175: Lessons from a 10-Year-Old Published Author with Emma Sumner

Emma Sumner is the author of The Fairies of Waterfall Island. She published the book in 2016 at the age of only eight years old. Today she&#8217;s 10 years old and just finishing up her second book, which is a prequel to the first. She was inspired to write her first book when she saw her dad publishing his second book on Amazon. Her dad told her that if she could write 150 words in her story that day, he would help her publish the book when it was complete. She began immediately outlining the book in a new notebook she&#8217;d recently gotten. When she showed the notebook to her father that night, Emma had 172 words in it, and he began helping her from there. In this podcast, we talked about what inspired Emma to write a book, Autism Speaks, and the importance of starting your novel. Emma has a unique story and a message the whole world needs to hear. How Emma Decided to Write a Book about Fairies Emma likes books about fairies. She&#8217;s a particular fan of Rainbow Magic and The Never Girls. She also likes mysteries; she enjoyed The Magic Treehouse. There was never any question in her mind what type of book she&#8217;d write. Emma&#8217;s Writing Process Emma is definitely a plotter, not a pantser. After Emma finished her outline, she began writing the rough draft. She would have a writing session every Saturday at Panera and post an update on Facebook about what she was doing. After Emma was done with her rough draft, she and her father hired an editor to go over the manuscript. The editor helped a lot because she found mistakes that Emma and her father missed. Emma revised the rough draft based on her editor&#8217;s suggestions, and then published the book. What Emma Learned from Working with an Editor There are a lot of lessons you can learn by working with skilled professionals who are able to give you a different perspective on your work. Emma learned that you can make your book better by focusing on the details. Before the editor helped Emma revise her work, there weren&#8217;t a lot of details about the world. She says it was really fun working out how fairy magic works. That kind of nuance adds depth to your fictional world and makes it easier for readers to fall in love with your story. How Emma Markets Her Book Emma&#8217;s aunt has been tremendously helpful in marketing her book. She helped Emma get several television interviews because of the unique story about how the book was created. Notably, Emma has been on Good Morning Sacramento and Fox 40. She&#8217;s also done interviews for magazines and newspapers. Emma recently started using Amazon ads to market her books. She targets books similar to hers on Amazon; her book is displayed every time someone looks at those product pages. Emma also made sure that her book was available in as many formats as possible. You can buy a Kindle version, a print version, or the audiobook version. What It’s Like to Be on Local TV Once you agree to do a television interview, you and the producer decide on a day and time. Then you go to the TV station and do the interview. Emma has had to miss school a couple of times for TV interviews. The experience was well worth the missed class time. Emma&#8217;s Spelling Bee Success Emma has traveled all the way to the National Spelling Bee two years in a row, when she was in the third and fourth grades. She&#8217;s also talented in math and science. She competed in the district math bowl in the first grade. Readings in Classrooms Teachers read Emma&#8217;s book in classrooms. She attends some of these readings and talks about the process of writing her book. There&#8217;s a lot of ways to get your book known if you simply look at opportunities within your own community. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-11364 size-medium" src="https://www.tckpublishing.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/sumner-quote-1-300x300.png" alt="how to start writing a book" width="300" height="300" src