Carina Press First Anniversary – Guest Blog and Contest!

NOTE: THE CONTEST IS CLOSED AND A WINNER HAS BEEN CHOSEN.

Happy 1st Anniversary to Carina Press! It’s hard to believe a year has gone by already since Carina first launched. So many new books have been released, and if you haven’t been over there yet, you’ve really been missing out.

It’s a thrill and an honor for me to write for Carina. Due to my insane schedule, I’ve only released one book with them, with another coming out this year. I hope to do more in the future because I love digital publishing, and Carina does it so well.

I’m hosting a blog for one of the Carina Press team today, so read on, congratulate them on their success, and check out the awesome contest!

~ Jaci

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In celebration of our one year anniversary, I asked as many of our Harlequin team members and Carina Press freelance editors as possible to write a short blog post, talking about what the past year or so has been like for them, working on Carina Press. I deliberately didn’t provide any direction other than that, because I wanted to see what people came up with, in the spirit of Carina’s 1st anniversary. I was so pleased when I saw what they’d all come up with, and had to say (and some of these posts made me just a little teary)! I hope you enjoy the post, and look for your opportunity to win a Carina Press book at the bottom of this post. ~Angela James

As the Manager of Digital Content for Harlequin and Carina Press, Jenny Bullough oversees the production of all ebooks and manages digital-first workflow and deadlines. She is a voracious reader, an ebook evangelist, and she really, really likes color-coded Excel spreadsheets. You can follow her on Twitter.

By Jenny Bullough, Carina Press team member, former editor and current digital workflow specialist, and voracious digital reader

I can’t believe it’s only been a year since Carina launched! It’s become such an integral part of my daily working life, and has fed so much of my personal reading, that I can’t imagine a time when I wasn’t a part of the Carina team.

What has it been like over the past year? Exciting. Exhilarating. Exhausting. Occasionally frustrating. And very fulfilling. Working with the Carina team has allowed me to once again flex my manuscript evaluation muscles and polish my meager copy-writing skills, while also letting me indulge my deep need for color-coded spreadsheets and intricate folder structures.

Digital-first can be challenging. We are continually looking for new and better ways to adapt traditional databases and systems that were designed for a print-only model to accommodate digital-first needs. Luckily I like things fast-paced, so the “breakneck speeds” of a digital publisher are right in my comfort zone!

Best of all, though, is that through Carina I’ve met and fallen in love with new genres and sub-genres like erotic romance, male/male, steampunk, and shifters, and rekindled my love affair with historical romance and mystery. And I’ve found so many new “must-read” authors that my ereader is constantly full of great stories just waiting to be read – which is, let’s face it, pretty much a dream scenario for anyone who loves to read!

It’s been a whirlwind first year and I can’t wait to see what’s around the corner!

To celebrate Carina’s one year anniversary of publishing books, we’re giving away some prizes. Today, on each of the nineteen blogs our team members are featured on, we’re giving away a download of a Carina Press book to one random winner (that’s nineteen total winners!) All you need to do to be entered to win is comment on this post. You can enter to win on all nineteen posts. In addition, on the Carina Press blog, we’re giving away a grand prize of a Kobo ereader and 12 Carina Press books of the winner’s choice. Visit the Carina Press blog to enter to win, and to see links to all 19 of today’s blog posts.

And a sincere thank you from all of us, to our readers and authors, for making Carina Press’s first year a success!