Odyssey Books is a small press based in New Zealand. It was founded in 2009 by Michelle Lovi, and even now has only three listed team members, one who is part time.

Their website focuses on selling books over recruiting authors, which is always a good sign. Their covers are a real mix of well done and appealing, as well as amateurish. According to their website they have print distribution in Australia and New Zealand, and web distribution internationally. Their Australian distributor is Novella Distribution.

They have three traditional imprints, as well as a self-publishing arm (please contact us at support@authorspublish.com, if they redirect you to the self-publishing imprint).

Recently, they decided to change the direction of their primary imprint so that it now focuses on speculative fiction genres only – fantasy, sci-fi, horror, etc. Although the information on the Submittable page for their primary imprint does not make that clear their main submission guideline page does. Their primary imprint, Odyssey Books is open to submissions from international authors, as is Ensorcellia, which publishes novellas, chapbooks, and comics in postcard-sized volumes.

Their third imprint, Obscura, publishes picture books for older children through to adult readers: novelty books, gift books, graphic novels, coloring books, as well as quirky and creative non-fiction, and they are only open to submissions from Australian and New Zealand authors and illustrators.

Their website is a little disorganized and overwhelming, but some of the books they’ve published look excellent.

To see more of what they’ve published, go here; to learn how to submit, go here.

Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2021 Guide to Manuscript Publishers.

Random Sample has been published since 2015, and they currently publish two issues each year. They’ve only published seven issues total, though, because originally they didn’t publish in that form. Each edition contains writing from around 20 contributors. Some issues are themed, but most are not. For example, the most recent edition is themed “Follow Your Joy.”

Random Sample accepts submissions year-round, though they provide cut-off dates for consideration in specific issues. Right now through November 15 they’re accepting submissions for Issue 8. They will remain open to submissions after November 15, just not for Issue 8. Also note that they read submissions most consistently during the summer and winter, before publishing a new issue. Response times could be faster during these months.

Poets may submit up to five poems. Authors of prose (fiction and nonfiction) may submit one story, 7,000 words or fewer. Authors of flash writing may submit up to three pieces, 1,000 words or fewer each. They also publish hybrid writing, which can be submitted in either category. Random Sample aims to respond to all submissions within six months.

Random Sample also offers a special opportunity for young writers. Authors under 20 years of age can submit to the Random Young Writers Series. The young authors selected will work closely with editors at Random Sample to polish their writing, which will be published alongside other emerging and established authors in the journal.

Random Sample does accept previously published work, although they prefer unpublished writing. They do not accept multiple submissions and ask that authors wait at least three months from receiving a response before submitting again.

Random Sample accepts submissions online using Google Forms, not via email or by post. They accept simultaneous submissions but ask that authors withdraw work published elsewhere.

Random Sample only accepts submissions that follow the guidelines they’ve posted online. Please read these guidelines before submitting.

If you’d like to learn more or submit to Random Sample, please visit their website here.

Bio: Ella Peary is the pen name for an author, editor, creative writing mentor, and submission consultant. Over the past five years, she’s written hundreds of articles for Authors Publish, and she’s also served as a copywriter and copy editor for a wide range of organizations and individuals. She is the author of The Quick Start Guide to Flash Fiction. She occasionally teaches a course on flash fiction. You can contact her at ellapeary@gmail.com.

Beta readers are usually the first real readers that you’ll get outside of your critique partners that will offer insight into your story. It’s an important stage of the writing process because their comments will help you determine what’s working in your story and what still needs some work.

Once you have their notes though, it can be hard to know where to begin. Each reader has their own set of opinions that may or may not match up across the board. How do you determine what comments you should listen to or disregard, and what should you do if you have conflicting feedback?

As the author, you have complete control over what you want to use from beta readers. Although you shouldn’t immediately ignore any criticism you disagree with, here are some tips to help you better implement beta feedback.

When to add versus ignore

The key thing to consider when you start sifting through beta feedback is: Does this feedback actually align with the direction I want this story to go?

It can be easy to be swept up in the suggestions beta readers make and wanting to utilize every single comment because you want your readers to be happy, but it’s important to view these critiques with a critical eye. Ask yourself how adding this feedback would change the story: Will the story be more dynamic? Will the characters be more nuanced? Does it fit the vision of the story you’re telling?

If the answer is yes, then you should implement the feedback. If majority of your readers bring up the same kind of comments or concerns, that is something also worth listening to — even if it’s something that you hadn’t considered before. If multiple readers think something isn’t working, then it probably isn’t. Utilizing their feedback can help you see where the misstep is and how you can correct it.

When it comes to ignoring feedback, make sure that you’re disregarding it for the right reason. Does the suggestion not align with the theme of your story? Are they saying they hate a facet that you absolutely love? It’s okay if you don’t want to change something, but see if there’s any other lesson you can glean from the comment that can help you better contextualize your thought process for the story. Even if readers don’t like something, if they can understand where the writer is coming from it can still enhance their reading experience.

