You published a book… What’s next?
By Ashley Elizabeth, written January 2025
You’ve done it.
From drafting your manuscript to editing, to editing again, to putting it away, then editing again, through submissions and rejections, then finally: that acceptance email comes. You’ve gone through the secrecy stage (or at least I did) until the press announces its next selections. Then you’re thrust back into editing. At least this time the next thing to do is cover design, interior layout, exterior layout, asking for blurbs, etc.—but you get it. The list goes on and on as to all the work required for your book to exist in your readers’ hands.
So, what do you do when the book is actually out?
The truth is what comes next is a personal decision, but one that should align with what you want of the manuscript. This is much easier than it sounds.
By the end of 2023, I knew that I would have two collections coming out in 2024: my debut full-length collection, A Family Thing, and my third chapbook, CHARM(ed). That said, I already knew I had a daunting task ahead of me since these two collections were vastly different thematically, and I felt like there was no connecting thread to market them together. I also wanted better for these two collections than what my first two collections garnered, so I knew I had to get to planning early, but what did “wanting better” mean?
It took a while for me to answer that specific question, but in the end, I came up with three wants: more visibility, more celebrations, and more spaces to share my work. I applied for various places to assist in widening my reach outside of Twitter/X, but to no avail, so I got even busier reaching out to venues I had read at previously and even being brave and contacting new ones to book readings or see how I could get involved. While some places said they had no openings for the year, they put me on their list for 2025, and I was grateful.
Alone, this one act combined more visibility and more spaces to share. While yes, this was a want of mine, it also was frightening for someone with social anxiety, but let’s consider this a challenge in the right direction.
Being a poet with these incredibly high expectations of myself, adding that to being a middle school educator comes with its own set of goals, challenges, and expectations. While managing the balance between edits of two different manuscripts in addition to my full-time job and other life events like one of my students stealing my car, I was continuing to submit work outside of these manuscripts and then the unthinkable happened: another chapbook of mine, red line, was accepted for publication—also in 2024.
A Family Thing was due to come out in August, and CHARM(ed) in November, so for red line to be slated for October rose internal panic because it meant that much more work had to be done. It also meant when I book events in the city talking about my experiences as an educator, I have to watch how I approach what I say, which is not so fun (red line covers part of my life as an educator after losing two of my students, my lens as a Black educator in a formerly white-led school, our lockdown situation, and my unconventional ways in the classroom).
But I don’t shy away from challenges: I embrace them.
For people with day jobs, writing by itself can feel like something you don’t have enough time for, let alone all these other moving parts. I would have loved to go coast to coast spreading my voice, but my reality isn’t set up that way as someone with such a demanding career and family life.
There have been times along my publishing journey this year that have veered me into the lane of giving up one, the other, or both, but that wouldn’t have been fair to my readers or my students, those who I continue to work for every day. It also wouldn’t have been fair to me. Since I was younger, I dreamt of becoming an author. Writing, especially writing my subject matter, is good work. Messy work at times, but good, important work.
So, after the collections came out and I spoke at all the planned readings and other engagements I had except for one due to illness, what was there to do?
I didn’t have to wait long to find my answer: After A Family Thing released, school was quickly starting and my car got stolen again, so I had life issues to worry about. After red line released, I picked up a terrible illness from school and was sick for several weeks where I was mainly focused on my health, which then also ran into the release of CHARM(ed) where I was starting to feel better but then ran into issues at school.
I haven’t touched much on the celebrations behind these publications because I consider each time I get to read from them to be a celebration of sorts, especially when I consider the themes within each manuscript. I made it through everything A Family Thing talks about, which is a celebration. Putting a good word into the atmosphere about Baltimore in CHARM(ed) is a celebration when people do nothing but try to destroy it (though I did treat myself to a chicken box and half-and-half both when I got the acceptance and when it was released). Uplifting my deceased scholars that I discuss in red line will also always be an honor and celebration as to know them, to say their names is a privilege.
Now if you asked me, “What do I recommend doing after publishing a book?” I could say take yourself on a solo date, eat a piece or two or five of your favorite cake, rest, dance in your underwear, call your sister and yap for two hours about everything and nothing, order your favorite takeout, marathon your favorite shows that you’ve seen maybe one too many times.
What I’m going to say is: Give yourself credit. You have created something no one in this world has. You have used your voice to speak up and out about something you believe in and that is probably the greatest, bravest thing you could ever do.
In short, what comes next is up to you. There is no right or wrong to your next steps, or any mandated steps for that matter, but whatever you decide to do, enjoy the journey. You’ve earned it, however “it” looks for you.
Ashley Elizabeth (she/her) is a winner of the 2024 Garden Party Collective Chapbook Contest. She is a Pushcart-nominated writer and teacher whose work has appeared in SWWIM, Voicemail Poems, Rigorous, and Sage Cigarettes, among others. Ashley is the author of A Family Thing (Redacted Books/ELJ Editions, 2024) and chapbooks red line (Garden Party Collective, 2024), CHARM(ed) (fifth wheel press, 2024), black has every right to be angry (Alternating Current, 2023), and you were supposed to be a friend (Nightingale & Sparrow, 2020). When she isn't teaching, reading, or writing, Ashley works as chapbook editor at Sundress Publications. She lives on the original land of the Piscataway (Baltimore, Maryland) with her partner and their cats.
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