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Writing and Publishing, Part 53:
Becoming your own publisher:
My publishing Effort:
The Wesoomi Gardening Journal:
This part of my essay series will be quite personal. If that does
not sit well with you, you may want to skip these gems about my
publishing efforts.
"The Wesoomi Gardening Journal" was the first book I ever wrote and, of course, the first book I ever published. It came about quite by accident. I had no intention of being a publisher although I did want to write. Like every other fool, I believed I was a damn fine writer. In fairness to that Idea, I at least had studied English and writing for most of my life. Most people who think they are damn fine writers have never studied either one.
At the time that I graduated from Ford Motor Company with a small pension and a decent Social Security check, I had no intention of joining the rocking chair rodeo. I have seen old people who took that route. One day you see them early in their retirement and they are babbling about how they are ready to lay back. A while later when you see them, they are sitting there kind of dozing. The next time you see them there may be a bit of drool or spittle in the corner of their mouth and a rather blank expression, and so it goes.
Real retirement was not an option for me. I had to be useful and creative. My intellectual friends tell me that is just a fallout of the puritan ethic which was hammered into me as a child. Whatever caused it, I had it in my head that I was going to be an inventor. I even had a list of things which I believed the public needed or wanted. Find a need and fill it they say. That was about nine years ago. One thing which amazes me is how many of the things on that list have been developed and successfully marketed by other people since then.
The gardening journal came about because of my love of gardening and my carelessness in record keeping. I had slips of paper all over the place about what I had done or intended to do in my garden. The problem was, I could never find the relevant one. I finally decide to gather all of my notes together and make kind of a gardening calendar or journal containing all that I had learned over time about gardening. I told this to a friend one day and she quickly insisted that I give her a copy.
Her response made me wonder who else might find my notes to be useful. Anyone who gardens, was the answer. That was when I decided to turn my notes into a book. Notice that I was following one of the prime dictates of writing. That is, write about what you know about.
This was my first book and figuring out how to lay it out and write it took the better part of a year even though I had all of the material at hand. My approach embodied my first mistake in a long series of mistakes in writing and publishing. I assumed that someone would want to publish the book. I did not look into finding a publisher until I had done all of the work. I essentially believed the BS in Writer's Digest Magazine.
When I finally went looking for a publisher, I discovered some hard truths. Here they are in no particular order. The books stores are loaded with gardening books. Many of the people who write them have real credentials. Most publishers do not want to see new manuscripts from unknown writers. Even if a book is accepted, it takes more than a year for a publisher to get a book to market after they agree to publish it. Publishers will not put much effort into an unknown writer. The writer will be expected to do the marketing. The publisher will do very little except manufacture the book and offer it to distributors.
So, here I sat with this great book and no one gave a darn. Just the same, I was determine to get it published. That was when I bought my first book on self publishing. Out of that came my second mistake. The book made it seem easy and I believed it. Here is the truth.
Starting a business is easy. I have already explained how to do that. Getting a book designed and manufactured is not difficult. There are a lot of tedious details, but none are very complicated. The most difficult part is in mastering the layout software. In my case that was Adobe PageMaker. I got a lot of help from the book manufacturer. They wanted me to get it right.
Marketing, for me, has been the road block to success. It is not easy. The book I read blew it off, made it seem like just a detail. My marketing effort with the Gardening Journal failed. This is what I learned about five areas of marketing.
Most important is that direct advertising is not cost effective; at least in my experience. I placed ads in two national magazines devoted to gardening. I have already address this. So far as I can tell, the ads resulted in one sale.
Second, is that reviewers don't. In the case of the gardening journal, I sent the book to a number of newspapers and magazines. It cost me hundreds of dollars in postage. This resulted in one review in one suburban newspaper and one sale.
Giving books away did not help. I also sent the book to many local TV personalities. They ignored it. I finally figured out that these people only hype their cronies stuff. I also gave over 500 copies of the book to local churches to be used in fund raisers. That got me absolutely nothing, not even recognition.
I also sent copies of the book to several booksellers. I got only one response. Someone at a local B&N actually read the book. He told me two things. First, I had misspelled a word. The word I had misspelled was foreword. I had inadvertently written forward. They are not the same. I know that. The other thing he told me was that the book was overpriced for the market.
That was more important and to the point. I consider it my biggest mistake for this book. I have already covered this in W&P 36. I will only say now that I will never write another gardening book. The truth is gardeners are cheapskates. I should have known that because I am a gardener. It's a whole different mentality. I have tried to analyze it.
I believe that gardening and farming are seen as kind of peasant activities as opposed to engineering which is seen as an intellectual pursuit. That's really ridiculous when you consider it. It takes every bit as much research and study to write a good book on gardening as it does to write a good book on the principles of electricity. It's all a perceptual thing. We perceive the engineering book to be very, very technical and thus quite valuable. People who have not had to depend on it for their livelihood, do not understand that farming is every bit as technical. Farmers know it. Gardeners usually don't.
Now, what has happened to the gardening journal? Of the original 2000 plus books, I still have about 1100. I have given many copies away to friends and relatives. Everyone who uses the journal appreciates it. I and my wife start a new journal each year. Several people who get them free do the same. So, the book was not a dead loss. In fact, I feel quite good about it. In addition, it was a real learning experience.
Next time, I will discuss my second book, The Gaffer's Shorts."
This was the effort which really embittered me toward the entire
publishing industry. I'll lay out the whys and wherefors next
week.
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