Book Talk: Author Journey Surprises

From Canva rabbit holes to rewrites, book marketing and post-launch feedback, our Debutantes share the most surprising parts of their publishing journeys so far.

Catalina Margulis, AGAIN, ONLY MORE LIKE YOU (April 29, 2025)

What’s been the most surprising thing on my author journey so far? How much work a book launch is! And money! Seriously. And I acknowledge that it’s as much work as you want to put into it. But if a tree falls in a forest, does anyone hear it? Not really. So if you want your book to find its readers, there will be a lot of work involved in creating awareness about it–as much as you’re willing to invest in it. (And unless you have heaps of cash to hire a great publicist to do the work for you.)

If I knew then what I know now, I would have started saving up years in advance, so I could take advantage of all the promo opportunities out there. And even though I started planning my book launch a year ago, knowing what I know now, I would have started even earlier.

So much of our attention as authors is on the book itself and craft of writing–and yes, that’s important. But in an increasingly crowded space–and especially now with AI writing its own books and helping people put out even more!—we can all do ourselves a favour by turning more of our attention to the marketing of a book, to help our stories find more readers.

Here’s a pic of the Advance Review Copy packages I sent out to some book reviewers and influencers. And that’s another thing that costs more money that I imagined–shipping costs!

Alexandria Faulkenbury, SOMEWHERE PAST THE END (May 20, 2025)

There have been a lot of surprises in this publishing journey, but one thing that sticks out to me is the amount of time I’ve spent in Canva. I knew I would need to do a lot of my own marketing, especially in publishing with a small press, but my Canva usage is a bit out of control! I teach English and I usually set aside a chunk of time each morning to catch up on grading and student emails and recently I found that I had spent my entire grading block fiddling with a single graphic in Canva. 🙃It’s a wonderfully useful site, but I still didn’t expect to spend quite so much time pouring over font and color choices and whether or not my book cover looks better against a circular background or a square one. I guess spending a lot of time on revisions in a book is good preparation to spend an hour nudging a colorful blob back and forth one quarter inch to align perfectly with whatever this week’s promo is!

A screenshot showing some of my many Canva projects.

Kristin Offiler, THE HOUSEWARMING (July 29, 2025)

I’ve been most surprised, over and over again, by how malleable my novel is and how much rewriting I can do to it without losing the heart of the story. When I signed with my agent, we decided to shift it from Upmarket to Suspense/Thriller, which meant a significant rewrite to tease out more suspense. Together we did three big rewrites to finally land on a version that had the right balance between the first draft and the more suspenseful rewrites. Then there was more rewriting to be done with my publisher, cutting a few subplots that no longer pulled their weight and adding some more elements of suspense. And after all that, the story itself remained the same while the way the story was told shifted around. It’s been surprising and honestly freeing to see that it’s possible to maintain a story’s original impulse while allowing it to change forms as much as necessary to tell the story in the best way possible. That tells me I can try things out on the page without worrying about irreversibly breaking the story. Fiction is so much more malleable than it seems!

Penny Zang, DOLL PARTS (August 26, 2025)

The most surprising part of the publishing journey so far has been how many times I’ve read my book! After initial rounds of revision, I’m now at my final read-through and I’ve lost count how many times I’ve looked at these pages. Each time I read it, I find myself noticing different things, and I can’t even remember changes I’ve made along the way. Knowing this process helps give me comfort as I draft Book 2, though. I’m less worried about perfection in my first drafts now because I know how many more times I’ll end up revising. The good news: the ending still makes me cry! I think that’s a good thing, at least.

Emily Krempholtz, VIOLET THISTLEWAITE IS NOT A VILLAIN ANYMORE (November 18, 2025)

Something that has surprised me again and again is the “hurry up and wait” aspect of publishing. It’s happening less now that we’re really ramping up, but especially at the beginning I often felt like I was sitting around twiddling my thumbs and waiting for the next step, and then I’d get four emails from my editor in a single day and we were off to the races with multiple deadlines suddenly staring me in the face. Thankfully because I’ve been a freelancer for years I’m very used to managing my time in unconventional ways, but I’m the kind of person who uses a planner and likes to have an idea of what my days will look like (if you haven’t guessed, I’m also a plotter when it comes to my books!), so having less control over those timelines has been a big adjustment for me in a lot of ways! I’m happy to report, though, that I’m definitely finding my rhythm.

Gloria Huang, KAYA OF THE OCEAN (January 7, 2025)

Focusing on post-launch, since that’s where I am with KAYA OF THE OCEAN, I would say the most surprising part so far is how some of the most meaningful feedback or recognition can come almost from nowhere, out of the blue. As authors, I think we spend so much time writing and creating these books, and then we spend so much effort trying to shepherd them into the world, that we (okay fine, I) become a little myopic about where you imagine your book ending up. It’s amazing–and kind of beautiful–getting reviews or emails out of nowhere and not being able to trace how your book got into those hands. It really feels like your book baby grew up and is out there, making its way in the world! (This metaphor got away from me a little bit, but I’m going with it.)

C.I. Jerez, AT THE ISLAND’S EDGE (March 18, 2025)

The most surprising part of the publishing journey for me was the amount of rewriting I was encouraged to do during the developmental editing process with my publisher. I was under the impression that once the publisher had the manuscript, it needed to be as close to perfection as possible. I was very fortunate that I worked with one of the best editors in the industry and she pushed me to do some significant rewriting in both Act 1 and Act 3. We had a total of 9 weeks to make adjustments but in that period, I added nearly 20,000 words! I’m so glad they did push me that hard though. It’s a much better story with the changes we made!