11/21/09
Ok, I’m going to start writing about getting my up coming book out to potential customers. Currently the title sits at “How to Start a Business: Mac Version” and the subtitle is “10 Essential Steps for Startups using Macs”
This has been a six year project that has changed two times, once from a book that covered Windows, Mac, and Linux to just covering Macs for larger businesses to the now current version as one only for startups.
I’ll be self publishing it because with the way the economy has slowed very few publishers will take on untested authors of books unless they have good credentials or some other leading factor that helps them get across to literary agents and publishers. Also the reason why I’m self publishing is to show other wannabe authors that it can be done with work on their part. The book has been completely done in iWork Pages ‘09 and other than graphics which I’m exploring to spice up my book it’s completely Apple made. So for $79 you can write your own book and make money 24/7 from Amazon through it’s Createspace.com web site.
About two weeks ago I had to see if using Pages would cause any technical issues with producing the book so I ordered a proof copy on Monday and was hoping it would arrive by the following Monday. On Saturday the doorbell rang and since we don’t get may visitors I had a rush of excitement that the proofs might be here. Sure enough, they were at the door left by the UPS man. I opened up the box with the excitement of a six year old on Christmas morning opening up presents! There were both copies beautifully bound, like real books. I spent about 15 minutes looking at each page, item, font, graphic, and a host of details that I had covered. There were little problem at all with the books.
Wow! Just one step closer to getting published.
I left the two books in the kitchen table and both my wife (“It really looks like a book!”) and Dad (“Wow!) saw them and wanted to really look at it now. It’s one thing to talk about it, another to print out three ring binders of it to hand to others, but having the near real thing in ones hands gives a person a chill like a woman that is eight months, two weeks into her pregnancy, you want the day to arrive.
I’ll sign off for now as I work on getting it out. Post your comments and tell me what you think, I’ll respond to thoughtful criticism, but not to anonymous trolls. Writing and publishing is a process as all new writers/authors experience and I hope this will inspire others to take the challenge up.
Update 1/28/2010:
Well, have found an editor to help get the final push done with my book. If you take a look at my Facebook pages you’ll see a test of my books cover. General consensus is they like it. Just a few more tweaks and that will be done.
Hired a copywriter to do the back cover and my bio. Most people don’t know how to sell “themselves” very well, not that we sell ourselves short, but that we sometimes don’t see strengths that are there. Plus, a fresh set of eyes to see things will bring things out that may not be so apparent.
Got my next round of book proofs on Tuesday. Dad said “it looks real professional,” and that means both the production of the book, and thanks to iWork ‘09 Pages, the interior file as well. My wife got even more excited about it.
May have a friend do a Forward in the book that would be really sweet when it’s done. Can’t wait. So honored to have that done by this person.
Can’t get over the fact that this project is almost over. Been marketing it at lots of Denver Meetups and the new covers and the discussions about how I have done it are creating a number of questions and comments about how this truly is a “desktop publishing” using today’s technologies.
Was learning about the publishing lingo “leading” and while we all remember single and double line spacing, in publishing they discuss “leading” spacing in points, i.e. font size points. Such that a 10 point font would have a 12 point spacing, or a 12 point would have a 14 point. Found this little gem in Pages to do just that. Oh, so nice.
Looks like it’ll be “published” in the end of February and I’ll have a launch party in mid March so that the marketing will go out in enough time to let everyone know. Then there’s the publicity and press releases that I need to work on. As Jack Canfield has stated “10% of your work is writing the book, the other 90% is marketing.” So true, but well worth the effort.
Until next time.
Update 2/26/2010:
Well, hired an editor to help get my book cleaned up and polished. If you ever write a book, this is the one of the more essential parts as the books interior is the most important regardless of the cover. It looks like I’ll be done within a few weeks and a tentative launch will be end of March. I’ll have more dates and times of the launch as I get the info for Denver.
