Authors Dish: Cynthia Sax’s Publishing Path

June 2018: Publishing Path
~ Cynthia Sax ~

CTR asked:
QUESTION: Which path did you take: Trad, Indie, or Hybrid? And what led you to that choice?

Cynthia Sax said:
Indie, Trad, AND Hybrid – Cynthia Sax

When it comes to writing, I’ve tried almost everything.

I started as a diary writer. My Dear Wonderful Mom, trying to discourage me from writing on the walls, gave me a diary for one of my birthdays. I filled volumes and volumes of diaries, gaining the habit of writing every day.

In high school, I wrote for newspapers, both a daily and a weekly, covering small town politics and other events. They PAID me for my writing. That was an amazing thing to me. The more I wrote, the more I was paid.

When I left for university (I became an accountant), the writing didn’t stop. It merely moved from paper to the screen. I was and still am a non-fiction blogger under a different pen name. My area of expertise is entrepreneurship and new business development.

Throughout those early days, I always wrote fiction…for myself. When I discovered romance novels, my writing focused on writing those. One of my buddies encouraged me to enter a romance writing contest. I placed third! That encouraged me to send stories to publishers.

I received plenty of rejections but continued sending out my stories until one was accepted. Changeling, a smaller press, published the very first Cynthia Sax story. They were and still are amazing mentors of new writers. They taught me more than any workshop or book ever could.

I wrote for bigger and bigger publishers until I was writing for a big New York Trad publisher. The bigger the publisher; the more control they seemed to want over my stories. One publisher was super specific about the types of heroines I could write. That bothered me but the alternative was Indie and I didn’t want to do that.

Why didn’t I want to go Indie? Like most writers, I want to spend most of my time writing, not looking at stock photos or formatting stories or dealing with booksellers. I had the (wrong) perception that being Indie would suck more time away from my writing.

Then one of my publishers stopped paying me. That, combined with issues from other publishers, pushed me to self-publish some of my stories.

I didn’t want to be Indie, so I did it in the laziest way ever. I built a team, finding an awesome editor, cover artist, formatter. I was already doing the bulk of the marketing for my books. To my amazement, self-publishing wasn’t much extra work.

For a short while, I was a hybrid, but I loved being Indie so much; I did that more and more. I’m now 100% Indie. I love being able to write the stories I want to write, having the ability to tweak things like pricing and book descriptions until they work.

Would I ever go Trad or Hybrid again? Perhaps. I never thought I’d go Indie. I’m not ruling out anything.

– Website – http://cynthiasax.com/
– Twitter – @CynthiaSax

Dark Fire

[SciFi Alien Romance]

What the Beast wants, the Beast gets.

Dare’s savage nature has made him an outcast among his kind. The silver-scaled Dracheon warrior can’t control his inner beast. It’s too strong. When his primitive instincts told him his destined mate was on Carinae E, he had no choice. He had to travel to the outlaw planet. There, he hoped to meet a female powerful enough to survive his Drache.

He finds Faylee, a delicate little human.

Faylee is the best thief on the planet. Everyone she encounters mistakes her for a young boy…except for a tall, shiny warrior from off-planet. When she gazes into Dare’s flame-filled eyes, he makes her feel, for the first time, like a desirable female. The fire-breathing male has her yearning for hot kisses, fierce embraces, and a future filled with love. She doesn’t realize mating with him might be the last thing she ever does.

Dare’s beast isn’t the only danger on the planet. An enemy from the past has returned and he’s determined to stop Dare and Faylee…permanently. They’ll need luck and the assistance of every warrior in the Refuge to stay alive.

Dark Fire is a STANDALONE SciFi Romance set in a gritty, dark world.

Available in Ebook:

– Kindle – https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CW2Y8B7/
– Nook – https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dark-fire-cynthia-sax/1128614574
– Kobo – https://www.kobo.com/ebook/dark-fire-22
– iBooks – https://itunes.apple.com/book/dark-fire/id1381353384
– Smashwords – https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/824382

More Authors Dish about their debut novel inspiration.

– Read the authors of Day One: https://coffeethoughts.coffeetimeromance.com/ad2018-jun-pub-day1/