Two authors in the family! That’s me on the right, in Australia with my talented and beautiful step-daughter Kelly, who published Sailing to Jessica, about her trip around the world. Which ended, by the way, with the adoption of our daughter/grandaughter in the Gilbert Islands.
"You should write a book about that!" Have you heard that before? Well, now you can.
It’s now possible for me to publish a book for the states, Europe, and beyond, from my desk in France (as I did this summer). And whether you’ve written the Great American Novel or you just want to write your family history for your grandkids, you can do it too. Here are some thoughts, from my experience and from our readers who are authors.
The cost: if you are handy enough to do the cover, editing, and formatting yourself, you can publish for almost nothing. If you're serious and seeking something professional looking however, you'll need to hire a cover designer (I was very happy with my designer: Damonza.com). I signed up a friend as my editor, but this was too much to ask and I should have used a professional. You simply cannot believe how many times you have to read a book to catch the errors. To get a cover design, editing, and formatting done, you could sqeeze by on $1000 but you could spend a lot more.
The how-to: Before you type the first word of your book, read a how-to book and/or several how-to articles or blogs. Why? Apart from the obvious reason of figuring out what you're getting into, your typing will later have to be formatted. I typed mine in Mac Pages, which I later found out was a bad choice for Amazon's Createspace (Word is better, and there are other options). When you type you must avoid all formatting, such as tabs and paragraph indents. So save yourself a LOT of bother, and do your homework FIRST.
, recommended a great book for authors, called APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book.
Study it, before you start. Just about everything you need to know is in this book.
The marketing: If you publish it, they won't come---unless you bring them to the book. Most self-published books sell less than 100 copies. There is a lot of competition out there. So before you even begin, figure out how you'll market it. Marketing will be an on-going time-eater.
My step-daughter Kelly has a good marketing tip: "I would recommend that everyone makes a book trailer for their book. In my mind, a book trailer is today's high tech version of a glossy brochure - but it is more fun to watch and share". She was clever enough to do her own, or perhaps you have access to a teen-ager?
Now, to all all you aspiring authors out there, I say, go for it! And for you, a big fat bon courage!
One more tip: We have a free-lance editor among our readers, I have just discovered! So if you need an editor for your book, you know who to contact: Barbara Bell. You can get in touch with her through her website or through LinkedIn.
In the COMMENTS: The artists from last week's post will be thrilled to read your nice comments! And Natalia, you are so right, we can learn to appreciate different styles, when they speak to us. Sally, I agree--Marion pulled off a pretty amazing feat, given the French love of red tape. And Judy, pigeonniers were originally towers that were homes to pigeons. Pigeon caca is prized above all for it's fertilizing properties, so having a pigeonnier was a status symbol--as it is today, but only because of their charm.
