Choosing my Path

Last week, I took a major leap. But before I get too far ahead of myself, let's go back in time.

In the late fall of 2024, I finally decided to abandon Twitter. I honestly should have jumped ship ages ago, but I digress. Down a social media app and in search of more sources to doom scroll, I downloaded Threads and Bluesky. In my effort to further advance myself into the digital writing world, I followed a variety of creatives and publishers right out of the gate.

Over time, I kept seeing a little frog profile picture on my feed. Said frog was commenting on posts pertaining to the publishing industry. I noticed their information was in line with my previous research and I was very impressed with their devotion to helping the writing community. I visited their profile to follow them and learned that the frog was the mascot for Contrarian Publishing, an assisted self-publishing company founded earlier that year.

Great logo. Great advice. Great name. I had to learn more.

Hopping over to their website, I learned that Contrarian's passion for elevating authors ran deep and that the people behind Connie the Frog were a talented group of experienced professionals. I was intrigued by their mission and services, and had a feeling that I'd stumbled upon something special.

Over the next few weeks, I exchanged emails and joined Zoom calls with Jamie, the head of Contrarian (and a fellow Arcane-obsessed individual). It became clear that her drive and direction would be the perfect fit for my book.

Long story long, on January 23rd I signed a book deal with Contrarian Publishing!

My initial feeling was pure excitement, but it was swiftly replaced by a sense of utter dread. For the first time, my life-long dream was in the process of becoming a reality, and that freaked me right out. Not because I'm on the precipice of great fame (I kid as I'm well aware that fame and fortune are extremely unlikely in this field), but because this is something I've now invested in financially.

Thoughts of "you've made a big mistake" and "failure is inevitable" rang in my ears, so I had to remind myself of why I took this leap: if you don't do it now, you'll always wish that you did (and, "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." - Micheal Scott, Wayne Gretzky [who I was very disappointed to see attended the Inserectionist's Innuageration]). If that wasn't enough to reassure me, nothing would have.

I also kept in mind the many reasons I chose Contrarian. These are just some of them:

1. Qualified team members passionate about my project

2. Professionalism and transparency

3. Reasonable cost for services rendered (likely lower than if I got services separately)

4. Removed the stress of doing the business end of things

5. Better marketing reach than myself alone (plus they make merch!)

6. Adorable frog mascot

I'm still a little scared, but that's mostly been superseded by excitement. In the coming weeks, I'll begin working through the developmental editing process, sculpting my story into the best it can be under Jamie's guidance.

Let's do this thang!!!