Q&A Thursday: Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Writers Edition

Dear friends,

It's Q&A time! As always, if you're a paid member and you have a question for an upcoming Q&A Thursday, just fill out this form.

Shall we?

B: My daughter has written a YA contemporary fantasy novel. We are torn between self publishing and traditional publishing. In many ways, I am looking forward to the self publishing process and feel capable. But we obviously don’t have a big platform like the top publishers, nor their ability to get on the lists that stores and libraries choose from.

In a perfect world, we would find an agent, who would find a publisher who would use my daughter’s cover and provide strong marketing and publicity. Since what we want is unlikely for an unknown debut author, should we pursue finding an agent or would we just burn too many bridges if we turned down an offer?

I wish I knew how old your daughter is, and/or if you are writing and publishing this thing together as a co-author team or if you are just helping her. Because I am going to say something controversial: Don't encourage your teens and tweens to publish. Encourage them to write! But I think professionalizing writing too early can backfire when the writer is too young to manage the emotional ups and downs of it. And let's be real, us adults aren't always prepared