Rejection motivates writer to self-publish

Rotorua writer and publisher Claire Plaisted is helping aspiring local novelists get past the rejection slips. PHOTO: STEPHEN PARKER

Rotorua novelist and publisher Claire Plaisted is not one to be easily embarrassed.

But she did become a little red-faced when one of her first novels was placed on the shelves with an 'adult content' warning on it.

"My friends had suggested it needed a bit of sex in it after they had read the first draft,"
Claire says. "So I added some spicy bits.

"The next thing I knew it had 'adult content' warnings on it. I wasn't really expecting it to be like that."

Claire says she is foremost a writer who has branched out into publishing, both in print form and as an e-book.

To date her four books have been exclusively for e-book publication over the internet.

But over the past four months she has been working more as a formatter - getting the written words onto actual pages, sorting out chapter headings and page numbers, designing covers and adding the introduction, among other tasks.

For a ridiculously small sum - $20-$40 per book - she has been able to sell her novels on demand of the internet.

"I just got fed up one day of the rejection slips.

"It wasn't nice and I quickly got fed up with it - so I thought I would branch out into self-publishing," she says.

What Claire really means is that she wanted to hold one of her books she had written in her own hands.

"Marketing is not my speciality, but I learned to find my way around a computer to begin formatting."

Since then she has been asked to help with other writers in Rotorua who have put words on paper but have had their ambitions stalled thereafter.

"My sole aim is to get other people's books ready so they can sell them online, and later in print," she says.

To date Claire has had five books she has written printed, and 15 published as e-books.

"I'm really a family history specialist but enjoy the novelist side of my writing."

She considers herself a prolific writer and can put out a book in six weeks from woe to go, she says. "I don't know where I get my inspiration from.

"I sit down at the keyboard and the words flow - its like someone is talking to me, it's really weird.

"I once wrote three chapters in three hours.

"Mainly it's adult crime, but I have also written children's books."

With titles like Zoe's Journey, Rosetta's Lot and Joseph's Story - there is plenty of intrigue to interest readers, she says.