How NaNoWriMo Helped Prepare My Book for Publication: 3 Perspectives

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Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Kindle Scout is reader-powered publishing for new, never-before-published books. It’s a place where readers help decide if a book gets published. Of the over 75 titles readers have discovered through Kindle Scout, many have roots in NaNoWriMo. This post highlights three authors who’ve used their experiences from NaNoWriMo to help with their submission to Kindle Scout:

The novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo, The Misses Brontë’s Establishment, is the same that was selected by Amazon’s Kindle Scout program. Both processes were intense, and both lasted exactly 30 days. For NaNo, writing 3,000 words/day wasn’t too hard for me, since this is my normal pace.  But the discipline required to do it every day—for a full month—strained even my resources.  By the end, I think I was hallucinating.

After much revising came the novel’s entry into the Kindle Scout contest. Thirty more days of intensity: this time, not of writing, but marketing! Hundreds of Facebook, Twitter, email pleas trying to solicit votes…

In sum, I’d say that the sustained discipline required for NaNo absolutely came in handy when it was time for Scout. Both NaNo and Scout are marathons, not sprints, and I’m not much of a walker (being from L.A.).  Both experiences were gratifying, fun (in a way), and enabled me to further my writing career.

Amy Wolf, author of The Misses Brontë’s Establishment, a novel discovered by readers through Kindle Scout


I am a complete and utter perfectionist.  I looked at my writing as a constant work in process and I would sit on it for years at a time, constantly editing and rewriting until I was blue in the face.  My confidence kept dropping and I suffered from crippling writer’s block.  Then my friends told me about NaNoWriMo in 2008 and dared me to do it.  Naturally, I did what any aspiring writer would do and picked up the gauntlet.

The experience was liberating.  NaNoWriMo’s unofficial motto of “No Plot? No Problem!” set me free.  For one month all I had to do was write 50,000 words. I even went further and dared myself write 3,000 words a day for 30 days.  I honestly don’t l think I slept for more than four hours a night, but somehow I scribbled down a few more than 90,000 words of a Dungeons & Dragons meets Greek mythology mashup that I never edited and never reviewed.  When I saw that certificate I beamed with pride, and I learned something fundamental about myself: dares work.  

This past year my friends dared me to write a story about vampires and I used that same power to write Four for Kindle Scout.  If I never had dared to just write one story in a month, I don’t think I ever would have pushed through and finished my novel, in fact I am pretty certain I’d still be editing it now.

R.E. Carr, author of Four, a novel discovered by readers through Kindle Scout


The funny thing about a month is that it is usually an unmemorable period of time that breezes by without much thought. The beauty of NaNoWriMo is that it is a marathon that guarantees that you will have a memorable month. I remember vividly November of 2013, when I wrote the first draft of Freelancer, a few thousand words at a time.

Sitting down to write 2,000 words for one day isn’t really that difficult. But then the weekend comes or work wants you to work late or the only time you have to write is at 2 a.m. and you haven’t slept in a week. That’s what makes NaNoWriMo so difficult and so rewarding. The natural inclination is to just skip a day or two and tell yourself that you’ll make it up, but there aren’t any cheat days when you are trying to write a novel in a month. 

The good news is that eventually these days add up and soon you will be writing the climax of your book while eating the leftover turkey. You’ll type “The End” and lean back and realize that you have done something incredible. You’ve created a story.

When I finished the first draft of Freelancer, after NaNoWriMo I felt great. And I also felt like I never wanted to write again. So I took a break for a while and enjoyed the holidays. When the New Year started, I passed out copies of my first draft to anyone that would read them and started the real difficult part of writing: taking a first draft and turning it into a book. I did three major revisions for Freelancer and a handful more of copyedits.

In February of 2015, Freelancer went live on Kindle Scout. My book was finally available for the world to see. A new thirty day marathon began as I tried to market my novel. I did everything I could think of let people know that my book could use their support in non-intrusive ways. I was careful not to bother people, but I had an amazing story that I knew people would love, so I did what promotion I could.

I tried to keep Freelancer in the “Hot and Trending” category on Kindle Scout for as many hours as possible. That meant a little bit of marketing every day and it meant checking the status of the book every hour for 30 days. I thought NaNoWriMo had been rough, but the Kindle Scout campaign almost did me in. I searched the Internet for places where book readers might be interested in receiving a free copy of my debut novel. I introduced myself and became a member of so many great communities of authors and book lovers during this process. But, readers have lots of options and I refused to spam people so even those communities weren’t a great source of nominations.

I wrote out a schedule with the remaining days in the month and experimented every day with a new marketing channel. Just like with NaNoWriMo, the month ended and I had accomplished something I was proud of. No matter if Freelancer was selected for publication I had received so many great pieces of feedback about my work and pushed myself that I was grateful for the experience. 

Freelancer was lucky enough to be selected for publication by Kindle Press. The night I found out was one I’ll always remember. I danced around the house celebrating.

But, it turns out the hard work wasn’t over. I spent the next thirty days after selection doing one final edit of my book. It was another thirty-day marathon, forcing myself to work every night. At this point, it was a familiar feeling that I had come to relish. Thirty days of focused productivity. The lessons that I had forced myself to learn by writing late at night and on a holiday in November of 2013 had paid off a number of times already and the book hadn’t even made it out to publication yet.

NaNoWriMo was one of the most difficult programs that I had ever willingly signed up for. But it has also turned out to be one of the most valuable and rewarding. I’ve done it every year since and can’t wait to get started this year. Take it a day at a time and force yourself to be persistent. It’ll be worth it in the end.

Jake Lingwall, author of Freelancer, a novel discovered by readers through Kindle Scout