Anna Buck
Carihi Mirror
Carihi student and Mirror contributor Paige Pierce has recently achieved a long-standing personal goal: writing and publishing her own book.
Pierce has known from the age of twelve that she wanted to have a book published by the time she was sixteen, and late in 2018, Pierce’s book Coloured Ink, a collection of poems written by Pierce over the years, was self-published and made available by booksellers all over the world.
Coloured Ink was published Dec. 1, 2018.
“I found out about five or six days later that Amazon and Barnes and Noble had picked it up,” Pierce says excitedly. Within weeks, she found out that Indigo and Chapters had both started carrying it, as well, “and that was my biggest dream come true,” she says. “I used to go into the stores when I was little and just flip through all of the different books… and search my name in the computer to see what would pop up… now Chapters has my book in stock. It’s so cool.”
Pierce initially intended to publish the book through a company in New York, but her contract didn’t work out due to financial and legal reasons. She then self-published the book through Blurb, a company that allows writers to design and publish their works for themselves.
“Blurb had a program that I could download onto my computer so I could format my book and put it together to way that I wanted it to look.”
Coloured Ink is divided into three sections, each represented by a colour. These sections of the book are categorized based on the feelings Pierce experienced and things she was going through at the times the poems were written.
“I used the ink as a metaphor, so each different colour represented a different feeling or state of mind,” she says. “So there’s the reds, the blues, and the greens, which represent a different feeling and emotion. I kind of grouped the poems into these different sections based on what I felt when I was writing them and on what impressions they give off to the reader.”
The book has something for everyone, no matter their situation.
“That’s the cool thing about poetry: it’s not set in stone. You take what you want from it and then go from there.”
Pierce’s book can be purchased through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google Books, Chapters/Indigo, and Audible, as well as through the publishing company Blurb or through Pierce directly.
She can be contacted at pmpierce77@gmail.com