Finding My Way Into Publishing

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a writer. As a child I was always making up stories, inventing characters and creating worlds that only existed in my head. When I told my parents, they said, “You want to be a writer and…,” gently nudging me towards the idea of combining it with another career. They knew publishing was a tough industry to break into, and they wanted me to go in with my eyes open.

The dream never went away. I wrote and wrote, and most of it was rubbish, but each half-baked story and clumsy draft taught me something, and slowly I got better.

My first steps into publishing were just as clumsy. I had no idea what I was doing. I pitched a revision guide idea to HarperCollins and was invited to write a chapter for one of their study guides. That gave me my first taste of being published, but it was far from a straight path after that. There were so many rejections, moments of wondering if I was ever going to figure it out and a lot of cringing when I re-read my earlier work.

The publishing industry felt like peeping through a keyhole of a locked door: I could see where I wanted to go but I hadn’t got a clue how to get there. My lucky break came with a burst of optimism: I rocked up to the London Book Fair with no plan and no contacts and networked the room. It was here that I met Button Books, who published Be Your Best Self and Run Like a Girl.

Later, I began to understand the do’s and don’ts of publishing and queried for a literary agent. Even as a published author, and even after Run Like A Girl won Children’s Sports Book of the Year Award, I got loads of rejections. Polite “thank you, but no” emails filled my inbox, until eventually I got that one yes. Working with an agent has helped me understand this world a little better – though I’ve still made plenty of mistakes – and more opportunities followed.

If I’m honest, even now with five books out in the world, I am still learning, but this journey has taught me to:

Keep going. Writing is persistence. Some days the words flow, other days it feels like dragging a cart uphill. Write anyway. Every word you put down matters.
Stay positive. Rejections and self-doubt will happen. They don’t mean you’re not good enough; they just mean you’re still on the journey.
Say yes. Get involved with different initiatives, connect with people, ask questions. In my experience, most people genuinely want to help.
Never stop learning. Every word, every draft, every experience adds to the toolkit. You never “arrive” as a writer; you just keep growing.

And maybe my parents were right after all. My career now is a combination: I’m a writer, yes, but I’m also head of marketing, a public speaker, and a speaking coach. I’m using those skills to support other writers too, helping them bring their books into the world. Far from distracting me from the dream I had as a child, it adds to it.

Publishing is challenging, but maybe that’s the point. Rather than having all the answers, it’s about holding onto the dream that first made you pick up a pen, and finding joy in the messy, surprising process of sharing it with others.

Danielle Brown
Author of Run Like a Girl and Be Your Best Self