When my husband was little, his sweet mama read to him constantly. One favorite book, Little Raccoon and the Thing in the Pool , survived his childhood and eventually made its way onto our bookshelf to be enjoyed by all of our children and grandchildren. In this story, Little Raccoon is growing up, and his mama sends him out alone for the first time to hunt for supper in the pool on the other side of the woods. She has taught him all she can; now he must learn to face the fears and foes between him and a delicious meal. It took him a few tries and he had to learn to filter out lots of uninformed advice, but once he found someone whose guidance he trusted and mustered up a little courage, he got what he was looking for. Let's imagine you, the writer, are Little Raccoon. You are going through a process to decide how to publish your work, and it's a little frightening. There are lots of bad actors and characters who don't know as much as they think they do whispering in your e