New pike fishing book - coming soon

[mark barrett]

Out of interest Mark can you identify what it was you werent happy about?

 

The layout of the book is in my opinion a bit dated and feels a bit like a school text book rather than a fishing book. There was little room to be creative with the layout, or the pictures, contrast that with the one we are doing and its just a lot more pleasing on the eye.

 

In addition the priniting I believe was done on the cheap, this caused a lot of the photographs to be much darker than they really were. with Fenland Pike, Steve Harper individually corrects the stops on the photos to make sure that they are clear and sharp and with good contrast.

 

All my original drawing's were "improved" by an artist, I am not being big headed, and you will see it in the new book that there was no need for that at all. They put in a few errors, one being that they misspelt a major town name (but thats proof readers, because we are having to change back a similar error in the new book!), but overall Budgie it just didnt really come across as written by me. It was a bit dry and a bit too technical, but it is a pretty good tool for a beginner to the game and it is readable, but it not a patch on the new one.

 

All that said the reviews that I got for it were blinding, and the sales have taken even the publishers by surprise (765 in less than five moths the last time I checked with Crowood), so I must have done something right, but its not the book that I would have written if I had had a whip hand on it. Hell even the title wasnt mine!

[mark barrett]

i'm interested in how you get books published privately ,i'v had a couple of "speculative offers" from the angling press for my intrepid book (still a few years off yet) but strangely it becomes their book not mine.

how much would an A5 full colour c100 page book be?

 

 

Imposible to say, without knowing what format HB or SB, but for a HB with full colour pictures and words I doubt that you would have too much change from £10,000

[chesters1]

blimey i'l get my john bull printing set out when the time comes

[Janet]

Chesters, perhaps Dave (Vagabond) is someone you should also ask about self-publishing? I have a copy of his excellent book, and I believe it was published privately? I also have another book by Kevin Perkins from FishingMagic which was also self-published. They may be able to give you some helpful advice.

 

I've also had a few "speculative" offers...I'd be very wary of them if I were you! They seem to expect you to pay for all the printing costs whilst they reap the benefits...don't go there!

 

Janet

[Sportsman]

Quite right Janet.

There are many so called "vanity" publishers that will do short runs of books that are probably not commercially viable but pander to individuals who want to see their words in print.

All of the costs, and they can be considerable, fall onto the author and most of these books don't come near to paying for themselves, let alone making a profit.

I have 5 self published titles in print, all on aspects of first aid and casualty handling. We sell direct to training companies who use them on their training courses and sales are running at around 60,000 copies a year, we make a living from it.

I could get a A5 100pp full colour book printed in the UK for less than half the price quoted by Mark. Price per unit would depend on things like type of binding and cover but most importantly nn quantity. To keep the unit price down you would have to think of a minimum print run of 3000 and with a full colour cover and content and perfect bound (like a paperback) I am confident it could be done for less than a pound each

[Kappa]

It is possible to get a book published for very very little money indeed!

 

It costs a few hundred to get it setup and then you get the books printed to order. I.e. the books are printed one at a time according to demand. They are still available from Amazon etc etc and you can sell them yourself by ordering a load direct from the printers.

 

You don't make as much money per book than if you got 3000 books printed but then you'll never be left with 2995 in your garage and a bigger mortgage.

 

Rich

[Sportsman]

It is possible to get a book published for very very little money indeed!

 

It costs a few hundred to get it setup and then you get the books printed to order. I.e. the books are printed one at a time according to demand. They are still available from Amazon etc etc and you can sell them yourself by ordering a load direct from the printers.

 

You don't make as much money per book than if you got 3000 books printed but then you'll never be left with 2995 in your garage and a bigger mortgage.

 

Rich

 

Point taken Richard, see my note on vanity publishing.

The problem is that the unit cost is so high there is no way you could sell them for enough to make any sort of profit. They do however make nice Christmas presents.

I publish books for a living and need to be able to make a profit so I would rather produce a good quality paperback for a pound and sell it for 6.50

[Andy Macfarlane]

See your village is missing it idiot again Pooch, or are you on association time

 

Glasgow is hardly a village and besides, how did you ever manage to write anything when you can hardly string a sentence together?....but I'm the idiot....

[mark barrett]

Glasgow is hardly a village and besides, how did you ever manage to write anything when you can hardly string a sentence together?....but I'm the idiot....

 

Acceptance as they say is the first step to recovery Pooch.

 

Now your accepting your an idiot, maybe you will get better.......but I doubt it

[James P]

When I advertise my memoirs (entitled "How I caught F---k All!")

 

I'm afraid i've already bagged that one Budgie!

 

If anyone's more qualified to write such a book i'd love to meet the poor bugger!