Writing and self-publishing a book: Part 1

"It's often said 'we all have a book in us'. I'm not sure how true that is, but I wanted to find out for myself. During the pandemic I had a bit of spare time on my hands, so I wrote a book. Or more accurately, I wrote two books. Here's what I found out about the (ongoing) process."

This is Part 1 about writing a book or perhaps more correctly, self-publishing a book, and I do hope you will find it interesting, as well as potentially useful. If it encourages you to write your own book then maybe I've even had a hand in that decision.

Note: In a recent TV interview, comedian and chat show quiz host extraordinaire Jimmy Carr, joked that during lockdown everyone either wrote a book, started a podcast, or got a puppy. Just for the record, he also wrote a book.

Purpose

You can call it the goals, the aims or objectives too, but I'd suggest a key point is establishing your purpose. By that I mean answering all or most of these things:

• WHY are you writing a book?
• WHAT do you expect to achieve?
• WHO are you writing it for?

If you can answer those then you will be much clearer about the whole project. I realise that is to state the bleeding obvious, but it's also true. Your purpose might be nothing more than 'to see what it is like to write a book', or it might be something on your bucket list, or you might just be really, really bored, but I still think it's good to acknowledge that i.e. the purpose behind the book. Once that's sorted, you can more easily get on to the next bit, the meaty bit of the process. The actual writing.

Writing

The first thing to say is that I actually found the writing bit the easiest part of the whole process. Perhaps this is because it was pretty much under my own control. I was not reliant on any other parties which, as you will see, is a feature of producing a book. In my case, I was actually repurposing a lot of existing written material (see below). Most of it wasn't originally written to go into a book, however the base material was already there. Effectively, for my first book I used a lot of my pre-existing material. Content that I'd produced over the previous 18 months or so, and I fashioned that into a book.

Each article that had previously been published, usually on LinkedIn, became a chapter in its own right, and then a suitable start and end was then added to each. Since my material was largely pre-existing, it was like creating a meal or a recipe. I had all the ingredients ready, and it was then just a case of putting them into a decent order to create the dish. (Sorry, have I mixed metaphors there?)

What it meant was that I actually assembled my book in about ten days!! But do recall that I was using content I had written over the preceding year and a half. So that's 10 days, coming after the previous 540 days.

Book coach

I never knew there was such a person as a 'book coach'. How ignorant was I? In fact, there is now a coach for almost anything we can think of. Once the preserve of sportsmen and women, now it seems that anything and everything on the planet has its own coach. So, there's perhaps no surprise that there are people called book coaches too.

I didn't use a book coach however they are there should you feel the need to use them. I guess the role of the book coach is to help you develop the core idea and help you through the creative process. Perhaps one for you to explore yourself if you are so inclined?

As I note above I had written my book, or rather assembled it very quickly before I even knew that book coaches existed.

Editing

A book editor is someone else available to you, but again for reasons outlined above I never used an editor on my first book. That was partly because I was reusing my own material, much of which had previously been shared in other media. I figured out if it was good enough (or bad enough, delete as appropriate) for other purposes, it was probably good enough (or bad enough) for my book. Also, because I was writing about something involving my own personal experiences, I didn't feel that an editor was appropriate - in my own situation. It also saved me a bit of budget too.

I am however considering using an editor with my second book. Bear in mind that using an editor is likely to add at least a few weeks (or maybe a month?) to the whole process.

Beta readers

These are essentially people that you ask to read your book. Often people you know. You may chose to do this before you go to proofreading, i.e. at early draft, or afterwards. In the case of my first book, I asked a couple of people I had worked with to read through the text. I didn't ask for any particular feedback other than a very general 'so, what did you think of it?'

With my second book, I made this a slightly more formal process with my two beta readers. One gave me a very succinct review, the other almost did an editing job. Bear in mind, getting feedback from beta readers can easily add several additional weeks to the process - and even with a relatively short book of, in my case, 35,000 words, this can add a full month on to the time plan. I'd definitely recommend using beta readers, they will not charge for their time, but you should be prepared to acknowledge them when you come to publish your work.

Proof reading

I guess like many of us I'm my own worst critic, and so I was prepared to self proofread and edit my own work myself. I did this at least twice, possibly three times, on some sections. But even then, we can't always recognise all our own writing errors, spelling mistakes and grammar faults. Therefore, paying for a good, reputable, professional proof reader seemed to be money well spent. I'd highly recommend this step in the process. The proof reader may carry out a light edit at the same time, but it is better to use a dedicated editor to do that (see above). For proof reading you should assume at least one or maybe two weeks will be needed to carry this out properly.

Foreword

I must admit I was ignorant as to the difference between a preface and a foreword. (The answer is that you can write your own preface for your own book, but a foreword is written by someone else). I approached someone I had worked with almost twenty years ago to write the foreword, so just tracking them down took a few days. Then they had to read the whole book, to get a feel for what it was all about, and for them to decide whether they even wanted to be associated with it. Thankfully that person did. This process resulted in a really good foreword, that I am very happy with, however this element added around another month on to the already extending time line.

Cover design

The cover design is important, but like all things you need to keep things in perspective. Since I was self-publishing my first book, but with a lot of help from others, I didn't want to throw any creative tantrums over the design - those days for me are largely over. I saw three different ideas, I chose one of them within seconds, job done! (I could have asked for bits of #1 to be combined with the layout of #2 and the font used in #3, but I didn't. There's no point creating camels is there!?)

ISBNs and barcodes

Most books need an ISBN, and a barcode. I was publishing via Amazon in both paperback and Kindle format, so each format needed a separate ISBN. It is advised to buy your own ISBNs rather than have Amazon assign them for you. This ensures that you maintain the rights to your own book (or it's something like that). That seemed to make sense to me, so I purchased my own ISBNs. Once you have an ISBN you can then order the barcode for it. The process of buying ISBNs online took minutes, and the barcode another minute or two more.

Typesetting

Then we come to the actual 'getting the words on the page' bit - are you still with me? This had to be set up in some sort of publishing software - don't ask! I was not involved in the day-to-day on this stage. Suffice to say this may only be a relatively short process but like so much else in book publishing seems to take a lot longer than you might expect. At the time of writing this particular Article, my first book is still going through the typesetting process, and it seems the publishing software is particularly fiddly. Something for me to bear in mind when providing electronic files for the next book.

My first book was 99% written by the end of July. It's now early October and the process is still ongoing, but a final product is in sight. I think this just goes to show how much more is involved in the whole process than simply putting pen to paper (or even sitting at a keyboard).

To be continued...

About the Author

Paul Latimer is an experienced market researcher, having held a number of marketing roles in a wide variety of industries he moved over to focus on market research from the agency side in 2004, before setting up his own market research consultancy, Latimer Appleby, in 2012. He is a graduate of the University of Birmingham, and holds several diplomas including those from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), the Market Research Society (MRS) and the Institute of Data & Marketing. He is a Certified Member of the MRS, and a Fellow of the CIM.

He is the author of the book 'A Better Decision': Market research in the real world.