Walking Backwards on the Road to Success

January 19, 2014

By Colleen Houck

I took a very strange road to making my book a bestseller. The expression, “There are many roads to Rome,” or “All roads lead to Rome,” can be interpreted in a couple of ways. The first is that the Roman Empire was so vast that no matter what road you were walking on, it probably belonged to Rome. It could also mean that there are many paths can lead to a successful outcome or another explanation could be that it doesn’t matter what you do or where you go, Rome is always going to be there so you’d better get used to doing things the Roman way. I think, in some way, all of these definitions apply to my publishing story.

Like the Roman Empire, the big publishing houses also run the world, but theirs is a world of the printed page. What has a more lasting or profound effect upon the world’s citizens than books and how can a prospective author hope to share their words with the world without first paying homage to and getting the seal of approval from a publishing house?

For much longer than I’ve been alive, books have been assessed, designed, and distributed by major houses and for the longest time if an author wanted to be published it was their way or highway. But, in the information age, this is no longer true and I was able to find a sort of back road that led me to Rome or the world of publishing.

I self-published.

I was told by many that self-publishing would mean no one would pick me up, that I was essentially casting my work by the wayside, leaving it to be devoured by the birds who would peck and scratch and pick it apart. That didn’t happen though.

Self-publishing was a tool and a very useful one to build an audience, to prove the merit of my work, and to begin to feel a measure of success. Publishing through an Amazon company called Booksurge, I was able to sell my book on the Kindle market and soon I picked up fans all over the world.

Social media became very important. As I traveled the road towards traditional publishing, I met many friends on the journey who offered support and encouragement. Fans tweeted, blogged, and wrote amazing reviews to help me along.

Through that medium I sold my series to China, Korea, and Thailand. An agent, skimming through self-published Kindle books found amazing reviews left by ebullient fans and offered me representation. A movie producer’s cousin bought the book and began talking about it and my books were optioned for film.

All of this happened before I actually made it to Rome.

While a major publishing house is still the ultimate destination for printed work, there are amazing things that can happen along the journey if you are open to trying a different path. If you walk backwards once in a while, you can really appreciate where you’ve been and see just how far you’ve come.

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Colleen Houck

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Walking Backwards on the Road to Success

January 19, 2014

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Colleen Houck