May 18, 20223 min read

My Road To Publication by Emma Bennet

I am so pleased to have bestselling author, Emma Bennet on my blog today to talk about her road to publication. Many aspiring authors don't know how to start this process. I am sure Emma's article will help.

Hello, and thank you very much to Val for giving me the opportunity to be a guest on her awesome blog.

I’m lucky enough to be a hybrid author, meaning that I’m both self and traditionally published - I get to have the best of both worlds! I’m a home-schooling mum of 4, so I don’t write full time and have to ensure I carve out writing time whenever I can!

I began writing after my eldest son was born, 18 years ago. I started off writing picture books with him in mind. This was back in the days of printing off your manuscript and sending it off in an A4 envelope which seems much more fun than attaching a document to an email if you ask me. Anyway, I don’t think I really applied to the right people because I didn’t know anything about the publishing industry, so those stories were filed away to work on at another date - more about one of them later!

Fast forward six years, and I had four sons and I began writing contemporary romance. My first book, ‘The Green Hills of Home’, was set in Wales, where I live, and was self-published. It followed the fortunes of a young writer called Gwen who’s desperate to save her family home and is thrilled to sign a book deal with a big publishing house. However, problems arise when she has to work alongside her devilishly handsome, but work obsessed editor, John Thatcher.

‘The Green Hills of Home’ was then picked up by a publisher, who also published my next two novels, ‘His Secret Daughter’ (which was an Amazon bestseller) and ‘I Need a Hero’ (my personal favourite because it contains an evil cat called Mr Darcy who likes to attack people), as well as my two novellas, ‘Snowed in for Her Wedding’ and ‘Just Desserts’.

When I left that publisher, I self-published all my back catalogue (‘I Need a Hero’ became ‘My Perfect Hero’) with the most gorgeous new covers, and released ‘Starstruck’ - the story of World famous singer Joseph Wild coming to stay with his old schoolfriend, Kate, when he needs to hide out from the paparazzi.

In 2020, I collaborated with my friend Caroline Coskren to produce my first children’s book, ‘The Snotty Princess’ (https://amzn.to/3xGKAs2). I’m so proud of it, it’s absolutely beautiful, and was great fun to do.

Then in 2021 I signed with the lovely SpellBound Books and they published my romance ‘Her Sister’s Baby’, which is about Sophie who, after her sister dies, abruptly finds herself guardian to a niece, Alana, she never knew existed. Sophie steps up to look after the baby, but the unexpected appearance of Samson, Alana’s father, wanting his daughter to now live with him, threatens to destroy Sophie’s newly formed family.

As for what the future holds: hopefully lots more books published, both romances and picture books - I really do love writing both.