The Lost Boys: From Wattpad to 3 book Publishing Deal with Random House

Lilly Carmine started sharing her story “The Lost Boys” on WATTPAD in 2010. It became the most read with thirty three million reads. And then nothing short of a miracle happened. Read about her road to publication.

The Story behind The Lost Boys

The journey began for me with the seed of a purpose my husband handed me one day:

“If you like to read so much, why don’t you write your own story?”

I pondered that thought for a while. I did have a lot of stories crammed inside my head, but to actually have the courage to write one down? And more than that, not only write the story but to actually show it to people? What if people didn’t like it?

The question I asked myself at that point was: “What have you got to lose?”

I risked it, I took that seed and planted in solid, firm ground. I posted the first draft of The Lost Boys on Wattpad, an online free e-book website, in February of 2010. On Wattpad I received a tremendous support from everybody, from users and readers, to authors as well asl the Wattpad Team.

Two years later, in 2012, I managed to gather over thirty-three million reads with my story on that site. It is the most read story there, and the record has yet to be broken.

I have had feedback, comments and lovely messages coming from all around the globe, from India, Philippines, Australia, to the UK, USA, Canada and many other places. They are all very supportive and passionate about my boys and I can’t thank them enough for all the love they have shown me. 

In 2012 I decided to try to get my story published and tried the agent route, since the majority of big publishing houses mostly do their negotiations with authors via literary agents. At the same time I also sent query letters to small publishers that had direct contact emails on their websites.

They were all very kind in their replies, but none of them were interested in my story. I was close to giving up.

You can imagine my surprise when in October 2012 I received an email out of the blue  from an editor at Random House UK. She had read my story on Wattpad. She loved The Lost Boys. She was interested.

After a few weeks of  board meetings and book presentations, we had closed a contract to publish not only one, but three books of The Lost Boys series.

I was in cloud nine and couldn’t believe my lucky stars, I had finally struck a publishing deal, and not only that, but with one of the biggest publishing houses in the United Kingdom!

It took a year for me to edit and finish in all the final details of the story with my editor at RH, and the book has just been published.

I’m very proud of the final result of all that hard work, and I’m very pleased with my beautiful blue copy of The Lost Boys finally in my hands!

And now I begin to realize that this journey is just beginning…

…

Lilian Carmine is the author of the popular Lost Boys Novels and graduated  in Visual Arts.
Lilian is currently working as a freelance artist on illustrated children’s books, animation,  and artistic creation – as well as the next book in her Lost Boys series.

The Lost Boys Trilogy is published by Random House UK – ebury Press, the first book of the trilogy released in October of 2013.
Lilian is currently working as a freelance artist on illustrated children’s books, animation,  and artistic creation – as well as the next book in her Lost Boys series.

TLB Official FaceBook Page:  www.facebook.com/JoeyandTheLostBoys

Follow Lily on Twitter  @LilyCarmine

 

Tags: featured, Lilian Carmine, The Lost Boys

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Book Marketing, On Writing