About this Substack:
This is a periodic newsletter from Queen Mab Media, the Creators First company. QMM has classes for creators at every stage of their publishing journey, from pre-agent to franchise writer looking to break new ground.
Periodically, but not more than once a month, you’ll get an email with a mix of things: it could be a video lesson about how covers get decided on inside a publishing house, a worksheet designed to help define your creator brand (and what a “brand” even is), or an audio interview with an industry leader. The newsletter is meant to give a taste of what our Publishing 101, 102, and 103 classes offer. It is meant to give creators business tips, insights, and tools they may not have considered—after all, no one teaches creators to be in business! But QMM would like to.
The writer of this newsletter and the teacher of those classes is Meredith Barnes, QMM’s founder.
Who’s That?
Hi, I’m Meredith Barnes. I’m a fifteen-year veteran of the publishing industry! The year I came into the industry, ebooks were just a headline writer’s excuse to proclaim the “death of books” and everyone was looking to buy the next YA creature-romance series (remember? the waves? Vampires in love, demons in love, angels in love…).
To read a more formal bio, you can visit the Queen Mab Media site!
Many things have changed since I started, and I’ve had the pleasure of working at about every type of company you can work at in publishing, doing a lot of different jobs.
But I started out at literary agencies—where it was instilled in me that creators should be at the center of the plans to bring their art to market. That transition, from pure art to selling art, to the marketplace, is not something artists get taught, even at prestigious MFA programs.
I think that creates a big knowledge imbalance between creators and their business partners at publishers and other companies. And it’s one I think I can fix!
Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives.
