If you haven't heard, I'm on the Skillful Pen Press street team, and I had the honor of interviewing one of their staff members. The press is still relatively young, but the team already has a lot of insightful advice to share with you all. With that, I'll let Rachel introduce herself:
Hi everyone! Thank you so much, Miriam, for having me on your blog! I’m Rachel M. Adams and I’m currently the head of graphic design and assistant marketing director of Skillful Pen Press.
Where did the inspiration for Skillful Pen Press come from?
It all started about a year and a half ago when Erin came up with the idea to do an anthology on our identity in Christ. It began the process of sharing the word, accepting stories, and preparing to publish. But it was a lot of work for just one person.
Adeline Charlotte and I, who were two of the girls who submitted to the anthology, volunteered to help Erin. And through that, Skillful Pen Press was born!
Not too long ago, Adeline stepped down due to life, so we are in the process of accepting applicants for our team, so if you’re interested, please check out our website and apply!
Recently we officially accepted two new graphic designers, Cadence E. Witt and Lori Scharf, and a new marketing director, Grace Sweeney, which is really exciting. So please check out our website for information on joining our team!
How do you balance family life and your personal writing with the press?
That actually has been a little bit of a struggle recently. Personally in a way I have to balance it since I’m not old enough to really make all of the decisions obviously. So if we have a family thing or something I just have to pause whatever is going on with the press. And I definitely feel that all our team members understand that. We all respect that too, all of us have different amounts of family time and personal time. With the press, I do change my personal writing schedule. I often don’t spend as much time when things are busy with the press.
Have you encountered any difficulties as young entrepreneurs in the publishing industry?
A lot actually. Everyone hits those bumps and struggles. Back when it was just Adeline, Erin, and I it was a struggle because of our personal lives. Another one of our struggles is just when we accidentally make mistakes with details or something like that. Most recently our biggest one is that we’re currently hiring new members while also working on Between The Lines, our new poetry anthology coming out this October! It’s really hard to do this sort of thing with just two people, and when you’re trying to add new people? It’s really hard.
Do you have any advice for writers looking to indie publish?
Don’t give up and don’t feel bad to ask for help/advice! Indie publishing is hard and it’s tricky if you haven’t done it before!
What are your expectations for the press and how it will grow in the future? Are there any projects you are looking forward to?
In my opinion, my expectations for the company is for it to run for years, maybe even decades, to come. We’ll just keep handing the baton down to the next generations to run the company. As for growth, we’re super excited for future books coming out, including the SECOND book in The Chosen series!
Who is your target audience?
Our main audience are young Christians! Most of our books so far have been slightly more geared towards girls but boys can totally read our books too!
What kind of writers would you encourage to submit to your anthologies?
Any young authors seeking to write for the Glory of God! It does depend on whatever anthology we have going on and whatever the genre the author writes in but we always want to hear from as many writers as we possibly can!
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