Why did we start an E-Book Publishing Company?
If you have found this page, I expect you are either interested in why we started Whimsical Words Publishing, or a publishing company considering the platforms where books are available for self-publishers.
Well, Let’s get into it.
A Little History…
I am Becky Wilde and have written as Becca Van for Siren BookStrand for over 10 years. Working with Siren allowed me to become a professional author. It was a good relationship, where I was able to lean on them for promotion and editing, as well as make a decent living from my writing. Truth be told, when I started with Siren, I had very little understanding in the process of editing a book.
My writing style was unstructured, which meant that there were occurrences of unsolved threads. I could easily take the book in a direction that didn’t always gel to the goal of the book. The editing of my books from the editing team at Siren, was at times brutal, and at the time felt like a personal attack on my creation. It took me a long time to learn how to write within the rules Siren had to publish a book to their standard/audience expectation. I did learn a great deal about story structure and editing while I was working with them.
I would write upwards of 70000 words for my books. Initially there would be 2 books of around 35000 to 40000 words per month then as I became better at writing longer more in-depth books, I would write 1 book a month. The need to produce a book a month as per the agreement with them was exhausting and put a great deal of pressure on me. I felt trapped in the need to write each month and I had a feeling of becoming stale in the sub-genre I was writing.
In the end, there were a couple of things that transpired in my personal life that made me take stock of what I was doing and what was important to me. We had some medical issues in the family at a time I was feeling washed out and stressed myself. It was important to me, for my own mental and physical health to pull back from my writing and concentrate on my family and myself. Everyone is fine, including myself. However, once all the dust settled. I was exhausted and realised that things needed to change. I realised I wanted to write for myself and have control of my creativity.
Who is “Whimsical Words Publishing” For?
Though I knew I still wanted to write, and ultimately still needed to be able to earn some money. How I did it was going to be on my terms. When I started with Siren, they wanted to distance themselves from my previous pen name Becky Wilde. As a result, I became Becca Van as a “Siren Exclusive Author”. This allowed them to promote Becca Van in exclusivity. This was good, however, I am not able to write as Becca Van outside of Siren. Hence a return to Becky Wilde…
New (old) name, starting from scratch and rebuilding my fanbase.
This time I will be in charge and own the name and rights to what I create. Being in charge, I also have a burning desire to write in a totally different genre.
I have always wanted to write children’s books. I have always been fascinated and inspired by The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton. Obviously, this is not something I can write as Becca Van or Becky Wilde with a history of erotic romance. A new name and ultimately another platform to promote this work would create much duplication. So here we are with Whimsical Words Publishing.
Ultimately, I would like to develop WWP to allow other up and coming Authors to publish through our platform and learn from us how we have developed a profile, crafted, and promoted our books. We are still a way from that, but we have a vision. Whimsical Words Publishing is for me and those who want to read some great books. Much more than just a platform for me to sell Becky Wilde Books, but possibly a platform to launch other authors as well.
Who are the Authors on WWP?
We only started in WWP in July 2023. And at the time of writing, we are only working on refining and promoting the website with Becky Wilde. We hope that the realisation that Becky Wilde is the highly popular author Becca Van. We hope to develop some traction for the website and get a following and be able to promote other authors down the track.
Expansion Plans?
I, Becky Wilde already have 3 books on the platform and another 2 in the works. Somewhere down the track we will introduce another genre and potentially, depending on our success, will open the platform to other authors looking to break out.
Developing the systems and learning the skills to self-publish on other platforms like Amazon, Kobo, Google, Apple, Barnes & Noble, etc. is not overly difficult, but still requires some time to develop. This is the place we hope to assist and nurture other authors when the time comes.
Just Not Yet!
How does the platform work?
Whimsical Words has partnered up with Book Funnel for the delivery of our books. We didn’t want to be in a position to make the sale and not be able to deliver the books. Book Funnel has a fabulous system where our books are uploaded and once purchased from our site, a system email will provide details of how to download the book, as well as support to upload them onto your e-book reader.
We are capable of a lot but recognise that using the experience of established professionals is key for us to deliver the best service to you, our customers. I will explain the delivery process in another post.
Summing it up, I hope I have been able to clear up some questions regarding the existence and work done to create Whimsical Words Publishing. As you probably noticed throughout this piece and others, I continued to reference “we”. I simply could not do this myself.
My partner in crime is also my partner in life, my wonderful hubby, Rob. He has done all the website development, sales processes, and publishing on the other platforms. He has been my “Web Guru”. If it weren’t for him, I would never be able to do this and realise my dream of taking total control of my financial and creative future.
Please get in contact if you have any other questions regarding the platform, my writing or where to get my books.
Thanks,
Love Becky Wilde
XXOO