When I decide to do something in life – start a diet, work abroad, write a novel, learn a language, take up a new hobby – the first thing I normally do is buy a book that tells me how to. This is why I’ve a vast collection of How To Write Books Books and why I spent much of May 1998 studying things like newsgroups and Yahoo! chat rooms in the pages of The Internet for Dummies; the arrival of our first PC and home internet connection loomed and I wanted to get a head start on how to use it.
Oddly, when it came to self-publishing Mousetrapped, I didn’t read any How To books. This was partly because I was trying to keep costs to a minimum, and partly because a wealth of information on the subject is available online, for free. I also struggled to find titles that didn’t read like self-publishing propaganda. (If I never see the word ‘gatekeepers’ again, that’s fine with me.) But now that the job is done and I’ve reached an impasse on the promotional front (anyone got any ideas? ‘Cause I’m all out!), I figured I’d order up a few, read them and see what I could glean. I was particularly interested to know if I’d have benefited from them before I went ahead, or if the free online information sprinkled with a light dusting of common sense did just as well. Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the ones I did read, starting today with The Self-Publishing Manual by Dan Poynter (Para Publishing, 16th Edition 2007). (more…)
