MEMO

DATE: September 21, 2017

TO: Mr. Stephen Haslam
FROM: Kyndra Prietzel
SUBJECT: Information-Gathering Interview

I decided to interview Ms. Heather Fisher, a self published author, to learn more about writing
and what is involved for publishing a book. I was able to learn about the facts and the experience
she had while writing and publishing. Also, I learned about interactions and skills that took
place. Furthermore, I learned about personal experiences, and facts that she encountered. I held
the interview at a public park since it was close by to both of our homes, and would make the
commute there as easy as possible.

Experience and Facts

Ms. Fisher remarked of how creating a book is very time consuming. She expressed of how you
need a lot of patience, and time to write. Also, she included that along with time you need
dedication and ambition to continue. There were times when it was difficult, but if you are
dedicated to what you are doing then it can become easier. Ms. Fisher also provided the fact of
organization which included topic notes, character summaries, the simplest of story plots, and
others. She implied you have to keep everything straight and in order or you could forget, and
the whole book could become a disaster.

When publishing a book she remarked that it is not very profitable. Especially, since it is a self-
published book there is not a lot of publicity for it. However, she feels that can be personally
profitable if you feel like you accomplished something great, and proud of your own book.

Publishing a book on your own is very difficult. You have to find yourself an editor, people who
will do the cover, and so much more. Finding an editor was difficult because most charged two
thousand dollars for editing one book, but she did luckily find an editor who would pay by the
chapter so the cost was spread out. She also mentioned finding errors on your own. When
reading she would not notice any mistakes, and just get caught up with the story, but when others
read it they found a lot. One trick she tried was reading it backwards to see if she could find any
mistakes hidden that she didn’t notice before. Fortunately, the technique worked and she found a
lot more mistakes than originally. However, self-editing isn’t the only difficult part for self-
publishing. Another challenging concept is finding someone to do the artwork for the book
cover. It involves exact measurements of the book and the spine, and can be very difficult.
Luckily, she found a man who would do it for free, but learned after that if she was going to do
another book and pay for cover art it would cost an average five-hundred dollars.

Interactions and Skills

Good communication skills are involved for writing and publishing a book. If you can’t
communicate effectively you’re not going to communicate ideas in a book effectively. She
mentioned the people may misinterpret what you are trying to put down on paper, but it may
make sense to you.
Some interactions that took place while writing were baeta readers. Basically, they are a people
you send your book to, she prefers chapter by chapter, and they give you feedback for free. Ms.
Fisher remarked that sometimes it could be a waste of a feedback if they give a comment or
suggestion that has nothing to do with the story. Another interaction was the editor, and she
included that authors have to be ready to take criticism. One example, is when an editor would
give feedback on a chapter and basically state “start over”. Other interactions were in book clubs
and writers groups where she read their posts, and asked questions about publishing, marketing,
and selling.

Ms. Fisher gave a short list of skills involved in writing including, of course, writing skills,
typing, grammar skills, creative skills, and reading skills. She gave an example of reading a
college professor’s book from the mid-west and that her grammar was absolutely horrific. Plus,
she included that the book was all about a horrible relationship. Creative writing skills and
grammar skills are needed to make the book understandable, and interesting. She also exclaimed
that to be a writer you need to have read enough books to know what works as a story. For
example, she included a coworkers book that she read, and that he had great tone and great
sentence structure. However, he never read any books so he gave away the entire plot in the first
chapter, and it wasn’t intriguing anymore.

Personal Facts and Experience:

Ms. Fisher choose to self-publish her book because it is first and foremost guaranteed. Getting
publicly published by an organization is very hard because publishers only look at your work if
it’s in the top ten of viewings on kindle, or ebooks, or something similar to that. Also, she wasn’t
planning on a career change where she would make thousands of dollars, but just wanted to
succeed in a goal. Self-publishing a book you don’t always have to take advice or suggestions.
Her book is originally her own work, and she doesn’t have to worry so much about making
dramatic changes, and going back to scraps to rewrite it.

Ms. Fisher was influenced by her mid-life-crisis to write a book. She felt like she hadn’t
accomplished anything in her life so she went back to school for seven years, and then finally
decided to write a book, and try something new with her life. Writing a book as she states,
“makes me feel better about getting old” because now she knows she did something with her life,
and she’s proud of it.

A role model that Ms. Fisher admires is Maggie Stiefvater who wrote the series “The Raven
Boys”. She admires her because she writes in the same genre as Ms. Fisher, which is teen fiction.
Her writing is similar, but she wrote a different genre and ended up just as amazing. Ms. Fisher
remarks how she challenged herself to write different things, and how that amazed her. Another
author that she admires is Dean Koontz because of his long career as a writer, and how he can
write a book and immediately publish. Both of them are wonderful authors, and she wants to be
like them someday.

For her, the best part about writing was when people got excited about her book, or having good
reviews, or having self-satisfaction that she did it. For example, a friend’s son read it and it was
the first book that he read cover to cover, and he got super excited and wanted to read more
books. The worst part about writing was having no time to write because of how busy she
usually is. When she did find time she mentioned that she would get caught up in the story, and
go to bed really late, so finding time was hard.

Interview Analysis

Through this interview I have learned about handing writing and publishing a book. I know it
takes a great deal of time and talent, but I’ve learned about the publishing part. Ms. Fisher
emphasized the importance of publishing and how self-publishing can be very difficult.
However, I love the writing aspect of the career and not the publishing. I’ve realized though that
I need to share my work with others, and understand their opinions on my material. Overall, I’ve
learned the time and effort that is involved and how to succeed in a personal accomplishment.

Good factors about the interview was gathering good informational questions that didn’t result in
a “yes” or “no” answer. Also, trying to have questions that would correlate with the others to
gather more information. However, I didn’t really categorize them so the question jumped topic
to topic a bit differently. Plus, I didn’t memorize all of my questions ahead of time so I was
constantly flipping through my notebook to find questions and looking down at my notebook to
see what question was next. There would usually be an awkward moment of silence between Ms.
Fisher and I when I had to find the next question. Also, keeping eye contact and remembering
her main points of answering were a little difficult to do. I’ve come to realize that next time
while conducting an interview I should organize myself, and keep good eye contact throughout
the interview.