Mackenzie Finklea's Blog

From ancient scripts to new-age classics, authors have been penning books for centuries. It was not until a few hundred years ago, however, that works were made available for mass printing and distribution to share their stories far and wide.

Thanks to publishing houses, authors could get their work into the hands of thousands; and today, millions. In the digital age, new opportunities have emerged that can create the same success for authors: self-publishing.

From blogs to print-on-demand, authors can retain total creative control and share their work with the push of a button. Here is the question you might be left wondering; is this better for writers?

Self-publishing is certainly more accessible.

The traditional publishing model relies on organized businesses with access to resources like printing presses, distribution networks, and a sizable budget to spend promoting the sale of each title. Without them, authors’ works would not reach beyond their neighborhoods. Now, in this new age of globalization, titles are translated into hundreds of languages and shipped worldwide.

Getting a book published by a major publishing house, however, is no simple task. Many authors spend months or years querying for agents to represent them and pitch their novels to publishing houses on their behalf: and some, to no avail. If that’s not enough, monopolies and mergers of major houses have left authors with fewer opportunities for submission.

Soon-to-be author Ashley Weiss says she:

“ … spent all of 2022 querying, and it was exhausting.”

Querying for an agent can feel like applying for jobs;

“You end up writing, rewriting, customizing, and pitching more or less the same 300 words over and over again.” — Ashley Weiss

Some authors are fortunate to be chosen by an agent ready to take on their work, but that is merely a battle won in the war. The agent then pitches the author’s work; this time to publishers in the same repetitive fashion.

Many authors in 2023 are facing a similar struggle to Weiss; they receive several polite rejections with little to no feedback. Why? Not because the work is not good. “It’s just not the right fit,” many agents report.

Often, that “not right fit” boils down to two major factors:

The work’s genre and the author’s identity.

Ashley Weiss reports that:

“The young-adult market is just oversaturated. Everyone is writing YA.”

Competition for the attention of an agent is fierce. Moreover, agents reserve the right to select whom they sign on. In 2023, we are seeing the rise of agents advocating for, and consequently primarily taking on, authors of color and authors identifying with marginalized communities, as these authors historically have not been advocated for by major publishing houses.

There is still major room for growth in author representation in the publishing industry, as just a few years ago, only 11%of books published were written by people of color: reported by the New York Times.

Authors who publish with major houses write for the market. Publishers want “what sells,” or else, they do not make a profit. Book publishing is not a particularly lucrative business model. In fact, most books are a loss for publishers. Publishing houses rely on the outlying “runaway hit” novels and the consequent production, entertainment, and merchandise profits from said works and ownership of the story rights.

From this industry professional’s perspective, here’s a brief overview of the current state of the book market.

What’s always been hot; World War era historical fiction and accounts, celebrity memoirs, self-help, and modern adaptations of literary classics

What’s hot now; zombies are back (due to our last three pandemic years), dystopian fiction is on the rise (as we spiral toward another economic depression), witches, LGBTQ+ romance, and (be warned) young adult remains oversaturated.

If you write YA, consider including one of the above niches within your story if you choose to pitch traditional. Alternatively, research smaller publishing houses that align with the niche of your work.

Alternatively, there’s the “wild, wild west” of self-publishing; where anything goes and every man for himself — as it were.

This new-digital-age industrial revolution fosters ever expanding opportunities; like independent and smaller publishing houses as well as print-on-demand services that allow authors to be their own publishers. Now, thousands of novels are published annually in America, creating an endless array of entertainment options for readers and exposure for aspiring writers.

The good news: you can publish anything.

The bad news: you can publish anything.

The barrier to entry is low, which is excellent news for accessibility and, alternatively, not-so-great news for quality control. The latter factor feeds the assumption that the traditional publishing route is the “better” option for writers. While, currently, traditional publishing is certainly more respected, the truth is; the “best” option varies from author to author and even work to work.

When self-publishing, you own all the rights to your work and are free to do with it as you please. Whereas publishers traditionally purchase your story and own the copyright and reproduction rights to do with it as they see fit. However, there is a give and take. Without a publishing house’s vast network and establishments, self-published authors have to work twice as hard for half as much exposure.

The best advice I’d offer an aspiring author is to know your worth, read contracts carefully, and decide what’s most important to you and your book journey — and finally, where you are and are not willing to compromise.

There is no right way to publish a book in 2023. It is up to each author to decide what journey is best for them and their work.

Mackenzie Finklea is a Publishing Consultant for Manuscripts Press. For more information on Mackenzie’s work or to connect, visit https://mackenziefinklea.com/

My journey as an author began with my first book, Beyond the Halls: An Insider’s Guide to Loving Museums. I am a long time writer, creator, reader... and in many ways (though it’s cliche to say) I have always had the desire to write a book. My first book was non-fiction and began with the intention of creating something that would give me a competitive edge in the job market; the very competitive and bleak museum industry job market. In writing the book, I enjoyed the content creation aspects; writing and storytelling, and I was eager to hold the final product in my hands.

