User talk:WikiMO

Speedy deletion nomination of Athena McCormick
Hello WikiMO,

I wanted to let you know that I just tagged Athena McCormick for deletion, because the article doesn't clearly say why the subject is important enough to be included in an encyclopedia.

If you feel that the article shouldn't be deleted and want more time to work on it, you can contest this deletion, but please don't remove the speedy deletion tag from the top.

You can leave a note on my talk page if you have questions. Thanks, User:Spacevezontalk 20:03, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Self-publishing
Very few self-published books or authors get articles here. You will have to produce quite a bundle of reliable independent sources WP:RS to show that the book has been reviewed in places other than Amazon and blogs, or the local newspaper (in most cases - some local papers are more noted for literary criticism and cover a bigger patch than, for example, The Deadend Flats and Albert's Ridge Mercury and Tribune (publ every Wednesday unless the fish were biting on Tuesday...). (Exaggerated and fictional example - you know what I mean.) Fifty Shades is a very rare example of a book that has made it across from self-published to standard published. It can happen. Very rarely. Not every regularly published book or author gets an article, but they have a head start because of the editing process and the publicity that the regular publisher can give. (A friend of mine actually reads self-published books, and he says most of them are badly in need of editing and proof-reading. No. I'm not saying this one is. I haven't seen it. I do advise trying to get with a regular publisher. Harry Potter was rejected by quite a few - don't give up at the first rejection slip. The money's less per copy sold, but by heck you actually sell copies...) Good luck. Peridon (talk) 20:48, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

About your article...
Hey, WikiMO, welcome to Wikipedia! I'm sorry you've had a rough introduction. I'd like to explain exactly why your article was nominated for deletion. The problem is that, at Wikipedia, we have a minimum threshold called notability that subjects must pass for an article to be written about them. Notability can mean a few different things, depending on the subject, but at a bare minimum, it requires significant coverage in multiple reliable sources that are independent of each other and the subject itself.

There are a few reasons why we have such a threshold. Probably the most important one is that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias don't publish new knowledge; they aggregate knowledge that has already been published in reliable sources and condense it into articles. We're not a news service; we don't report new things or strive to get a story out as early as possible. This is reflected in our policy on [WP:V|verifiability]]; we strive to have all the facts in our articles verifiably supported by references to reliable sources.

Verifiability is doubly important because we're an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. That means that we have no way of knowing who's writing what, and we can't take anyone's word for what they're writing. Thus, the only way we can be confident of our material is through verifiability and reliable sources. Our information is only as good as the sources that back it, and subjects that aren't notable just don't have enough sources for us to be able to write an article about them.

Don't take it too hard, though! Deletions like this happen all the time; it's a very common mistake, and nobody will hold it against you! Like you said, she's still early in her career; she's not notable yet, but that doesn't mean she'll never be notable. We just have to wait until she is notable to start writing her article. Don't be too disappointed! Wikipedia's rules are pretty tricky, but it's a lot of fun once you get the hang of it! If you have any questions, the Teahouse is a great place to ask them; it's a place for new editors to ask questions and get any help they need in a friendly, relaxed environment. Thanks for trying to improve Wikipedia, and happy editing! Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 23:32, 16 January 2013 (UTC)