Self-described shenaniganist and unabashed romantic, Cameron D. Garriepy wrote her first romance novel on an antique typewriter, using a stack of pink paper. Detours between that draft and her publishing goals have included a BA in Music, a professional culinary education, and twelve years in the child-wrangling industry.

Cameron writes from the Metro Boston area. When she isn’t blogging or performing her duties as managing editor at Write on Edge, she lives with her husband, son, and two poorly behaved dogs.

How Cameron Got Started Self-Publishing

She got into self-publishing as a way of learning about it. She had been blogging for almost seven years (and three of those posting her fiction on her blog), and was looking for a way to expand her exposure. She submitted a short story, “Closing Shift,” to a contest. It didn’t win. Since she “lacked the financial freedom” to submit it to paid competitions, she decided to repurpose the work instead, using it to teach herself the Smashwords publishing platform. Her second publication-ready short story, “Requiring of Care,” she decided to also publish through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), intent on learning and adding her experience with the KDP platform to her professional skill set. As she moved from her short stories to finished novel manuscripts, the decision to publish them independently was a natural progression.

For her Buck’s Landing book (“A New England Seacoast Romance”), Cameron did something quite interesting to help finance the project. Knowing that in terms of production value the book would require a step up, she began seeking out the services of a professional editor and compiling a list of possible marketing strategies and companies. As a stay-at-home mom with a young child, her family’s finances did not allow for such expenses, so she did something innovative: she turned to her network of readers and friends and launched an Indiegogo crowd funding campaign to cover her book project’s start up costs. “I offered my funders perks ranging from a mention in the front-matter to e- and paper copies of the novel,” she said, “as well as the opportunity to name characters.” The book was released a few weeks ago, with the crowd funding campaign making it possible to create a high quality, edited and polished product, as well as providing the resources to acquire inventory for physical sales and ad space/marketing packages.

Self-Publishing Tips

• “Remember the famous line about murdering your darlings. Find the means, even if it means saving up, to hire an objective editor — one whose profession it is to edit fiction. Find someone you enjoy working with, and trust them! Not only will you be offering your reader a better product, you’ll be helping the entire indie author community raise the bar!”
• “Learn everything you can about the nuts and bolts of the various self-publishing platforms. Being able to format your own files is an invaluable skill in self-publishing.”

Check out Cameron’s author page and books for sale on Amazon.com. You can also follow her on Twitter.

Article by Eldon Sarte

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