I’ve been inspired by John Wood’s story of creating the amazing organisation Room to Read after visiting Nepal and having his own Road to Damascus experience – understanding that he could no longer justify his existence as a senior Microsoft executive knowing that there were millions of children without books.

Not everyone is crazy enough to take a stand, to stand out from the crowd, to stand up for ourselves or others. But as the film says, the world needs these crazies to push the human race forward. We cannot stand still.

My belief is we don’t all have to quit our jobs or our businesses to do this. We just need to tell our stories. All businesses and all people have the power to make change happen if we just step out and speak. Our stories help us to understand, to educate, to inspire, to influence, to persuade … and to move all of us forward together.

Will you be left in the becalmed sea, hungry, thirsty, bored and lonely?

Or will you ride the wave?

The world is listening. And your story could be just the thing to help me move forward. And mine could help you. Stories are like glue, they bind us together.

‘How important do you think it is for self-publishers to publish to the same standard of the traditionally published book?’

It seems from the considerable numbers of responses, that there is a general consensus that self-publishers need to aspire to the same standards of book production as any traditional publishing house.

One member of a group even went so far as to say that she thought my question very odd. ‘If you’ve created a book, given your energy to it and are ready to share it with the world, why wouldn’t you aim for the stars and give it your best shot?’

I thought it might be useful to continue to explore this in my blog, so with apologies to anyone who happens to have been following the LinkedIn discussions I am copying the answer I gave here.

You might be surprised …, how many people I have met who have cut corners when self-publishing because they really didn’t ‘get it’. They may even have believed they were aiming for the stars but thought that the moon could be reached without professional help.

My question was prompted after a conversation with someone who believed that publishing a book is something anyone could do, even if they had no background in publishing, no experience of publishing a book and no publishing skills whatsoever. They questioned the value of working with people with these skills in order to create a high quality product.

If I sat down to play the piano today I might find it a bit of a struggle to make beautiful music. That’s fine, if I work at it one day I might have something I would be proud to play to a friend or family member. I certainly wouldn’t take to the concert hall stage until I’d spent many years perfecting my art, probably with the help of a good teacher and many hours of practice.

As Eric Morecambe replied to Andre Previn’s protestations about his piano playing: ‘I AM playing the right notes. Just not necessarily in the right order!’

I think many authors who choose to publish independently have plenty of ‘right notes’ to play. They just need to work with folks with the right skills to help them get their notes in the right order.

You can see the answers to my question on LinkedIn here.

…Lulu CEO Bob Young recently told an interviewer at the World E-Reading Congress in London, “Most authors actually don’t want to self publish. … The author needs help. He needs help understanding who his market is. He needs help crafting his content so it has more appeal. … We understand the need to connect publishers [with authors] in the sense of people who understand the markets and can help authors sell their content.”

As an independent publishing consultant, I frequently suggest to my clients that the stigma attached to self-publishing is becoming a thing of the past. Why do I think this is?

It is partly a quality thing. There was a time when self-published really meant exactly that. The author had used the standard word processing tools to create a book and put it up on Lulu or similar without much thought as to the standard of the finished product.

How times have changed. Now that there are more people who have experienced the self-published book, both as author/producer and reader, the standards are continually rising. It is no longer considered acceptable by most professionally minded people to offer to their audience a book with an amateurish cover design, a poor quality finish and content littered with mistakes. We know our readers expect us to put on a smart appearance, just as we know our clients expect us to turn up to a meeting appropriately dressed.

When we produce a bad book what are we saying about the way we are likely to do business? Most of us would not like to risk our reputation in this way. And realistically, for most of us that means getting help to create the right book, whether by seeking the elusive publishing deal in the traditional manner or by finding publishing experts to help us to publish independently.

What does this mean? I suggest the following for starters:

Appraisal
An editor to appraise the book and give you honest feedback about how well it will do the job for the book’s target market. For best results choose a professional editor, or at the very least someone who does a lot of reading in the area you are writing in. Resist the temptation to ask a colleague, friend or family member – they may find it hard to give you objective advice, or even worse, you may find it impossible to take it!

Editing
Once your appraisal is done, consider it carefully. Can you make the suggested changes yourself or do you need the help of a substantive editor? This could be the same person who gave you the appraisal or it could be someone new. Or if you feel ready to go after doing some revisions yourself, you could go straight to the copy editing stage. You can find out more about the editing process in the blog post here. Choose a member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders who has lots of experience in your subject.

Design
When sourcing someone to work with you on the look of the book, find a designer who has experience of working on books. I can’t tell you how many dogs dinner covers I’ve seen that have been put together by professional designers who just don’t understand how books work. Remember, the most important thing is readability. A good design is accessible and clean – it isn’t there to show off how clever the designer is. (With my apologies to all you lovely creatives out there who don’t read books but do pick them up and stroke them a lot!!)

A business plan
Sometimes authors forget that a book is – first and foremost – a product. And as with any other product you need to make a business case for its existence at all. A plan that includes financials is a good idea so you can see what your break even point would be and how much profit you can realistically expect to make from your first print run. Most important, however, is a marketing plan. After nearly 20 years working with books I have yet to see one sprout wings with which to fly or legs with which to walk. As many self-publishers have found out to their surprise, unless you work as hard at the marketing of your book as you did at the writing those books that fill your heart with pride and satisfaction on delivery could soon turn into the dark and terrible secret lurking in their cartons in the loft or the garage. Don’t let it happen to you!

