Finding the support team

You're on Your Own, so You Need the Best BSE stands for Blame Somebody Else. With your project, you are in charge and there will be nobody else to blame. Do you really want this? As you will have realised from the section 'What do You Need to Publish a Book?' each member of your team will be vital to your success, at different stages. We all have different criteria for the people we not only enjoy working with, but also work well with. For example, some of mine are: :: easy going :: makes me laugh :: full of good ideas :: listens and then asks intelligent questions :: is really interested in the project and contributes to it :: returns my calls the same day These criteria are, of course, entirely subjective and have no relevance to reality. For example, there may be a million and one reasons for not returning my calls; but - as far as I am concerned - if someone does not, I ask myself why. And the answer I come up with is: doesn't want to talk to me. Why? Not interested in the project/hiding from me/hasn't done what he/she has promised to do. All sorts of stuff that I consider to be unlikely to produce success. But that's just me. What are your criteria? In my experience, it is a mistake to hand over any part of your precious project to a friend, just for the purpose of putting some business his or her way. You need professionals: in other words, people who can do the job not only better than you, but also as well as - or better than - anybody else. How will you know that they can? It's the old advice: ask around, and do your homework. For example, if you are looking for a publicist, find people who have employed publicists and pick their brains. People like to be useful and helpful, and you will learn a lot. Because you are reading this on the Internet, I am presupposing that you are computer literate anyway, so we won't pursue the avenue of typesetters, etc. Printing is a minefield for the uninitiated. As you will have gathered by now, I like doing things the lazy/easy way; and so, to circumnavigate this minefield, I went straight to the people who had printed LAZY LEARNING (Redwood Books of Trowbridge) and done an excellent job. I told them that I wanted EASY BEING to be exactly the same size and shape, with identical quality paper, jacket, etc as LAZY LEARNING. They also printed the flyers. I cannot recommend Redwood too highly - they pulled rabbits out of hats in all directions. TIP for finding the sort of printers you need. Find a book whose quality fits with your masterpiece and the name of the printers will be on the back of the title page. Then you can chat them up, and at least get some idea of prices. Another thing worth thinking about when choosing your team is where they are situated. Okay, so long-distance communication improves by the day, but I like dealing with people face-to-face. I was particularly lucky that AuthorDocs, who designed the book, were only 20 minutes down the road. I spent a lot of time with their Brian Curd. It would have taken for ever to explain by fax exactly what I wanted; as it was, we just worked on the project side by side. Why did I choose AuthorDocs? It is such a good name, for a start; Brian is completely laid back - nothing seems to faze him; he was enthusiastic about the project; put in lots of good ideas of his own; made me laugh; and, when I discovered that his favourite radio programme was 'I'm sorry, I haven't a clue', my mind was made up. None of this is logical - but it worked! Brian did a brilliant job, and we had a gentleman's agreement about how much extra work he would have to do to follow up any new ideas I/we might have. TIP: An important criterion for choosing a designer is how much he knows his way around what computers can do. For example, for the postcards, Brian simply put his design onto a disk, which could be taken straight off again - in other words, the postcard printers could not give me a whole lot of hassle about how much extra it was going to cost (I stupidly had not given the postcard job to Redwood in the first place). The whole book was on disk, including the jacket; and Brian took the disk over to Redwood to make sure that everyone understood exactly what was required. What we are talking about now is: No Hidden Extras. A good reason for having your publicist close by is that it costs money to shift books. And, if the publicity is going well, they are going to keep wanting more review copies to satisfy the demand. It costs about £1 to despatch one copy of EASY BEING by post; so every frantic call for an extra supply of review copies is going to cost money. I first met my publicist, Belinda Boyd of Pulse Communications, at Newbury Races, with her husband Nick, and they made me laugh a lot. Not a good reason for employing someone, you may think; but they were doing the PR for Newbury Racecourse at the time - and doing it extremely well. Distributors, like everyone else on the circuit, can be snooty about self-publishing: have your figures, and what you contributed to them, for your last book all ready to dazzle them. Distributors need to know that they're going to make money from your enterprise - tell them about your world; that you are out and about in it; that you wrote this book for a good reason: you wanted people to read it. This way, they will know that the book will sell on your reputation and on your drive. The last thing any distributor wants is an author who just sits on his or her bottom, waiting for the world to beat a path to the door. Business is business: convince them that you know that. Apart from the people on the list, who else can you enlist to help you on your way - in return for something useful from you? For example, The Anglo-American Book Company (who also publish useful books), wanted to publish EASY BEING, so the book is published 'in association with' them. They put it on the front cover of their catalogue and, before the official publication date, had ordered their second hundred copies. We are all in business to provide us with what we want out of life. Think about this and ideas will come to you for promotion.