The End of an Era

In the words of Semisonic, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end..."

Well, friends. I have something to tell you.

If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw my post from a few days ago where I mentioned receiving some rather unexpected news. I’m sorry for the vagueness of that post, but honestly, I needed a few days to process and I knew that when I was ready to share, I’d need more than a Instagram post to fully explain what happened, what it means, and how I feel about it.

So, here we are.

But before I jump right to it, we have to go back to the beginning so to speak…

When I was twenty-two years old, I decided to write a book. I had a story I wanted to tell, and it became the sincerest dream of my heart to share that story with others. And so, I began to write that story. I knew nothing about publishing or what it meant to be an author. I just knew that I wanted other people to know the characters that lived and breathed in my head. For years, I worked on that book, and I decided to document my journey. So many of you found me through social media and YouTube during that time and cheered me on as I went through the ups and downs of writing and attempting to publish my novel.

From imposter syndrome and writer’s block to querying and the submission trenches, you were all there with me. And in the spring of 2017, I got to joyfully announce that my book, Keeper, was being published.

I can’t tell you how elated I was to share that news and how full my heart felt knowing that my story was going to become a real book for readers to read.

On January 30th, 2018, my debut novel, Keeper, was officially published and released out into the world.

From there, the journey was incredible—I honestly don’t have words to describe what a fantastic experience my debut year was.

Cover reveals and bookstagram photos and book signings and seeing my book on the shelves of a bookstore for the first time….all of it was truly magical.

If you’re feeling nostalgic and want to re-visit the glorious highs of that time, here’s a video I made about it a while back.

And then, I was lucky enough to get to do it all over again with the sequel, Seeker.

My journey to book 2 wasn’t easy—those of you who have been with me for a while know that it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But somehow, I managed to write a sequel that I was immensely proud of.

On September 10th, 2019, Seeker was published and officially hit the shelves!

I got to do several amazing launch events, went to conferences to sign books and meet readers, and even got the news that both books had been bought by Audible and were being made into audiobooks!

I also made a video about Seeker too, if you’re traveling down memory lane. This one makes me cry.

Publishing Keeper & Seeker was honestly a dream come true and I feel so incredibly lucky to have had the experiences I’ve had with both of these books. There were amazing ups and there were some pretty low downs, but overall, I feel very blessed.

So, let’s fast-forward now back to the present and back to my impending news.

Keeper and Seeker are pretty old in terms of release and book age. Keeper will be seven in January and Seeker will be six in the fall. And as such, marketing for these books has slowed to a crawl. My publisher stopped pushing these books years ago and never mentions them anymore. (This is common and not a diss to the publisher, just the facts/reality of being with a trad publishing house. They only market you for so long and then it’s on to the next author and the next book. That’s just the way it is.)

I did try to do my own marketing, but admittedly, I’ve had a hard time with this. Mainly because of the age of the books but also because when you’re trad published you’re very limited in what you can actually do. For example, I wasn’t able to run a sale or do a book bub ad because my publishers said we couldn’t. They never gave me a reason, just told me no. (Again, not a diss. Just the facts.) In a nutshell, I couldn’t do anything without my publisher’s express permission, which severely cut down on my options.

And so, Keeper and Seeker have largely just faded into the background.

Until now.

Last Thursday, I received an email from my publisher informing me that they were reverting my print and ebook rights to both Keeper and Seeker.

To say I was shocked is an understatement. I hadn’t asked for the rights back, nor was I expecting a reversion. But there it was, in my inbox.

Let me pause real quick to explain for those of you who may not know what this means: When you sell a book to a publisher, you are essentially giving them all publishing rights to your intellectual property. That means you, as the author, no longer have the right to make any decisions regarding how that work is published, distributed, or marketed. The publisher owns the rights and ultimately decides what to do with them.

