Writing my Book

I restarted this blog as a result of the success of my writing efforts over the past months.

My first achievement I mentioned in the previous post the writing of my book "My Friend  Ruby". It has been an enormous learning curve. The actual writing of the book was in fact the easy part. All the problems came afterwards.

The first problem was getting the manuscript published.  The normal procedure is to find an agent who then presents the manuscript to various publishers. Hopefully one of these publishers will agree to publish the manuscript.  This can take a long time, sometimes years (This is what happened with J K Rowling. It was several years before her agent found a publisher willing to actually print and distribute her first book).

I did not want to go down this route as I was unwilling to wait years to see my manuscript become a book.  Also it was highly probable the manuscript would never make it into print as it is a very niche genre.

In this technological age there is now another option for authors.  That is for them to "self publish", which as the name implies is when author turns their manuscripts into a book. Of course this means they also take on all the financial costs.

This was my second problem. I knew nothing about the self-publishing industry. Although I was publishing the book myself I still wanted it to look professional. Anyway to cut a long story short (if I can!!) after researching on the internet, attending various courses and conferences I finally decided to use Silverwood Books to help me through the process. http://www.silverwoodbooks.co.uk/

The deciding factor in choosing this company over all the others;- they are based in Bristol. If I ever had the need to actually see them face to face I don't have far to go.
They have been fantastic and the book looks fabulous.                      


My third problem is probably the biggest.  Because I have self published it I am therefore responsible for marketing it. This is not especially difficult, it is soooooo time consuming. There is the need to increase my presence on the internet; get the book noticed by booksellers both real and in the cloud; find a way to get my book distributed etc.

The real dilemma of the whole marketing system for self publishers is

1. Do you want to sell your books?
2. Do you want a decent return on your financial investment.

If the self published author sells a books they keep the whole amount.

If a bookseller sells it ,the author only gets royalty which is only a fraction of the charge possibly if they are lucky £1.00.

If the book is sold through Amazon the royalty can be as little as 1p.

Amazon may be popular for the buyers but it is dreadful for authors.  Please consider this the next time you are thinking of buying a book. 

Instead can you buy it through the website of the author or directly through the website of a bookseller or even can you pop down to your local independent book shop to purchase it.  You may see something else that you are tempted to buy. If we stop using our book shops and libraries they will all disappear then we will have even less choice

You can buy my book from my website www.annachelmicka.me.  

It is dearer than Amazon BUT no postage makes it cheaper!!!!!!!!