DIY publishing

This week I attended a seminar by Geoff Bartlett at the Sydney Writers' Centre on self publishing. I learned heaps about preparation:

. pick out at least six possible cover designs for your book and tote them round to discerning people to see what they think. (Glad I've got people in the printing industry in my family, not to mention my WD pals!)

. make a website relating to the book alone, and direct people to it via email, facebook, twitter etc.

. come up with twelve different titles and make sure no one else has used it. It's not a copyright problem but may confuse people looking for your book if there's more than one.

. think of places you can market your book (funnily enough I'd written a long list of these while waiting for the course to begin.)

Geoff's handout lists many practical things related to printing, design and layout, budgeting, publicity and marketing. As I've slowly come to realise, marketing is ongoing and starts well before the book is published, and carries on until the last one is sold. Geoff claims it's not too hard once you get in the habit of doing a little something every day.

I have lots to do over the holidays, the first one being to throw out all my old health-related files to make room for my brand new self publishing ones in the filing cabinet.