Out of the plethora of publishing options available today, we’ve ranked three that fit the best.

Our Gabby Wells novel series is about a teen sleuth who, along with solving mysteries, must also deal with the high demands of her faith. These stories are not written in a preachy sort of way. Though most people will probably categorize it as Catholic or Christian fiction, we would categorize it as fiction about a character that happens to be Catholic.

Because of her beliefs, her faith journey is part of her life and adds a higher level of dramatic tension to the series. Not only must she try and solve the mystery before her, but how she solves it can have eternal consequences.

Most people will probably try to pigeon hole this type of story into the Young Adult Christian fiction or Young Adult Catholic fiction category even though I feel it is far more universal than that.

Maybe I’m just being too optimistic.

This will be a five book series, not a one-off novel, so we have to look at the big picture of how best to publish them over the next 5-10 years. At this point we have ranked these three publishing options:

1. Established Publisher – An established publisher, either mainstream or Christian based, would give us access to resources that would be costly to do otherwise, especially editing.
2. Create our own Imprint – since we hope that this series will be larger than a simple self-published title, having an imprint of our own, thereby establishing ourselves as our own publisher, would give us direct access to the same printing companies that publishers access today. This would add a level of professional credibility to our product and allow us to adjust to the growth potential with each book.
3. Self-Publish – using something like CreateSpace or some other low-cost self-publishing option, we could publish the series this way. I’ve read a lot of books created using this method and the quality of the printing is excellent. And the out-of-pocket costs are minimal. There is, however, a lot more time required to develop all of the material required, formatting the various publication options (print, ebook, etc.), cover photos, etc. Plus, we’d have to be extra careful about rights ownership using such methods.

Option one is our preference, of course, because it’s a shortcut to getting out a quality product. I have no problem surrendering a portion of my royalties to a company that helps make the end product the best it can be.

So, we’ll see what happens. Who knows, things may change. But, this is where we stand at the moment.