The reversion means that I now own my intellectual property again. I am the one who gets to decide what happens with the books moving forward. It also means that the current versions of Keeper and Seeker are going out of print. (A book is considered to be out of print when it is no longer available for purchase and no new copies are produced/published.)

The e-book versions have already been taken off Amazon and are no longer available for purchase. Soon, the print versions will also be removed. Once they’re gone, they will not be made available again.

In essence, the lives of my lovely little green and blue books are coming to an end.

I admit, I’m feeling a little sad about it. It feels like the end of an era for me.

But I’m also choosing to see this reversion as an opportunity. And this is what I wanted to talk to all of you about. I feel very much like Keeper and Seeker belong not just to me, but to every single one of you who followed me on my journey from day one. The decisions that I make moving forward will be heavily influenced by your feedback, so here’s what I’m thinking…

I would like to re-release Keeper and Seeker….but I don’t plan to simply publish the existing versions. I’d like to re-vamp them.

Let me explain. One of the things authors often joke about is how many mistakes we made in previously published work. It happens to all of us, and it’s just one of those things that you have to accept. You can’t edit a published book, right?

Well, you can if you get your rights reverted. 😉

Here’s the thing: Keeper and Seeker aren’t perfect. No book is, but there are definitely things I wish I would have done differently with them. There are also typos, continuity errors, and just plain ole mistakes. I’m super critical of my own work, so the list is pretty long in my eyes, but the point I making is that I now have the opportunity to re-edit my books and to make them better representations of who I am now as an author.

I’m not the same twenty-two year old girl I was when I wrote a book about a girl with a magical green amulet.

I grew up.

And I think it’s time for Lainey, Ty, and Maggie to grow up too.

I think I’d like to age the books up, to move out of YA and into the NA category. Or maybe even adult. I want to up the tension and the stakes and breathe some new life into these books. I’ll have to give them new covers (rights reversion does not give you the license to existing artwork), but I’m totally okay with that. I can freely admit now that I HATE Seeker’s cover and have since the day I first saw it. To be able to finally give that book a cover that truly captures its essence is so exciting to me. I’m a little sad to see the green Keeper cover go though; she holds a very fond place in my heart. But I think change in this case will be good. I’ve even toyed with giving the books new, more mature titles. Something that better speaks to the genre and the genre expectations.

And if it wasn’t clear, these new versions would be indie published by me. I could always just re-release them exactly as they are but with new covers, but I don’t think that would feel satisfying to me. This is an opportunity to give these books a second chance at life and to find new readers. If I’m going to do this, I want to make sure I do it right.

That’s where you come in. What do you think? Would you be interested in a new version of Keeper and Seeker?

I’m eager to hear your thoughts and also terrified to hear them as well. But like I said, these books are just as much yours as they are mine, and I want us to decide this together. <3

So there you have it. That’s my news. I’m still all up in my head about it, but I’m choosing to see this as a joyful opportunity, even if it is tinged with a little sadness.

I have no idea what the future holds and with everything else I have going on, I’m definitely feeling very nervous and overwhelmed. But excited too, and determined, and empowered.

No matter what happens, I’m glad Keeper and Seeker made their way back home to me where they belong. Those books, even as imperfect as they are, are magic to me.

And you know what they say about magic right?

It always leaves a mark. 😉

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Before I leave you, I wanted to announce one more thing: Since the current versions of Keeper & Seeker will only be around for a few more weeks, I’m doing one last book signing.

If you want a signed copy of my books before they completely go out of print, you can order them HERE.

We have a very limited timeframe to work with, so if you want copies, you will need to order by no later than December the 6th, 2024.

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Thank you all again for standing behind me through all of this. I’ll forever be grateful to you for being a part of this journey.

To wrap this up, I want to leave you with a quote from Seeker that very much describes how I feel about all this:

…Maybe what we’re feeling is just another piece to the puzzle. Maybe it’s part of the journey—pain and all. We feel, we seek, and hopefully, we find.

The end of an era, indeed. 💚

Until next time, friends.