The Denham Springs-Walker Library branch held a special Local Author Q&A session at 10 AM on August 27, with authors Pam Bankston, Stephanie Fournet, Jack Caldwell, Alyssa Lonergan, Holly Rose, Lynn Shurr, and Donnie Smith as the panelists.
Author Introductions
Pamela Bankston is from South Louisiana and is widely known for writing Frizzy Freida’s Gymtastrophie, a children’s book that has become a series. That series has since been adapted into a stage play, Frizzy Freida Takes The Stage, and a showing has already been performed by a local theatre group.
Stephanie Fournet is from Lafayette, Louisiana and has authored fourteen novels, mainly romance in genre, and has been publishing for around fourteen years, first with a small press and now independently.
Jack Caldwell is from the bayou country of Louisiana and is a self-published author of 12 novels of historical fiction. Caldwell mainly writes novels from the 19th century, something he calls “a very important turning point in history” as well as the time period of the industrial revolution.
Alyssa Lonergan is from South Louisiana and a multi-award winning fantasy and paranormal romance author with over 35 novels published. Writing for about ten years and publishing for the same amount of time, Lonergan notes that she “loves a lot of adventure, so that’s what you’ll find in my books.”
Holly Rose “knew [she] wanted to be a writer in sixth grade when [she] read Jane Eyre and fell in love with the language.” After working at her job for 20 years, she found herself putting ideas to paper and finishing novels, ultimately publishing three books in recent years. All of her books are considered romance novels with different subgenres.
Lynn Shurr, who found her forever home not far from the Bayou Teche, worked as a librarian in the past while also traveling extensively, leaving her too busy to write until her first year of retirement when she finished her first novel. After five years, Shurr was finally published and eventually turned her sports romance book into a fifteen book series.
Donnie Smith from Amite spent 46 years in law enforcement and traveled for around 28 years in total before retiring in 2022 and deciding to put his life experiences and memories down into writing. With ten books published so far, Smith notes that he seeks to only write about the truth with no embellishments or flourishes.
Q&A Begins
Attendees were offered question sheets to get the ball rolling, however not many needed to utilize them as dozens of questions about writing inspiration, editor tips, and publishing advice flowed from the audience, leaving the authors more than happy to answer any and all questions.
To start, the first question posed covered writers groups and whether or not aspiring authors need to join one. A few of the authors noted that they either are currently or have been a part of a writers group and noted that writers groups help with the writing and editing process.
“I do recommend joining a group if you can find one,” Shurr told the audience, with Bankston naming the Creative Minds Writers Group in Ponchatoula as her current group.
From there, the authors discussed different agents, publishing companies, and methods of publishing.
“I did try to get New York published for five years. I had 74 rejections, and it’s even worse now because there’s only like 3 big publishers left… you need an agent but there’s fewer agents because everyone’s self publishing,” Shurr stated. “It just gets harder and harder.”
Lonergan, however, found that there are more agents available through social media as opposed to traditional methods.
“The more that you put your book out on social media, the more likely it is to be seen by an agent,” Lonergan added. “The advantages of an agent are that they can do everything that you can’t… they [promote] you to publishing houses and they do the dirty work.”
Rose and several other authors also warned to be wary of editors and agents and to check their credentials and reviews before sending anything to them. Some, Rose added, may attempt to take submitted manuscripts and put them through AI to either skim the work or edit it using AI. Rose specifically noted that “everyone stay away from City Owl Press” because they were the cause of several headaches and discrepancies for her when publishing with them.
Many of the authors then addressed that using Amazon to publish comes with downsides as much as it can seem to be the easiest way to self publish. Several of the authors stated that, in the past, Amazon will “just drop your book and you have to fight to get it back,” leading to them having to fight even more to get publishing rights back when they didn’t want to sell through Amazon anymore.
The authors also touched on ways new authors can design their books and where they can outsource design and editing services.
Fournet noted that using a formatting service allows for increased creative freedom when designing book layouts, adding that she likes “having the control, and being able to go in and fix something if something’s not right.” Fournet also stated that she has found some editing services before on Fiverr, stating that it can be helpful as long as one takes caution to check the ratings and reviews of who they hire.
Caldwell explained that he’s been using the same editing team since he began writing and has only met with them in-person three times over 20 years, mainly utilizing the internet to send drafts back and forth and communicate. Additionally, Caldwell emphasized that authors need editors that aren’t afraid to “destroy your book” in order to make it better.
For those interested in outsourcing their cover art design, some of the authors noted that prices can range from $50 with commercial licensing included to upwards of $1,000 depending on the artist and how complex the art work. Lonergan explained that she specifically follows artists that she appreciates online and then pays them to make artwork for her novels when they are available for commissions.
“You want a good cover, you really do,” Shurr told the crowd. “If you do a cheesy, self-done cover, you’re not gonna sell your books.”
Caldwell explained that the cover art for his short story collection is actually a painting his wife’s grandfather did, highlighting that good covers can also come from traditional art and photography, so long as permission is obtained from the art’s owner.
Additionally, when outsourcing editors, Shurr specified that she had an experience with an editor that charged $35 an hour to edit with the bargain price ending up at $850 when it could have easily reached $1,000 or more without the bargain. Other editors may charge by the word instead of by the hour, but the general consensus from the panel was that you pay for what you get when it comes to editors.
Even so, Smith stated that his wife is the one who edits and proofreads all of his novels, and she even designs the cover art for his books as well, adding to the idea that not all editorial or design work needs to be expensive or outsourced when an author’s family or friends are willing to help.
No matter which method for design and editing the authors expressed a preference for, there was a sense of agreement from the panel to not use generative AI to write books or design cover art for books, with Rose emphasizing the importance of keeping art and writing human.
When it comes to the best place to publish a book, opinions were mixed between e-books and physical books.
Caldwell stated that e-books are “where the market is” for a “majority of their sales,” noting that “I’ll go to book fairs and people will look at my stuff… and the last thing they ask is ‘is this on Kindle?’”
Shurr agreed, saying “most of my sales, I will say, tend to be e-books.”
Lonergan expressed that she sees the majority of her sales with physical special editions of her books, however.
“I have a lot of author friends who easily sell six figures a year in special editions,” Lonergan said. “I sell way more paperbacks, hardbacks, and special editions than e-books.”
Fournet explained that she sees most of her royalty checks from audiobook titles, stating “I did decide to hire narrators and produce my own audiobook… but audiobooks now are a very large market and that is where the big dollar signs have been coming in for me the last few years.”
The authors ended the Q&A session by discussing their methods of writing and how many books they work on at a time.
Many of the authors said that they will try to focus on one book at a time, while writing down any ideas they have so they can revisit them later, while others noted that they are currently working on several novels at the same time.
The general idea was that new authors can spend time discovering what method works best for them so long as they continue to make the effort to write a little bit every day, whether that be 300 words whenever and wherever they can or 1,000 at a set time every day. If they do that, Shurr noted, they’ll have written a whole book before they know it.
