I was talking to a dealer at an antique show about some unknown pottery they had, since I knew who made it. After a lengthy discourse on various aspects of the company (I was a rabid collector) the lady exclaimed, “You know, you should write a book!” I replied that many people had told me that, but I had no idea how to do it. She answered, “We do - we’re authors”.
They introduced me to their publisher and we talked about the scope of the book, how many photos, how much original history, how long it might take me, etc. We agreed on a schedule and they provided me with their standard author’s agreement stating royalties, discounts, etc and away I went.
Took me several months to travel around the eastern US and photograph collections, that part was easy since I knew a large number of collectors. It was published about 6 months later, hard bound with deluxe paper. It was their top seller that year, 20 years later the royalties have finally dribbled to a halt.
I had an idea for a nonfiction kids’ book. (I had a number of publications to my credit at that point, but no books.)
I wrote up a proposal and started sending it to editors.
One of the first to see it said she wasn’t interested in that idea, but she liked my writing style (in the samples I sent) and my background and wondered if I would be interested in writing a kids’ nonfiction book in an existing series.
So I wrote up a few proposals; they picked one, which I turned into an outline and two sample chapters; they gave me the contract; I wrote the book!
Edited to add that my original idea was published by somebody else a few years afterward.
I’m actually in the process of writing my first book now. I’m doing it in my spare time.
I didn’t intend to write a book–I thought at first that it was going to be something akin to a research paper. But after I got into the subject, I realized that no paper would be long enough to do the subject justice.
I’m not far enough along to really think too much about publishing, although I have looked up several possibilities for that. I very well may end up with one of the self-publishing companies; I don’t plan to make that decision for a while yet.
The actual “publishing” part has become pretty easy, especially if you have any ability to create press-ready PDF page masters. Amazon lets you put things on sale with minimal effort. The real hurdle is attention, promotion and generating sales, which no package or self-publisher house will help with, much. (Oh, they’ll sign you up and take your money, but they only do what you could do yourself with a little due diligence and effort.)
In 1979 I was asked to teach a course that colleague going on sabbatical had taught several times. I made careful notes, using a whole new perspective on the subject. I mentioned this to a friend who was interested in writing and he suggested a joint book. I sent him my notes and he rewrote them. We added two other, closely related, subjects. One of them was my expertise and I did the first drafts and the other was kind of new for both of us, but again we had a new perspective on it. We then sent it to a couple publishers, both of whom were interested. We chose one and the rest is history. We co-wrote a second book and then I wrote one on my own. We got some royalties on the second book, but none on the other two. And even on the second a major part of the royalties were payment for having provided camera-ready text, so they had no typesetting costs.
I had written a popular freeware MS-DOS-based program, and then led a group of similarly-inclined programmers who enhanced it over a couple of years. Then out of the blue an independent publisher contacted several of us with the concept of a couple of us writing a book about the program. We agreed, and wrote what ended up being several books about the program and the images it generated.
This was not a big moneymaker. Rather, it was a labor of love. I figured it out eventually and I’d been working for slightly less than minimum wage. But my mother was incredibly impressed (she never tired of telling folks that her son “wrote books”), and it was a lot of fun. And one of my co-conspirators decided to become an author afterwards.
The publisher has long since folded, the books are long out of print - but dammit, I’m an author!
My book is unpublished and, in its present state, unpublishable, but it is a book and I did write it.
It started as a National Novel Writing Month project. I managed about 20,000 words during that NaNoWriMo (well under the 50,000 word target, but one of the longer pieces of writing I’d done at that point) and I kept going in fits and starts until it was done (130,000+ words, so on the long side for a novel). This wound up taking nearly five years because I do have a full-time job as well as other hobbies and interests, my novel has a historic setting that required some research (and I procrastinated by doing more research than was strictly necessary), and while writing it I also developed health problems that limited my ability to type.
That said, I think someone in similar circumstances but who was better at setting aside time to write more or less daily could have finished a comparable novel a lot more quickly. That’s the sort of person who might make it as a professional novelist. I don’t think I’m cut out for that, so it’s lucky I do have another job!
My friend who writes has a per day word goal that he makes every day. He gets up at 8am, starts writing by nine, and does not stop until he finishes his word goal. He doesn’t let writers block stop him, he just writes, knowing he can change it later. If he needs to do research, that doesn’t count towards is word goal. Some days he is done by lunchtime, some days he is done after dinner. Its a job. And its a job that’s taken twenty years to become something other than a hobby.
