Poets & Writers

Your Rights Revert

STEPHANIE DICKINSON is an Iowa native who lives in New York City. She is the author of three books published by Spuyten Duyvil, including the novel Half Girl (2008), the novella Lust Series (2011), and Love Highway (2014), a true-crime book based on the 2006 murder of Jennifer Moore. Her other books include Heat: An Interview With Jean Seberg (New Michigan Press, 2013) and Flashlight Girls Run (New Meridian Arts Press, 2017). Her work has been reprinted in Best American Nonrequired Reading, New Stories From the South, and New Stories From the Midwest 2016. She is the editor of Rain Mountain Press.

YOU and your manuscript have survived the grueling search for a publisher—the queries, the contests, the pitches, the rejections—a process often as demanding as the writing itself. You’ve found a small, independent press—maybe a new but ambitious one, whose growing reputation is matched by its impressive catalogue—whose mission and vision are just the right fit for you and your book. You are, in a word, euphoric. After the high of signing a contract, the integrating of editorial suggestions, the proofing, the weighing of each deletion and addition, and the thrill of receiving author copies, you celebrate your book’s release with a launch party. The book appears on Amazon, the review copies are in the mail, and you’re building momentum and settling in for the long-distance moment has arrived.

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