A Bestseller is Better Than an Orange Jumpsuit JULIET CLARK
2
007 was a rough year. After 14 years of marriage, I decided it was time for a change and filed for divorce. For years, people complained about how vindictive my husband was, but I was just too close to see it. The minute I filed for divorce, I found out just how vindictive my husband was. The next nine years turned out to be one vindictive drama after another. A year into this experience, I was exhausted and feeling disempowered by the nonstop tug of war over kids, assets, and friends. I had been in counseling, along with the kids, for an entire year trying to get everyone through the changes, demands, and drama when I decided that I needed to pursue a bucket list item that I had been thinking about for many years. As an avid reader of mystery novels, I had always wanted to write one. When I got out of college, I worked for a traditional publisher. I had a degree in horticulture and the publishing company I worked for had just purchased another publishing company that is wellknown for gardening books. I was inspired by the publicity meetings. This was back in the days when traditional publishers publicized their author’s books, unlike the industry today. From traditional publishing, I transitioned to a prestigious worldwide advertising firm and worked on a billion- dollar account. This deep dive into marketing would help me with my own business later on. I sat down one afternoon and began writing my first novel. My rage was spilling out over the pages as I killed the character fashioned after my ex-husband with a baseball bat. It felt cathartic and I couldn’t stop. The plotting, scheming, and planning of his demise led to a tremendous amount of healing. It was like I was journalling to stay out of prison. I worked on that book for about three months before I sent it off to my editor on the project. I chose Stephen King’s first editor and was shocked when I had to print the manuscript and send it to him. No editing in a word doc for him. I got the full red-pen markup.
Juliet’s second Book Cover | Photo credit: Kim Brundage
working in traditional publishing. In 2008, self- publishing was new and most of the new companies were subsidiaries of the traditional publishers. Traditional publishing had controlled the mass media market for so long, that they felt entitled to the monopoly of publishing. That meant that the new subsidiaries didn’t help authors much because they wanted to continue controlling the business.
One of the first red flags for me was the cover. Instead of a beautiful and thoughtful cover, they had me choose three images While the book was being edited, I started to look around from a bank of photos and they slapped them on the cover. The for publishing options. I saw the success of some big authors cover of my first book is quite possibly the ugliest book cover who published through Kindle but didn’t feel like Amazon to ever hit the market. The manuscript was a nightmare. To the publishing was the right fit, so I contracted with a self- untrained eye, it probably looked fine. However, I knew how a publishing company. The experience was underwhelming after book should be set up so I was flabbergasted by the design. To 18