I enjoyed the journey so much, that before I had even sent the manuscript off to copy editing, I already had an idea for another book.

In October of 2019, I was deep in the revisions phase of developing the manuscript for Beyond the Halls, and honestly, I was still writing mountains of new content. True to form, I am deep in the writing zone, and suddenly I have a diverging thought; another idea for a book! This time: fiction. At the time, the idea that came to me was something of a cross between Back to the Future and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I knew there would be time travel. The initial idea was an intern who time travels with a curator in a Delorean stored at a Florida museum and explores a variety of time periods and places where famous artifacts were first created, in use, or stolen and transported to the museum they live in today.

“Are you going to write another book?” people would ask not days after the public launch of Beyond the Halls. Hell, someone asked me at the launch party. I told them about this new story idea in it’s baby stages, and the more I told it, I realized that I was not in love.

Time passed, and I devoted my energy to the sale and success of Beyond the Halls and all of the wonderful opportunities it brought me. Within that year, I spent day in and day out coaching hundreds of authors in publishing their own books. I had the pleasure of meeting and working with some very talented fiction writers. I was so intimidated by their skill and the idea of taking on a complex novel of any length. How do you even begin to keep track of the plot, the characters, intense detail??

After celebrating a year of Beyond the Halls in December 2020, I settled into a routine bubble bath and was suddenly struck with inspiration and was instantly in love. I leapt out of the bath and whipped out a journal I keep at my bedside. Getting dressed can wait, I have an amazing idea. Late at night, I hand-wrote about fifteen pages of mind maps, bullets, questions, plot points, characters, and thus was the birth of The Artifact Hunter. (Though, it did not have a name yet.)

Immediately I took to chatting with friends and family about the plot; it was natural, exciting. Suddenly the idea became less intimiating. I knew what I wanted to write, the story I wanted to tell; and after that, it practically writes itself. There’s this world in my head where this story plays out, and all I need to do is put the pen to paper. This, of course, is easier said than done.

What’s the story? Why museums? I am borderline obsessed with museums— I love them. I have a deep fascination with displays of human culture and how and why we attach value to and display objects; the stories they tell, the context of their discover, provenance, use and more. The people who work in museums also are responsible for bringing the stories to life, and I have the utmost respect for them. After spending so much time, energy, research, and lived experience with museums and the people who work in them, it truly consumes much of my thoughts. The exciting part was getting people to be as excited or at least interested in museums and their stories as I was. There are countless movies, tv shows, and books that take place in museums or utilize them for setting— people have an interest in museums and their potential for action packed adventure. This book follows in the footsteps of those works.

In writing and talking about Beyond the Halls, the story that always seemed most compelling to the audience was that of the Elgin Marbles; and rightfully so, it’s engaging, tragic, and invokes anger and frustration. The Elgin Marbles are a classic, and frequently taught, example of dissonance in museum ethics and the repatriation of artifacts (or lack there of in this case).

The Elgin Marbles are a very large set of hand-carved marble nabbed from the top of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece; currently living in the grand halls of the British Museum in London, United Kingdom. They are truly an iconic symbol of ancient Greek culture. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin was the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire; which Greece was a part of at the time. He invited several skilled artists to make drawings of ancient monuments in Athens, and claimed that he received a royal decree from the sultan of the Ottoman Empire authorizing him to take casts of the sculptures, fix the scaffolding around the Parthenon, and... take any items of interest.

The admittedly ambiguous firman from the Sultan probably meant they could take little things they may have found in their excavations, but Lord Elgin conveniently interpreted it as “take whatever you want, including whole chunks of the building.” So, Thomas Bruce and his merry men took several slabs of sculpted marble off the top of the Parthenon along with several sculptures, and crates full of other antiquities. TOOK IT. Several thousand pounds of marble, carefully crafted, well over two thousand years-old at the time. Not only did he take the marbles, but he got in a shipwreck on the way back to England, and a team of divers had to retrieve the marbles from the sea. This guy.

Knowing their cultural value and potential worth, he wanted to sell them to Great Britain, and he did: for 35,000 pounds (about 4 million USD). In recent years, the Greeks requested that the marbles be returned to Greece and reside in the Acropolis Museum. The British Museum denied the request and claimed that the Acropolis Museum did not have adequate conditions to house the ancient marbles. So, the Greeks built a brand new Acropolis Museum, state of the art; complete with space left specifically for the missing marbles, and the British Museum still denied their request. The acquisition of the Acropolis Marbles was ultimately a product of looting on the part of the British, in the infancy of proper archaeological practice, and during a time of political turmoil for the Greek, but these conditions are no justification for the interning of heritage.

It is this story that inspired the key quest in this book; to find and prevent the lifting of an artifact of significant cultural value from its homeland.

