How I Scored a Book Deal with Amazons Thomas Mercer (in 5 Stages)

How I Scored a Book Deal with Amazons Thomas Mercer (in 5 Stages) How I Went from Indie Author to Scoring a Book Deal with Amazon's Thomas Mercer Last year we spoke with author Natalie Barelli about striking a big item off her bucket list: writing and publishing her debut novel,  Until I Met Her. Less than 12 months later, Natalie has been signed by Amazon's thriller imprint Thomas Mercer, and her novel is undergoing a re-release. In this article, she talks the bumpy road of self-publishing - one that has been full of trials and tribulations. However, she's a true example of the saying, â€Å"If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.† In a year, Natalie has turned publishing mishaps into lessons, and, clearly, her perseverance is being rewarded.  It was during this  Kindle countdown when things started to change. I checked my sales dashboard obsessively, as you do, and was ecstatic one day when I logged in and learned that I’d sold 20 copies in one day. I wondered if this would be my sales peak, but the next day I sold 50 copies, and on the last day of the promotion I sold 200 copies.I knew th at when the price went back up, sales would soon dwindle, so I scheduled AMS ads every day once the promotion had ended. When the ads worked, resulting in clicks and sales, my novel would begin to appear in the ‘also bought’ section of books on its own due to it's rising popularity. At that point, I would remove the ad and wait until sales dwindled again before scheduling a new one. I managed to sustain the ranking for a while that way, and that’s when I got a lovely email from Thomas Mercer.Finally: Scoring a book deal and beating submission guidelinesThomas Mercer gave  Until I Met Her  a new cover and further rounds of editing  - by now that book has been edited more times than I care to admit. This was mostly due to the fact that the story is set in New York and I’m Australian, and no matter how hard we all tried the first time around, some of my language didn’t come across as authentic.It’s  been quite a process, but Thomas M ercer has kept me thoroughly involved, asking for feedback and approval every step of the way. Of course,  when a small army of professionals wants to improve your book, you’re hardly going to stop them.Until I Met Her is  still on preorder as I write this, going live on May 30th, so as of yet I have no idea what being published by Thomas Mercer will mean for the future of my novel. A lot of books under Amazon imprints like Thomas Mercer do fantastically well, but not all of them. For instance, I know that my novel will not be featured in the Kindle First monthly offerings (what surely is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of self-published authors on Amazon), because it’s a re-published book and therefore doesn't qualify. So in a way, it’s as much of an experiment as, say, Facebook ads or Kindle Countdowns. But when you’re indie, that’s one of the luxuries and responsibilities you have: to experiment.Until I Met Her is available on Am azon.Please  share your thoughts and experiences, or any questions for Natalie, in the comments below!