Jolene Perry now has a selection of over a dozen and growing YA (young adult), NA (new-adult) and LDS (Mormon) titles for sale on Amazon, including Dizzy, My Heart for Yours and Falling.

“I wear juvenile T-shirts, worn-out chucks, and eat too much chocolate,” she says. “I write. A lot. I make up words, drink Shirley Temples, and suffocate a little without my iPod.”

She lives in Wasilla, Alaska, with her husband and two kids, plays the guitar, and likes to “drive fast, and wonder why I live where I do every. single. winter.”

How Jolene Got Started Self-Publishing

Like many other novelists, Jolene never intended to self-publish. She had an agent, and in fact still does (although a different one now). She collaborated and co-wrote My Heart for Yours with Steph Campbell, whose book, Grounding Quinn, was self-published and did really well. Since Jolene already had two books on sub to publishers, they self-published My Heart for fun. And it has done really well.

She then got an offer to publish two other titles she had written as series follow-ups to her first published book, The Next Door Boys (through Cedar Fort), but they would have been released 18 and 30 months out. She said no thanks and proceeded to release those two on her own.

Although still busy with more traditional publishing projects — she has one book coming out with Entangled in Fall 2013 and another with AWTeen in Spring 2014 — “I love the freedom that comes with self-publishing,” she insists, “and I’m definitely glad I took the leap!”

Self-Publishing Observations and Tips

• “My agent is fairly convinced that publishing is gearing toward self-publishing. I think that more big publishers are going to offer more and more ebook-only deals. I also see them sending a lot fewer books to print.”
• “The self-publishing market is bigger weekly. it seems, and I think anyone who’s working hard NOW to get themselves ‘established’ is going to have a much easier time getting their books noticed in a very swiftly growing field of books.”
• “Get yourself out there everywhere — Twitter, Facebook, blogs… Be yourself when you are out there.”
• “Don’t skimp on cover art, and get a LOT of opinions on cover art before you put it up. That makes or breaks a book. I’ve paid as little as 10 dollars for a cover and as much as $400. It’s worth the money and worth the time and worth a lot of feedback.”

Learn more about Jolene by visiting her website and her blog. Also drop by her Amazon author page for her fast-growing selection of titles, both traditionally and self-published. You can also follow her on Twitter.

Article by Eldon Sarte

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authors, fiction, Publishing Peeps