Jenny Smedley - Past Lives

Jenny's past life-related books have helped thousands of people - get yours by clicking on books!

Advice & help for budding writers and Gallery

Writers often contact us asking for advice, so we have put together this page will we hope will give encouragement.

If you’ve already written the masterpiece but you are having trouble getting a publisher to take it on, perhaps it's because your presentation is not up to scratch. Maybe you should consider getting it edited properly. There are many reputable companies on the internet that can do this for you. Just be sure to check them out thoroughly and don't be afraid to ask questions!

If you have given up on publishers - try what worked for Jenny. Get your book produced by Amolibros, and then work very hard at marketing, and you just might be lucky enough to get a commercial publisher to take the book over, like Jenny did with her first book. Whatever you do, be very careful not to fall into the clutches of a so-called ‘vanity publisher’. Companies like Amolibros, will produce a professional finished article, AND the all-important distribution deal, without which it would be very difficult to get your book into shops. Vanity publishers will give you a few copies of your book, often at an exorbitant price, and poor quality, and no distributor or reviewer will touch it.

Be very careful if an agent offers you any kind of deal that involves you parting with money. To get a genuine offer from a reputable literary agent is very rare. If a deal seems too good to be true, it often is. Jenny herself wasted a whole year on a fraudulent agent, so beware!

One way to enhance your profile as a writer and to get publishers to look at your work more favourably is to have some work published in magazines. Give it a go! You never know!

Above all, never give in. Getting rejected or accepted is a very subjective area. Some of today’s classic best-selling authors could paper their walls with rejection slips.

It’s often simply a case of showing your work to the right publisher at the right time. Publishers are not ogres (well most of them aren’t ;), so try talking to them and see what they’re looking for.

Advice from Jenny Smedley:

Persistence - this is a word I've seen used a lot, and I used to misunderstand it. I used to think that it just meant keep trying. It means that but the important words that are missing are 'with passion'. You have to have persistent passion for your writing, and the subject of it.

So, only write about something you feel passionately about.

I had to have the first edition of my book Ripples, published privately by a sponsor. Then followed two years of promotion, promotion and tireless promotion. Most people would have given up, possibly. Finally an honest-to-goodness real-life publisher took my book and published it professionally. Now I have two more on the way.

So my tip would be that you have to believe in your book - really believe in it - to make others do the same.

The gallery below is an opportunity for budding writers to showcase their work. If you would like to be considered for the Gallery, please email Tony. There is no payment for this. By sending us your work you give us permission to publish it here. You retain all copyright to the material.

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