forward a few years and many started and stopped books later, I was working on what would become my first finished novel, Ember Dragon Daughter. This was around 2016, when I was pregnant and working in an advertising agency.
The idea came to me when I started thinking about what would happen if someone had a birthmark they were told to hide, but it meant they were a hidden princess. That birthmark became dragon scales and the rest is history.
Around this time, I was also writing Harry Potter fanfiction of Draco and Hermione. I stopped writing fanfiction once I had my son, instead focusing on my original fiction, but I did a few one-shots but never finished that longer story I was working on. Even now, I'm still a reader of fanfiction.
My original plan for EDD was to pursue traditional publishers, but my mindset wasn't right. When I was first dreaming of this book, I thought about how traditional publishing could save me from poverty and get me movie deals. In my mind, it as my way out. Traditional publishing has evolved a lot over the past decades and now very few people get the kind of experience shown in TV shows and movies.
There is still a place for traditional publishing, even with how the landscape has changed, but when I realized it wasn't what people glamorized it to be, my opinion changed on my publishing plan.
If it was likely I'd do most of the marketing work anyway, I'd rather get a higher royalty rate for it and do the whole thing on my own.
Realizing a publisher wouldn't save me and I had to save myself, I finished the draft and started planning.
EDD took me about three years to complete through multiple drafts and then editing and learning about publishing. It was published in 2019 as my young adult fantasy debut. During the writing process, my husband was diagnosed with cancer and was in and out of treatment. By the time I had finished and published the book, he was on the path to recovery.
I wrote so much of this book in emergency rooms and cancer centers and during my lunch breaks at work. It was a trying and memorable experience. This book was my lifeline through that pain.
Recently, Ember Dragon Daughter hit the top 10 on Amazon and the top 120 on Barnes & Noble. This was such a career high for me!
With heightened emotions and big goals, I also started pursuing personal development around this time. I bought courses on manifestation, publishing, and money mindset. It started a love of learning that still serves me to this day.
Before I go into why I split my books up and republished EDD under a new pen name, below are more details on why I decided against pursuing traditional publishing.
Why I Indie Publish
The three main factors that led me to indie publish instead of querying traditional publishers are:
Trad publishers can pull your book from publication, without your input.
I hate deadlines and want to be 100% in control my time.
Trad publishers don't do as much marketing as you'd think.
The first reason was a defining factor. Many of the books in stores right now won't be available in ten years' time. That does not sit well with me. Regardless of initial sales numbers, books can find their readers years after the initial release. I don't want my books removed from publication unless it is my decision.
Secondly, I am multi-passionate and love to pivot projects as needed. If I were working with a publisher, their deadline would matter more than what I would want to do in most situations. That control over my routine is important to me and I am not willing to let that go. Once someone puts a deadline over my head, I rebel against it.
Then, the marketing side. Usually, a publisher will pick a few books to promote out of their whole release lineup and put a lot of money behind those books. They don't have enough resources to support everyone's marketing at a large scale, so the rest of the books in their lineup are left to the authors to market on their own.
So if I am giving up a larger chunk of my royalties to work with a publisher (you get less royalties with publishers than being indie), and they aren't promoting me as much as I would on my own... I'd rather do it myself. If I could guarantee a publisher would prioritize my book and promote me on their list, losing some of my royalties wouldn't be that bad, but because that can't be guaranteed, it influenced my decision to not pursue traditional publishers.
Would I ever hybrid publish?
Yes! Hybrid publishing would mean I stayed mostly indie, but had support in certain markets or formats from a publisher.
This is something I would like to pursue soon. I am open to the idea of having my book available internationally with a publisher, possibly translated into other languages, and selling my audio rights.
The time it takes and the amount of QA needed to do audio on my own isn't as enjoyable to me. The final results were great for the books I do have in audio, but I don't plan on doing any additional audiobooks on my own once the Fated Tales series audiobooks are complete. I will be actively looking for an agent or publisher to partner with soon for my next audiobooks.
With hybrid publishing, I'd have completed the books and published the books on my own first and then someone else would take over for those translations and audio versions. Being hybrid takes away the first two issues I have with trad publishing, as shown above.
