The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese: How To Avoid the Traps of Self-Publishing (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780982774557)

Carolyn Poling Schriber received her PhD in History from the University of Colorado, where she studied medieval Europe and 19th-century America. She enjoyed a career as a tenured professor at Rhodes College, specializing in medieval history and publishing extensively on relationships between Anglo-Norman bishops and kings in the twelfth century. After she retired with Professor Emerita status, she turned her attention to her second love, the history of America's Civil War. Her recently published works, A Scratch with the Rebels and Beyond All Price have both been set in South Carolina during the northern occupation of the Low Country. A Scratch with the Rebels illuminates the depth and diversity of perspectives from ordinary soldiers on both sides of the conflict. Beyond All Price tells the story of Nellie Chase, who served as matron and nurse in the Roundhead Regiment from Pennsylvania. Nellie fought her own series of wars, against an abusive husband, against a vengeful Presbyterian minister, against nineteenth-century attitudes toward women who lacked the protection of family status, and ultimately, against a foe more lethal than war itself. Now Dr. Schriber is working on a third historical novel, The Road to Frogmore, which tells the dual stories of a a slave woman and a Philadelphia abolitionist who together faced and conquered the challenges of emancipation. The chapters of The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese originated as blog posts written by Dr. Schriber as she struggled to find her own way through what she calls the "thickets of self-publishing." The lessons she learned along the way helped her to win two separate book awards and to find herself listed among the top 100 Amazon best Sellers in Historical Fiction. Now her secrets can be yours. Carolyn Schriber lives near Memphis, Tennessee, with her husband Floyd and five companionable but opinionated cats.