All in all, for those self-publishers who put their business heads on, get realistic about what it is they really want to achieve from publishing and are courageous enough to go and get the help that they need, the world is fast becoming their oyster. I say look out world, a whole new wave of wonderful authorship is on its way!

However, I would also say it is a crucial element of the publication process that, when missed, will seriously damage the book.

Many people believe the need for an editor is related to how good a writer they are. It is certainly true that those of us with a fantastic command of language may need less attention from an editor. In my experience, however, even the best of writers need some help to deliver the best possible product. But how do you choose an editor and what kind of help do you need?

There are different editing processes that may or may not be provided by the same editing professional:

• Substantive editing (sometimes called content editing)
• Copy editing
• Proofreading

It’s a good idea to speak to a professional editor to get their opinion on which level of editing you need in the first place. If you are not all that comfortable with writing, whether because you are writing in your second language or it’s simply not your strongest skill, be honest with yourself and engage the help of an editor who can help you with content. You may need to budget extra but you will have a professional book that makes you look good. There is nothing worse than putting all that effort into publishing a book and then have people think the less of you because it’s difficult to read.

If, however, you are a good writer, you will probably only need the services of a copy editor. I always recommend going to the website of the SfEP (Society for Editors and Proofreaders) and finding someone who preferably has experience of working with your subject matter. This will repay you many times over as you will have found not only someone who can pick up on any spelling or grammatical mistakes, but also someone who can just check on any inconsistencies in your content and flag these up to you as author queries, as they are known in the business.

It will also save you a lot of money, time, effort and grief if you use a good editor before you book goes anywhere near the design/layout/typesetting stage. Proofreading is a term that is often misunderstood. A proofreader will check your final proofs for typos, missing lines, cross referencing etc. If you use a proofreader to edit your work you can expect a big bill from the typesetter or designer as they will probably have to make significant changes. It is much cheaper to do this sort of work at manuscript stage – and the term for that is copy editing. Then your proofreader (again available from the wonderful SfEP) is just there to check for those last minute glitches.

There is a great list of top tips for managing a freelance editor or proofreader on the SfEP website here.

If you’d like to know more about how to self-publish your own book I am running two one-day seminars, Publish your Book! and Market your Book! this August at the Woodside Conference Centre in Kenilworth, Warwickshire. I’d love to see you there!

The storyteller had had a deeply traumatic morning and was clearly still slightly shaken from her ordeal. Her 13-year-old son had rung her as she was dropping her daughter off at school. He was in a considerable panic as he reported that the family dog had managed to chew its way into the pet rabbit’s hutch and was in the process of running amok in the garden with the rabbit in its teeth.

Filled with apprehension and visions of a traumatised son and a gory scene in the garden, mum arrived home. Her son had succeeded in trapping the dog in the rabbit hutch while the rabbit was lying splayed out on the lawn. As mum approached she saw the rabbit’s nose twitch and with huge relief she cuddled the creature back to a state of calm. Despite its morning of terror it seemed to be quite unharmed.

There were many sighs of relief around the table, along with words of sympathy for all and admiration for the quick thinking 13-year-old.

And then came the next story from someone else at the table. This one was about a dog and a guinea pig. And, very soon we were warned that it didn’t have a happy ending. Without exception we all went back to the first story as quickly as we could. We didn’t want to know the details about the story that clearly ended in death and destruction. It seems we all still love a happy ending.

When I was thinking about using stories to tell people about who we are and what drives us I realised that it is the happy endings that people want. The live rabbit, not the dead guinea pig.

It may have been a miracle that that rabbit survived its experience in the jaws of death. It is miracles and magic that our customers want too. And we can show how we can give it to them in our stories.

1) Bought the Writers and Artists Yearbook

2) Gone through WAAY and found publishers/agents who publish in their area of interest

3) Sent an email with the manuscript to the publishers/agents saying ‘please read my book and let me know if you’re interested in publishing it’

4) Chased a few days later by email or phone.

A number of authors wonder why they don’t receive any response – and may even become quite outraged by the unreasonableness of it all. Rarely do I hear an author question whether they have presented the proposal in the correct manner. After a few simple questions from me it usually transpires that they haven’t done what the publisher would have asked them to do. Perhaps they didn’t realise that most publishers who are open to receiving unsolicited submissions have full and detailed guidelines on their websites. Oh, and that there is a very good reason for that. The guidelines are there to help authors to present their proposal in a way that helps the publisher to get through the hundreds of submissions they receive every week.

Then I met a speaker at the Professional Speaking Association spring convention on Saturday who said that he had put as much work into the book proposal as he had into the book. Now, that’s more like it, I thought to myself…

If you really want to find a publisher, remember that you need to sell your idea to them. If the publisher has guidelines think of this as a blessing – they are giving you full instructions on how to sell to them after all – and do exactly as they tell you to. And remember they are people who need to be engaged with – be courteous and considerate, be respectful and interested in what their needs are. If you treat the publisher as an enemy you will get nowhere.

Bear in mind that for a publisher this is not about you… it’s about their readers and what will work for them. The readers are their customers and their happiness is at the centre of the publishing business, not the requirements of their authors. If you think the same way you are on the right track. If you don’t, then seriously consider publishing through an independent route so that you can have it all and do it all your own way.