By Nicki Ehrlich and Joyce Sherry
All through her school years, Nicki read, and Nicki wrote. She wrote essays, she wrote poetry, she wrote songs. She finally wrote a novel. It remains in a drawer. Sometimes it kicks and screams, trying to get out. Sometimes it finds patience and waits. It’s a good story, but not the right story just yet.
While reading Zane Gray novels, a new protagonist emerged. This character didn’t exist in those beloved old Westerns. She was the strong female voice kept on the sidelines, wanting to tell her story. She knew horses; she knew family; she knew peace and hardship. She found herself alone on a Tennessee homestead in 1865, her family scattered by war. Her story had to be told.
That novel gained traction with a couple of gold IBPA awards and a few short-list considerations. The story continued into a second, IPPY award-winning book and then became a trilogy—the third to be published soon.
After a career as an actor, director, and playwright evolved into a career as a theater and English teacher, then into a quiet early retirement, Joyce told herself it was time to stop talking about penning a novel and actually dare to write the darned thing.
What characters presented themselves to her, asking for their story to be told? A ghost, a vampire, a cat, and a dying boy. After all, death is only the beginning. Because … reasons, she decided to publish it herself. Today, her debut novel has been shortlisted for the Foreword Indies Award and the CIPA EVVY, and her second novel is completed and will be published soon.
And there’s the rub. “Published soon.”
An author working (or hoping to work) with the big five is at the mercy of her agent, editor, and publisher. The time elapsed between convincing an agent to champion your book to the day you’ll see it on a shelf can easily be three to four years. Heck, just finding an agent can cost years of your life.
After many queries and rejections, Nicki found her dream agent. What they were looking for was her book—exactly—down to the details. She knew this was the one. Nope, rejected again. And it’s not because the book wasn’t good enough, but because it wasn’t what they wanted to publish now. For Joyce, many years of seeking an agent—even though she didn’t have an MFA in writing, a social media following a thousand strong, or a sixty-year writing career still ahead of her—led to countless close calls that ended with no offers of representation.
Even the author who finds representation and grasps the golden ring of a big five publisher faces a process of ceding control over her work. The agent and the publishing house’s editor require certain revisions. The design and marketing teams determine the look of the book cover. Perhaps the title needs to be changed. The marketing team positions the book where they think it will best sell.
Joyce relished being at the helm, marshalling the input and talents of editors, designers, beta readers, ARC readers. It all harkened back to her work as a theater director, working with a range of creatives to produce a finished product that reflects the director’s vision, a vision that, ideally, has grown thanks to the energies of the assembled artists.
She might not have loved every step of the process—some steps took her out of her comfort zone, for sure—but she asked questions, turned to those who had gone before, and she grew and learned. Now, she’s about to publish her second novel. On her timeline.
For Nicki, the more she learned about traditional publishing, the more she leaned toward self-publishing. She studied the process and found she enjoyed each step: the planning, the revision, the timing. She loves having control over what her book is going to look like, and she enjoys working alongside professional editors and designers to produce a product she can be proud of before it launches into the literary world where it will find its place.
She knows it will be published. Soon.
Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur: The Successful Author-Publisher
Nicki Ehrlich and Joyce Sherry
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM Friday Oct 16
2026 Annual Women Writing the West Conference registration portal
…author-published debut novel, Ellis River, won the IBPA Bill Fisher Award for Best First Book – fiction, and the sequel, Zephyr Trails, won a Gold IPPY (Independent Publishers Book Award). Nicki loves the writing life and delights in sharing the whys and wherefores of author-publishing with other write-minded folk. The third book in the Ellis River trilogy, will be published soon.
…speaks candidly about the creative and logistical realities of building an indie author career. A lover of all things strange and tender, she writes supernatural fantasy where ghosts speak, wishes have weight, and hope refuses to die—even after death. Her forthcoming novel will be published in February, just as she planned.
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