When you get conflicting feedback

Conflicting feedback is to be expected. Maybe one of your beta readers loved a character or a plot point that another one didn’t care for. It can be confusing at first to have such stark, differing opinions, but depending on the number of readers you elicited comments from, it may be accurate to how your future readers will experience the book. If you get feedback that’s pretty evenly split over certain sections of your book, you should determine what exactly it is that made a reader like or dislike that scene or character. Were there any nuggets in the feedback that you could use to get a better sense of what the real divider is? Maybe it’s not the character that’s the issue, but a particular trait that could be tweaked to better endear the reader to the character.

It’s also worth considering if you’re okay with conflicting feedback. There’s always going to be readers who like or dislike a part of your book. If the content is something you think is integral to the story, maybe it doesn’t need to be changed necessarily, but it can give you some insight on what aspects readers will gravitate towards or pull away from. You can decide what’s most important to you there, and if you need to strike a balance.

When you don’t like any of the feedback

Let’s take a moment here to dive a little deeper into the “why” you didn’t like any of the constructive criticism your beta readers provided. Often times, as writers our first reaction is to go on the defensive of our work and assume that the reader didn’t “get” the story. Although an emotional reaction is natural, it may not be the most conducive when it comes to revisions. Take some time away from the comments and your story to digest the critiques.

If you come back to it and you still don’t like any of the feedback, that probably means something big in your story isn’t working. Maybe the plot is too clunky or the world-building is confusing, the characters are one-dimensional or the romance is lacking. While it’s hard to hear, that doesn’t mean your work is unsalvageable — you just have more work to do than you thought. Sure, it may be disappointing, but you now have a guide on what exactly it is that needs improvement.

Another instance when you might not like any of the feedback might be because the feedback points to you not being the right person to tell the story or the story has some deep-seeded flaws. This is where looking at beta wording is important. If your beta readers are implying that the story has harmful tropes or your portrayal lacks the needed depth — particularly if your beta readers are from underrepresented backgrounds — that’s your cue to zoom out and really ask yourself what you’re trying to do with this story.

At the end of the day, beta readers are an outside perspective to prepare you for what readers might think before you put your book out in the world. You shouldn’t go into the beta process expecting that everyone will only have “amazing” things to say about your work, but you should get a sense of professionalism and genuine interest. Of course, beta readers aren’t editors, but their insight is still valuable and worth considering while you continue through the editing process.

Bio: Aliya Bree Hall is a freelance journalist and writer based in Portland, Ore. She is currently editing her first novel, an adult F|F science fantasy. When she’s not writing, she’s hosting Sapphic Stories Bookclub (and Other Queer Tales) or cohosting the podcast Shit We Wrote.

This is part of our ongoing series on how authors published their first book. You can read our other stories in this series, here, here, here, and here.

I am writing about what happened to me, at the threshold of publishing my debut novel. After fifteen years, after realizing there are notable paths to publication that don’t require an agent, Off the Yoga Mat is coming out with Livingston Press of University of West Alabama, a small university press.

My novel follows three characters coming of middle age as the year 2000 (Y2K) approaches: Nate is broke and in his eighth year of graduate school. Nate’s ex-girlfriend Nora finagles a position in Finland where she embraces sisu, the Finnish concept of perseverance, in pursuit of motherhood. And Lulu, Nate’s talented yogi, yearns to get to the bottom of her nightmares of childhood abuse as she returns to her hometown, New Orleans, to care for her ailing mother.

Many times, I thought I was done with Nate, Nora and Lulu. As far as I was concerned, I’d hit on the right combination of character, plot, style, conflict, and tone. But as I re-read it, and received additional feedback from my writing groups and rejections from the outside world, I realized I had not. Years passed and my sense of time wasting felt overwhelming. I put it away, worked on and published stories, poems, scholarly essays, flash fiction, and attended to my demanding teaching job. What also plagued me: jealousy. Other writers found readers. They published their books and won awards. Ironically, my character Nate researches the theme of jealousy through literature and psychology for his doctoral thesis, but claims he never gets personally jealous. What a mighty delusion! As Brandon Stosuy says in his Lit Hub essay Why Failure is Necessary for Creative Growth dated June 21, 2022 (but in a slightly different context), “You end up giving too much space to jealousy, bitterness, comparing yourself to your peers and that’s less room for the creative process to unfold.” I came to realize that.

In 2014, during a round of pitching agents, I received requests for the partial or full manuscript, but did not receive a firm offer. I questioned the novel’s opening. Would it grab a reader’s attention and make them want to turn the page? The sequencing of chapters, told in third person from three characters’ perspectives was also a challenge and took time to figure out. Their lives must stay entwined even when their story arcs take them on disparate journeys. For these and other uncertainties I had about the book, I benefited from what I am calling “key encounters,” exchanges that made it possible to keep going again. These encounters restored my sense of energy and urgency to revise with attention to craft in this coming-of-middle-age story (I kept getting older too).

