Why I stuck with New Degree Press
In a few months I will publish my second book with New Degree Press (NDP). Here are four reasons why I’m using NDP for the second time.
Number one: the support. The team of editors, cover designers, and co-authors help make publishing possible. One of the statistics that stuck with me from the first time I published is that 2% of authors successfully publish their books. In contrast, NDP sees the vast majority of their authors publish their work, and each author’s support team is integral to this success rate. That team includes instructors, editors, and cover designers. Instructors, through the Creator Institute, guide you on the writing and publishing processes and there are multiple levels of editors.
For the first few months, your developmental editor provides structural feedback on the first stories and chapters that you write. Then an acquiring editor reviews your first draft manuscript and gives you overall feedback on the direction of your book. After the next round of revisions, multiple copy editors review your book. A marketing editor helps you to get the word out about your book. Then a team of cover designers works with you to create a cover that fits your vision of the book. All along the way, you are working towards incremental goals together with a cohort of authors who are facing similar challenges as you, creating an exchange of ideas (for example, there might be an author who can help you get an interview or early praise from an expert in the industry that your book is about). With this team of support, publishing your book in less than a year as a first-time author becomes both possible and probable. When it came time to write my second book, I wanted to have this support team again so that I could utilize all the resources that they provide.
Number two: the education about the writing process. After the first few months of writing, NDP authors move into the publishing phase of the process. Something that I really appreciated was the amount of time that the NDP leadership team spent educating their authors about how the publishing world works. They explained the traditional, hybrid, and self-publishing models, and the pros and cons of each method. To make an analogy, they were like a jeweler who educates a customer on the diamond grading scale and pricing chart before the customer buys the diamond. The customer is more confident in his purchase because he knows the value of what he’s buying. That was like me with NDP: when I chose to work with them, I knew the cost and the value of using them as a publisher. In a world of overstimulation and tons of information, I chose to work with NDP with my second book because I liked how they streamlined the potentially confusing and overwhelming publishing process.
Number three: demonstrated results. NDP authors publish their books. I mentioned this on point #1, but when I first came across NDP, I was impressed by how many of their authors published. If I was going to take on the project of writing a book, I wanted to be successful. And I’m happy to say that I was — ten months after beginning the writing process, I published my first book Hola Miss. I signed up to work with NDP on my second book Love Story: An Encounter with God (set to publish in April 2021) because I was confident that with their help I would see it go to print.
Number four: deadlines. This is a big one. Without deadlines, Hola Miss would still be an idea and Love Story wouldn’t exist. When you’re writing a book, especially if you’re a first time author who plans to self-publish, it’s easy to feel like you have all the time in the world to write it. But when you have deadlines to write 20,000 words and to put a manuscript together, all of the sudden you have a book where before you just had ideas and maybe a few paragraphs here and there. Deadlines helped to motivate me and to make my book a reality. I wanted that pressure to help me see my second book come to fruition — and as an NDP author, that means writing and publishing a book in 10 months. It’s a definite perk for me to be able to add a new book to my portfolio in less than a year — one that I would recommend to anyone looking to become an expert in a field of interest, level-up their voice, or land a dream job.
If you’re interested in writing a book, keep in mind the importance of a support network with a successful framework. NDP has been a great fit for me and hundreds of people who can now call themselves “Authors.”