Hopefully, I'll have announcements related to hybrid publishing in the next year.
Publishing My First Personal Development Book
During Ember Dragon Daughter's publishing journey, I started listening to personal development podcasts and taking courses.
And because I apply everything I learn quickly, my second book was all about how I turned my family's life around during a hard time and learned how to thrive. I used myself as an example of what could be possible and mixed in personal stories with practical advice.
I published Stronger Now: How to Thrive in Any Circumstance and Become Unstoppable after EDD, both under the name Rebecca K. Sampson.
I knew that logistically there wasn't likely to be a lot of crossover between people reading young adult fantasy novels and personal development. There was some, but not a lot. However, I didn't feel like I had the capacity at the time to pursue two names and two different social media accounts... yet.
Why Authors Split Pen Names
I kept publishing, bringing the next book in the Fated Tales series out next, and even started writing my second personal development book based on identity work and affirmations.
Briefly, I even sold a planner and journal under the same name.
My message was getting lost in each new release and the algorithms of sites like Amazon didn't know what kind of audience would like my books, which can impact how algorithms recommend your books.
So, as I began writing the final book in the Fated Tales series, I also bought new covers for the series and started planning how to separate them into a separate fantasy-only name.
R. K. Sampson was born, starting with a new Instagram account just for fantasy content and then the re-releases of my initial books under the new umbrella. I talk more about me re-releases in this announcement post.
I decided to split those two names because I wanted my audiences to grow and my ideas for marketing these two different brands weren't the same. To give myself the best chances, I started to devote my time to two different social media accounts.
However, I want to note that just because I split my books into two names, that doesn't mean that I wouldn't have been successful if I kept them in one. There is always an example of someone making the opposite choice and succeeding. This is just what worked best for me.
Starting My Third Pen Name in Paranormal Romance
Around the release of my second personal development book, Repeat After Me, and my rebrand of the Fated Tales series, I was in a car accident.
Just like how my husband's cancer diagnosis pushed me into finally finishing EDD and getting it out there, this accident also helped me find myself in a new series.
But not for a few months.
The car accident gave me a broken nose, a concussion, and several fractures in my hand and wrist that led me to getting metal added to brace my bones and a year of physical therapy. For an author, the damage to my hand haunted my for months.
When I was going through a series of MRIs the week of my accident, I spoke to myself, saying "Universe, aliens, beings of the highest good, give me a message for what this will do for my career."
This prayer was answered about three months later. I had a dream of a ghost being intimate with the woman he was haunting.
This could have been induced by pain or pain medication, or a message from my future self, but that dream sprung a book idea into my mind.
I sprung out of bed and began writing, slowly and painfully (typing hurt for about a year), the book that became Haunt.
Haunt was technically the second book on the Rachel H. Drake pen name. I briefly published a short 13k words contemporary romance that was a random idea I spit out over a weekend and published in secret as an experiment. Once I started writing Haunt, I unpublished that book, and started treating my Rachel name as a third pillar of my career.
Once Haunt was complete and published, the flood gates opened, and it became a series of books that I'm now planning to create spinoffs for in the future.
These spicy paranormal romance stories have become an escape for me and thousands of other readers. I'm so glad I found this special place on the internet.
The Future of My Publishing Career
Would I create any more pen names? No. Right now, I can't manage more names and accounts. Typically with my three, I focus more consistently on my paranormal work, and I have a goal to batch more content around the other two.
I have books planned for all three pen names and aim to stay in those three general genres of nonfiction, fantasy, and paranormal romance. My focuses for the next few years will be on these ideas, while growing my books, while focusing on three main selling platforms: Kindle Unlimited, Shopify, and Kickstarter. Along with marketing, those platforms and my blog here are my focus. Over the years, I've let go of many ideas, like running a podcast and trad publishing, but these areas are the most sustainable to the busy life I have now.
With over 50,000 downloads of my books so far, I'm just getting started.
What other publishing posts would you like me to share? I plan on doing a part two with my recommended tools, but is there anything else you'd like to know? Ask any questions below or in my DMs and I'll create a followup.
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