So, as you probably know, I wrote a book, and I’m in the process of setting up a publishing imprint to self-publish it, and eventually, other books, maybe even by other people. When I tell people this, they often react with a note of awe in their voices. “Wow! That’s amazing, I could never do that.” I find myself confused by this, to be honest. Because writing the book, particularly this book, wasn’t really very hard. About half of the content is new, stories that I intentionally sat down to write for this publication, but about half of it is stuff that I’ve written over the past ten years. Compared to running TasteTO and writing 2 or 3 pieces a day at 500 – 1000 words each, writing a book of essays about my life and food was, well, easy and fun.
Writing a novel, which I did in 2005 (it’s sitting in a drawer, waiting to be published); that was a lot harder. But still not as hard as running a daily-updated website.
What is hard, and scary, and intimidating, is the actual work involved in publishing a book.
Normally, writers who deal with established publishers don’t ever have to deal with the technical aspects of putting together a book. They submit a manuscript, get galleys in return to do edits, and while they may have some say in the cover, or paper quality or overall design, they don’t literally have to set up templates or calculate signatures (those little bundles of sheets of paper that make up the pages of a book) to determine spine width.
I don’t think I have uttered the phrase “This scares the crap out of me!” so many times in my life as I have in the past few weeks.