I just reread my first blog post. I realized I had a lot to update.
First, I signed with Dawn Dowdle of the Blue Ridge Literary Agency . This agency is a boutique agency which means it is a smaller literary agency. I signed a contract with her which was straight forward and easy to understand. Dawn sent me all the format information for writing a picture book. The contract I signed was for 1 story but I had heard most agents would want to see more examples. So, without her even requesting it, I sent her basically every story I have written. She kindly explained we signed a contract for only one story and that was all we would focus on. She also explained that she didn't want to talk about a second book in the series until we saw how the first book performed.
She edited my story and I was relieved to see she didn't change much. She did suggest to do more showing/less telling. I made those changes, which changed some major parts of the story, and sent it back. She sent it back with a few punctuation and format edits. She asked that I not turn off the Track Changes and don't make any changes to the format. I made corrections and sent it back. She sent it back and again asked that I don't turn off Track Changes and stop changing the format. I'll be honest, I was really confused and frustrated at this point. I had never used Track Changes before but it seemed pretty straight forward. I obviously was doing something wrong because I also was not changing the format. So, I started researching and found the problem. I was opening the document she sent in Google. I then would switch back/forth between google and word to work on the document. I am more comfortable with Google and thought it was ok since google docs could be saved as word docs. Big Mistake! It messes everything up when you open in Google- DON'T OPEN A TRACK CHANGES DOC IN GOOGLE.
Now, I am waiting for my edited story to come back again. I think it is close to being ready to start sending out to publishers but I could be wrong. For all I know, there are more tasks to complete before it's ready for a publisher. In the meantime, I have decided to focus on social media. I am focusing on Instagram and Facebook. I am starting to think about promotion of my book. I watched a webinar I found via SCBWI about promoting your book and BRLA (Blue Ridge Literary Agency) also offered a webinar. From the SCBWI webinar I learned about Teacher Guides so I started one for my book. It is saved on my website. Please take a look and I would love any feedback.
I hope my next post will be about starting the search for a publisher!
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