Many of the other components of this book are drawn from prior experiences, my life’s journey, and the people I’ve met along the way.

I cannot wait to share The Artifact Hunter with you. Stay tuned.

It’s a common misconception that the publisher is solely responsible for the marketing of an author and their books. The amount of money, time, and effort the publisher spends on marketing for the author directly correlates with the size of their advance. Ultimately, traditional or self-published, book sales rely heavily on the author’s ability to cultivate relationships. That’s where you come in.

The authors you love want to connect with you. After all, you have a shared mutual interest— the book! Other than buying the book of course, there are many ways to support the authors you love to ensure that they keep writing and publishing more great work for you to read!

Here are five (free) ways to support authors and writers;

Write a review of their book(s). You can leave a review of their book on Amazon, Goodreads, and even your blog or social media account. You are an influencer because you have an audience. If you tell other people what you liked about the book(s), they may be inclined to read too! Have the reviews of a product ever affected your decision to buy? The same thing applies to books.

Sign up for their mailing list. Be a part of the author’s inner circle! By signing up for the mailing list, you will often get first looks at new books, access to giveaways, and insights on the author’s life and writing habits.

Engage with their digital presence. Following an author on social media is easy. What is really helpful? Take that one step further by commenting on or sharing posts from the author. You have a different audience than the author you follow, but one that probably would like their work too! By sharing their post with your audience, you introduce the author to an entirely new set of people!

Take a selfie. Post pictures of the book! Images and infographics make people pause on social media. Sure, don’t judge a book by its cover, but visual recognition is huge for book sales! (Especially when they have an eye-catching cover.) ;)

Tell your favorite podcast or book club about the author. A book club bump is a great way to get a batch order, and self-published authors especially are always happy to make an appearance at your next gathering. We love talking about our book(s). Podcast interviews also go a long way to spread the news about the author’s current and upcoming work. Plus, you might get that inside journalistic scoop that you don’t see on the inside cover.

If you do want to buy a copy of an author’s book, a question I often get asked is, “where is the best place to buy your books from?” It does matter! For self-published authors, we own 100% of the rights to our work, which means we can sell copies independently. So, the best place to buy a book from an indie author is directly from them! They will get the most financial benefit from the sale, and plus, you can get it signed. ;)

You can also support an author by pre-ordering their book! For me and many self-published authors, pre-orders directly support the production and publication of the book. Bonus: you get to read it before anyone else does.

I challenge you to do one of these things for your favorite author today. Can you think of any others?

In my life there have been several books that I started and did not finish. Usually, I would abandon a book because of school work, other priorities, or simply loosing interest.

My reading habits have greatly varied over time. I’ll let you in on a secret; when I was five, I told my parents that “I did not need to learn how to read.” I would just memorize the words to the books they read aloud to me. Clever, but ridiculous. Eventually, I did in fact learn how to read and got into it pretty quickly. Once I learned how to read, I loved it. I read a lot of books and would beg my mom to take me to Barnes & Noble every time the newest “Katie Kazoo” was released. I loved to read… until about sometime in middle school. In secondary school, they start assigning you entire books to read, whether you like them or not, and you must finish them.

As a person who does not like being told what to do, this was my nightmare. No longer could I choose the books I wanted to spend my time with. Some of the books I genuinely liked; Great Expectations, Pride and Prejudice, The Lightning Thief, Watership Down, and Anthem. And there were several others that I absolutely struggled through; Jane Eyre, Heart of Darkness, The Scarlet Letter, and Animal Farm to name a few.

Over time, I lost sight of the joy I once held in reading, and once I hit college and was tasked with reading hundreds of pages of textbooks a week— game over. Reading for pleasure was no longer a hobby that filled my free time.

I became an avid writer in college; all of those assigned essays were great practice. I will admit that I love to write more than I love to read, but I am also of the philosophy that great writers read.

After I wrote and published Beyond the Halls, I was feeling inspired by the great fiction writers that I worked with at New Degree Press and decided that if I wanted to be like them, I needed to get back into reading.

I have had trouble resurrecting the passion and finding books that I love and can’t put down. My last passion read was The Glass Castle. I read that book from cover to cover no problem when I was about fourteen. But now that I am free and graduated from standard education— no one is forcing me to read. It’s a double-edge sword because 1) no one is holding me accountable to the habit BUT 2) no one is forcing me to finish books I am not enjoying.

I have been freed from the habit of feeling that I “must” finish a book. It is okay to DNF! (Do Not Finish).

The Female Persuasion was the first book I actively DNFed. Without spoiling it for you, things for the main characters got way too grim. I was straight up not having a good time. So I reshelved it.

I’ve been in a book club reading with some friends since May, and even some of those books I DNFed. I still have a great time having thoughtful discussion about the book and the themes it addresses.

TL;DR— If you’re not enjoying a book, don’t waste your time or make yourself miserable. Reshelve it and pick up something new.