I was given a lot of advice, starting out: write the stories that you want to write. When you get knocked down, always stand up again. And don’t forget that your publisher isn’t your family.

All good advice, with the final piece meant to protect me; remind me that, fond as we writers might be of our editors, we’re in a business relationship, and we should keep a good eye on our contracts and guard our rights carefully, not let ourselves be deceived into signing the whole lot away.

The longer you stay in this business, the deeper this message is driven home. In the past thirty-three years since my first publication, my books and I have been passed along through seventeen editors at eleven English-language publishing houses alone, teaching me how precarious a life this is – and not only for writers. At one of my lowest points, my beloved editor was sacked right alongside me when a larger publishing house devoured ours.

That was at the start of 1999.

Ten years and three books later, I was more resigned. More practical. My publishers – and I’d been signed now by three more of them, and dumped by two – were not my family.

But, my latest book, I felt, might just be something very special. It was called The Winter Sea.

It was published in the UK, and distributed in Canada. My American agent, Shawna McCarthy, valiantly sent it out to all the editors she knew, but none of them wanted it.

“I ran it past a couple of colleagues,” an editor from one Big Five publishers replied to Shawna’s query, “and they confirmed my suspicions – that I am the only person still reading and loving this sort of book these days.”

Nonetheless, in February 2009, under its UK paperback title, Sophia’s Secret, that book was shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s Romantic Novel of the Year award, alongside novels by Cecilia Ahern, Leslie Downer, Linda Gillard, Julia Gregson (who won), and Judith Lennox.

And that same year (being in those days foolishly ignorant of the inherent racism of the Romance Writers of America’s RITA award competition) I entered The Winter Sea for consideration in the Best Novel with Romantic Elements Category. And got the call that it was a finalist.

So, in July 2009, I went to Washington, D.C., for the RWA National Conference.

My friend Robin Kaye was convinced that her own publisher, Sourcebooks, would be perfect for The Winter Sea. But I was resigned. I was practical. Sourcebooks was one of the publishers Shawna had sent out the manuscript to, and we’d heard nothing back.

Robin took me to the Sourcebooks Spotlight session, where her own editor, Deb Werksman, stood up with Dominique Raccah, the founder and CEO, and presented to the room the reasons why their company was different. It was a very compelling presentation. Dominique kept looking at me. Smiling. And when Robin marched me up to introduce me after it was over, Dominique and I shook hands, and she said, absolutely sure, “We’re going to be your publisher.” And then she turned and said to Deb, “We’re going to be her publisher.”

And so they were. And so they are.

They published The Winter Sea and put it on the New York Times bestseller list, where it remained for several weeks. They contracted for not only my new books, but all of the books in my backlist, republishing them as though they were new titles and introducing a new generation of readers to my work. A little over a decade later, when their sales of my books in the States passed a million copies, they sent me flowers, as if the accomplishment were mine.

But, even more than that, they did something that I, resigned and practical, had told myself was never going to happen.

Sourcebooks became my family.

Like a family, there are those of us who have a long association, and there are newer faces joining all the time, but it still feels the same, and I never for one minute take it for granted.

It’s such a great gift for a writer, to know that your books are so valued – not only the ones that you’ve already written, but those you have yet to write – and to be able to work with a team that will give you the space and support to create them.

In my book Every Secret Thing (which Sourcebooks are bringing out for the first time ever in the States this autumn, and reissuing after Christmas in the UK), one of the characters says to another, ‘I believe there are no random meetings in our lives – that everyone we touch, who touches us, has been put in our path for a reason.’ I wholeheartedly agree.

Being introduced that July afternoon in Washington, D.C. to Dominique and Deb (who’s still my editor) felt strangely as though I’d come home, and seventeen years later, I know that no thanks I can offer Robin Kaye will ever be enough.

Here is my advice, then, for you writers just beginning your careers:

Write the stories that you want to write. When you get knocked down, always stand up again. And don’t forget that most publishers won’t be your family.

So never stop trying to find one that is. Because, trust me. It makes all the difference.