Jessica and Danielle Dunn, who as teens wrote "A Teen's Guide to Getting Published," have issued an updated edition.

What do the books "Frankenstein," "The Outsiders" and "Eragon" have in common?

They were all written by teen authors. Mary Shelley wrote the classic horror tale "Frankenstein" at 18; S.E. Hinton wrote the social commentary "The Outsiders" about conflicts between poor and rich kids when she was 16; and beginning at age 15, Christopher Paolini wrote the fantasy, "Eragon," about a teen who becomes a dragon rider.

Though not as famous as these writers, there are successfully published teenage writers in Indianapolis and throughout the country. Y-Press interviewed some of them, as well as a high-school student who co-edited a mystery anthology.

To answer questions of aspiring young writers, twins Jessica and Danielle Dunn wrote the first edition of "A Teen's Guide To Getting Published" when they were 15 years old. They grew up in Houston, where they started writing for local magazines at 12. Now 26, Jessica and Danielle recently published a second, updated edition of their book. They both are engineers, and Jessica works for Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co.

In a different way, Anna Turner, an 18-year-old senior at Scecina High School, was inspired to write. Her best friend, Khara, asked Anna to write a story for her. Anna wrote two chapters, and Khara loved them. She begged Anna to finish writing the story.

She did, and "The Complexities of My Ever-So Shallow Teenage Life: Summer Vacation" was born. Anna used the pen name Jade Zeboris.

The paths the young authors took to publication diverged as well. The Dunns' work was produced by Prufrock Press, a Texas-based commercial company specializing in publishing materials for gifted and advanced learners; Anna self-published her work with the help of AuthorHouse, a company in Bloomington.

How are these processes different? In traditional publishing, the author and editor meet regularly to work together on the manuscript. The company takes care of the editing, layout, design, illustrations, and printing, but it is much more competitive to get work accepted and often requires an agent. If an author's work is accepted by a publishing house, he or she will often get an advance payment on the book and pay the agent a percentage of the advance.

The day the letters from Prufrock came, Jessica and Danielle opened them at the same time and started to scream: They were going to have their own book published.

Then, the real work began. With the first edition of their book, the girls had to wait a lot because e-mail wasn't in widespread use a decade ago. They had to mail changes back and forth to the editor multiple times before a final draft was accepted.

"Waiting is always the hardest part," said Jessica. "You know, waiting for the galleys and then waiting for it to come out and waiting to get the first royalty statement." Galleys are proofs that writers and editors review for mistakes and omissions before the book is published. A royalty statement explains how much money the author is making.

In the self-publishing process, the author is responsible for arranging all the editing, printing, marketing, and distribution of the book and pays for his or her book to be published. To self-publish a book, the author sends the transcript to the company, which provides layout services and cover art for the book.

Often, companies such as AuthorHouse print the books only when they're ordered; they don't keep any on hand, and they don't distribute them to traditional bookstores, only to online bookstores. Authors get a portion of sales proceeds.

Self-publishing requires discipline and hard work, too, Anna said. "The hardest part was editing the story. I've read it myself 17 times. My friends helped a lot. When you have five 15- or 16-year-old girls editing a story, that was pretty tough."

Austin Lugar, 17, hasn't written a book, but he's read a lot of them, especially mysteries, and he's helped out with events at the Mystery Company, a Carmel bookstore. That experience helped him land a job co-editing a book with the owner of the bookshop, Jim Huang.

The resulting product was "Mystery Muses: 100 Classics That Inspire Today's Mystery Writers" (Crum Creek Press, $15). Mystery writers wrote essays about what books motivated them to become authors. Austin loved the experience, learned a lot from Huang and hopes to edit more books.

He and Jim read each essay carefully and did copy editing, but they made sure each essay was still in the author's own voice, not the editors'.

Jessica and Danielle warned young people not to expect to be published the first time they try.

"Perseverance is really the big thing, because I think if you give up too early, then you're just going to be disappointed. But everybody experiences rejection. So that to me is the key thing -- to just keep trying," Jessica said.

ASSISTANT EDITOR: Katie Ciresi, 17.

REPORTERS: Ariana Gainer, 12; Alexander Waddell, 11.