We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mima Tipper. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mima below.

Alright, Mima thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Innovation comes in all shapes, sizes and across all industries, so we’d love to hear about something you’ve done that you feel was particularly innovative.

Writing novels for young adult readers is a personal and very subjective endeavor: personal in that writers have to come up with fresh concepts for stories only they are able to write and subjective in that there is no assurance that readers will connect to those concepts and stories. I have been writing for years and years, even had an agent for a good long time, but there was never any promise that a publisher would buy my work. Some would say, “Well, why didn’t you self-publish?” My answer to that is that reaching the market for children’s and YA books requires traditional distribution that is not available in the self-publishing realm. Yes, that’s right. It’s virtually impossible to get books into the hands of young readers without traditional distribution. Fortunately for me, I learned about hybrid publishing–a relatively new and innovative publishing alternative that blends the best of traditional and self-publishing. When my novel Kat’s Greek Summer was accepted by award-winning hybrid publisher SparkPress, I began a journey that allowed me to be an active part in my publishing process without sacrificing collaboration with a talented and experienced publishing team: a team that worked hand-in-hand with the traditional distribution model my book needed to have any chance of reaching its targeted audience.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

All my life I’ve been an avid reader, loving books and stories almost more than anything else. It wasn’t until I had my third child, and had spent many years re-reading childhood favorites to my older two children, that a lightbulb went off. I wanted to write my own stories, too, and the stories that came to me were for children and young adults. I spent the next 20 or so years writing and honing my writing craft–and reading voraciously, of course–I even earned an MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts. I had a literary agent for a while, and together we worked hard to sell my work in the traditional publishing marketplace. Publishing is a subjective business, though, and it wasn’t until signing with SparkPress that I am at last in a position to bring my novel Kat’s Greek Summer to my targeted audience of young readers. The novel is based loosely on summers I spent in Greece with the Greek side of my family, and that very personal aspect of my book is what I believe sets my work apart from other stories. Almost all of my writing reflects my half American half Greek heritage in some way, either with half Greek characters or with references to Greek mythology. The Greek’s in my blood, I suppose. I didn’t always feel that way. Growing up I was very confused about my mixed heritage as I didn’t speak Greek, and not much about my daily life was Greek. Only those summers when we traveled to Greece to visit family. A lot of the confusion and isolation I experienced during those trips is reflected in my writing, and my characters are often searching for a sense of connection to their roots. I think that sense of found connection and claimed belonging is what I’m most proud of in my work, and what I want my potential readers to glean from my stories: that self-truth is critical to belonging anywhere, and that the choice is theirs to claim that belonging.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The lesson I had to unlearn was to let go of the traditional path. I spent years trying to get my work published by one of the big five publishers, and believe me all the rejections made my skin thick. I was determined, though, and really believed that traditional publishing was the only way my stories would find their audience. As I mentioned in an earlier question, it is virtually impossible to get children’s and YA books into the hands of the targeted audience of young readers without traditional distribution, which I thought was only available through traditional publishing models. Fortunately, I kept talking to my writer friends and learned about the hybrid model of publishing that blended the author investment of the self-publishing model with the publishing/distribution team of a more traditional house. When my book Kat’s Greek Summer was accepted by SparkPress, I was thrilled and at the same time terrified of stepping onto this new, unknown-to-me path. After interviewing other SparkPress authors, one of whom was a good friend with SparkPress’s sister imprint She Writes Press, I decided to take the plunge. So far, the experience has been wonderful for me, and I am excited that my book will reach its audience.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

My story of resilience is really my whole writing/publishing journey. Writing for publication is full of rejection, and some of those rejections are incredibly hard. Imagine submitting to an agent, having them ask for a full manuscript, and then months later receiving a pass. Now imagine that same scenario happening over and over for years. It takes a lot of resilience and persistence to keep writing, keep revising that writing, and keep submitting work.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mimatipper.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/mimatip
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/mimatipper
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/meemtip
• Other: https://mimatipper.substack.com/

Image Credits

Author photo (train tracks) by Karen Pike Photography
Photo in wagon with our dog Gabe by Charlie Tipper
Illustration of Mima outside her whimsy wagon by Marley Tipper