Tag Archives: self-publishing

You too can write a book that becomes a bestseller

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MANY THOUSANDS OF authors aspire to ‘make their name’ by publishing their writing. Most of these people hope to follow in the footsteps of, say JK Rowling, and to achieve fame and become a bestselling author. This hope is exploited ruthlessly on social media, especially, so I have noticed, on Facebook and X (formerly ‘Twitter’).

Every day, I notice a steady stream of advertisements promising to convert your piece of writing into a bestseller. Some ads offer to convert your manuscript into a book that looks as if it has been produced by a recognised commercial publishing house. Other, provide editing and mentoring services. Yet more of them, promise to promote your book on social media. Some will guide you as to how to make your book more prominent on Internet search engines. And others will review your book any number of times. There are even websites that will write the text of your book using AI.  All these services naturally attract fees, and these can in some cases be quite hefty. If despite using these miraculous sounding services, your book neither sells well nor achieves great acclaim, you might be considerably out of pocket.

The problem is that very few of the myriad books written have either any outstanding literary merits or appealing features. The services offered in the ads offer profits and huge readerships on the horizon. But will they materialize, or will they remain mirages that fade away after you have parted with your money? I have never used any of the services that I have seen advertised. I wonder whether they would be honest enough to say that despite their best efforts, the submitted work is likely to be a failure, or do they not care.

OR, am I just a skeptic at heart?

Praise is always welcome

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HERE IS SOME PRAISE FOR MY PUBLISHING ACTIVITIES in a book review by Stephen Turner (of the University of South Florida College of Arts and Sciences (USA)) in the Journal of Classical Sociology 2022, Vol. 22(2) 247–253:

“Adam Yamey, a retired dentist and son of an LSE Professor, has published, through Lulu, a self-publishing company discussed in the book, several books about London, the history of places in Britain,the social movements of the Indian diaspora, travel in the Balkans, his great-grandfather, who was a Jewish South African politician, and other historical topics with a strong“social” content. His blog and webpage (https://adam-yamey-writes.com) are nicely professional and indistinguishable from the pages digitally competent academics produce.”

My LATEST book, which is about #Hampstead and its environs is available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09R2WRK92

Problems! Problems! Publishing

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ALL OF MY books have been self-published. Until recently, I used a ‘print-on-demand’ website called lulu. The process involved first writing my manuscript and formatting the text and any illustrations on Microsoft’s Word software, using a template (for the size of the book) downloaded from lulu. When I was happy with what I had produced, I was able to upload it to lulu’s website. Then, the fun began. Lulu converted my Word document into a .pdf file and when that was done, I could download the .pdf to proofread and make other checks. Almost always, something was lost in translation: what appeared in the .pdf was far from what I wanted. So, endlessly I had to keep adjusting my Word file and uploading it to see whether the latest version produced what I wanted in the lulu generated .pdf. It was tedious and somewhat nerve-wracking to say the least. Then, last summer, disaster struck.

I had just completed the manuscript for a book about west London and was looking forward to uploading it to lulu. It did not take more than a couple of minutes to discover that lulu was no longer accepting manuscripts in the form of Word files. The requirement was to prepare a correctly formatted .pdf file. I was stumped. I had no idea how to do this and felt despondent because I then believed that I might not be able to publish another paperback myself.

Many months passed. Then, while I was perusing some articles on the lulu website, I discovered that one can format .pdf files using software such as Adobe’s InDesign. I investigated this and found it to be quite costly. However, soon I became aware that there is a cheaper option, Serif’s Affinity Publisher, which I bought and downloaded.

At first, Affinity looked impenetrable but there are many on-line tutorials, which I watched before tackling the software. After a few false starts, I began to get the hang of the programme’s basics. Using the relevant template downloaded from lulu, I then inserted the text from my Word manuscript into the Affinity system. After several days of moving the text about and inserting some illustrations and the page numbering, I produced something that looked acceptable. I converted the Affinity file into a .pdf file using the software’s ‘export’ function. Then, with some trepidation, I uploaded my new Affinity-generated .pdf file on to the lulu site. To my great joy, the proof that lulu produced was exactly as I wanted it. So, the Affinity software has proved to be up to the job.

Having found a method to upload to lulu without the problems caused by lulu’s conversion from Word to .pdf, I moved on to finishing and pricing the book. To my horror, I discovered that lulu has increased its prices dramatically. The book, which I created could not be sold to the public for less than £ X plus at least £3.99 postage, which in my opinion was forbiddingly excessive for a book of the size I had made.

Then, I looked at Amazon, which has a book publishing service. Using a new ISBN, I uploaded my .pdf, and after looking at the proof they generated, I looked into the pricing. To my great delight, they can sell the paperback at 58% of lulu’s price excluding postage, which does not always need to be paid. I have seen a copy of the book produced by Amazon and I am happy with its quality. Amazon have captured me from lulu when it comes to book publishing.