Bea Northwick wrote her first novel around 2015. Her children were getting older, and she had more time on her hands, so she returned to an early love—books. With that first novel, Northwick, who has her master’s degree in library science, participated in Pitch Wars, and while she says it was an “amazing” experience, it didn’t land her an agent or book deal. So, she turned back to writing, completing a second manuscript. She pitched that one to agents via traditional methods, but “it just kind of languished in the query fields.” After writing her third book, Northwick chose to take the indie route.
“The big thing with self-publishing is I’m in control of a lot of it,” Northwick tells WD, “and to do this. I want to write a book. I got really disheartened. You know, you write two books, you query them, there’s some interest, but ultimately it goes nowhere. And that’s really tough, especially if you’re putting together a book in the small amounts of time you do have—it feels like you’ve put in all of this blood, sweat, and tears for somebody to tell you no. And self-publishing has changed so much. I was watching one of the members of the Pitch Wars group [who] writes romance and does a lot of self-pub. She was just doing so well, and she had freedom to write what she wanted.”
