When I first started writing and creating stories, I thought that was a tremendous amount of work.

Then along came the part where a couple of my stories were ready to start looking for a publishing home. The process that follows in researching publishers and the children’s book markets to see who is accepting what and what is the process for submitting, became more work still.

After many years of researching those markets, writing query letters, submitting my manuscripts when requested, waiting for an answer, researching some more, submitting again, waiting some more, my first manuscript was accepted by a publisher—27 rejections later, in fact.

So, finally, a contract. Here comes the easy street of being an author, right?  Wrong.

Illustration by Samantha Kickingbird for Sir Princess Petra – The Pen Pieyu Adventures, book 1.

First, comes the editing of the book, which is quite a huge process to begin with. Then, I’m assigned a marketing manager who informs me about all the things I am required to do as an author. The marketing manager puts my book is distribution all around the world and is in charge of marketing, what would I possibly have to do?

Well, putting a book in distribution to book stores and on-line book sellers apparently isn’t enough. With the amount of new books being published by traditional publishers and self-published authors (approximately 40,000 books per month), a new author has to get their name out there.

So an author must learn marketing skill also. My marketing manager told me I would have to set up a blog, make regular posts, attend book signings he set up for me, talk about my book on Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc, schedule events to speak at schools and libraries,  attend interviews he set up, seek out reviews for my book, regularly update the website the publisher set up for me, and join other blogs about writing and hopefully in responding to these blogs, they will in turn respond to mine. All this to try and stir up interest in my book.

Now, these things are all a lot more work than I ever anticipated. I do everything my marketing manager suggests–sometimes with gritted teeth, but I do listen to him.

So just when I think my time is taken up to the max, I decided to hire a marketing-publicity person to  set up a more professional website with key word rich formatting. He also writes and sends out news releases with key word structure, maintains and updates my new website, and in general, is a computer savvy person that knows how to stir up a lot of interest and also how to get my new website into the top pages of Google hits. After all, people have to find me in the sea of writers.

All these things do work to get my book, and myself as a writer, noticed. But it is also a lot of work on my part to follow the instructions given to me by these book selling geniuses.

Every week, I also have fan mail to answer, and write new posts for two blog sites that I maintain.

So, what does an author do when not authoring? Well, about 20 hours per week dealing with the list above.

By the way, I have a full-time job at a dental office and a part-time job as an art teacher. My writing days are now limited to a few specific days I set aside during any given month.

And just when I thought the writing part was hard work.