Out of all the workshops and retreats I attended and consultants I hired, a few stand out as having made a difference, giving me positive energy and the wherewithal to go back into the trenches. The first was a paid mentorship in 2015 with an editor who is also an agent who represented a friend of mine. He sensed what was missing and what I hadn’t realized but needed to work on: pacing, ramping up the stakes, developing emotional layering between the characters. This was before the pandemic and before Zoom, but we mainly had sessions over the phone as he lives in Canada and I live in New York City. What was it about these sessions that helped? His candor and enthusiasm, his specific emphasis on moving the story (he represents mostly commercial fiction), and making every effort to engage the reader. My opening chapter would present all three of the novel’s protagonists even if was only a brief introduction. On his advice, I moved up Nora’s discovery of an opportunity to escape her marketing job in New York City to work for Nokia in Finland; in the first chapter, the reader glimpses her through Nate’s perspective. When the story shifts to her POV, she attends a baby shower for her pregnant boss after Nate refuses to consider her desire for a child. Rather than wait for him, she takes off. Another key suggestion from this mentor was to add a serendipitous encounter near the novel’s end which would bring together Nora and Lulu, main characters connected to Nate whose paths had not yet crossed. How exhilarating to have a careful reader suggest a possibility that brought my work full circle, unveiling and deepening the characters’ vulnerability, pushing me to push on.

A second key pre-pandemic encounter: a three-week in-person master fiction workshop in 2019 at Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, with photographers and dancers in simultaneous residencies. This center encourages three cohorts to interact, eat, and socialize. The richness of these exchanges, the fabulous craft details and support of my workshop leader, a brilliant fiction writer with an egalitarian leaderships style, enabled a joyful time to write and walk, to explore our writing and non-writing lives. This workshop brought me back to my novel with a fresh eye, although I workshopped a short story during the residency. Our sessions focused on topics like emotional tenacity for your characters and for yourself, whether or not you need a prologue, and how to bring out sensual details that matter. One of my seminar mates said that our group “was like being in a Ninja blender with plenty of ideas and hope and laughter and tears.” The process of writing thoughtful feedback to the other writers, supportive with constructive critique, and our sessions where each of us was asked to bring in a text, visual or musical influence that informed our work, resuscitated powerful energy into sections of my novel that had thwarted me. We also had opportunities to share our work in forums, and at a gala event before a public audience. This community offered support and respect which matters most at times we doubt ourselves.

A final key encounter: my writing groups and beta readers. Over the years I have been drafting, revising and taking breaks from Off the Yoga Mat, I was in two different prose writing groups that provided constructive feedback. It was not easy finding the right groups; the writers in these were ambitious, well-published and talented. One group came about after we took the same instructor in an advanced fiction workshop through Sackett Street Writers. The other group contained two memoirists and three fiction writers struggling through their first (and then second) books. Sometimes their feedback was hard to digest and overwhelming; often, I could not return to the novel for a few weeks, or months. Yet, when I did, I understood that much of what they said was dead on. With distance, I could go through the comments and apply the ones I found most relevant.

They were especially helpful with Lulu’s back story, which took place in the 1960’s and 70’s; I struggled with scenes that involved sexual violence. How could I depict the decisions Lulu made based on her past trauma, especially with the different political contexts of today? My writing group suggested striking a balance between then and now, and write the story that made sense for the character’s perspective. I excluded graphic description, but conveyed struggle and confusion that contribute to the character’s growth and dignity. I also received an opinion from someone I hired to go over particularly sensitive areas and perspectives the novel touches upon, and she validated much of what I was trying to achieve.

At that point, more than ten years into the process, I started to query independent presses, and I am about to realize my dream of publishing my debut novel although it took much longer and has been a much thornier experience than I imagined.  The emotional highs and lows, and years of disappointment also came with breakthroughs and incredible support. Now another phase of the process of publishing a debut novel is about to begin. I’ve reached a point where I can take a deep breath and experience the joy that it will finally be launched into the world.

Cheryl J. Fish is the author of the debut novel OFF THE YOGA MAT, the story of three characters coming of middle age, to be published on 10/20/22 by Livingston Press/UWA. Her recent books include THE SAUNA IS FULL OF MAIDS, poems and photographs celebrating Finnish sauna culture, travel, and friendships, and CRATER & TOWER, poems reflecting on trauma and ecology after the Mount St. Helens Volcanic eruption and the terrorist attack of 9/11. Fish has been a Fulbright professor in Finland and is a co-editor with Farah Griffin of A STRANGER IN THE VILLAGE: TWO CENTURIES OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN TRAVEL LITERATURE. Fish’s short fiction has appeared in Cheap Pop, Iron Horse Literary Review, Liars’ League, Spank the Carp, and KGB Bar Lit. She is professor of English at BMCC/City University of New York and docent lecturer at University of Helsinki. Her website is cheryljfish.com and you can follow her on Instagram and Twitter @cheryljoyfish. You can preorder OFF THE YOGA MAT here.