Sarah Anderson Go and see Colman Getty in Windmill Street – just for friendly advice. They don’t take on individual books any more – I knew I wasn’t going to use them but it is interesting to get as much advice and as many angles about publicity as possible. I was also finding out what I should … Read more
I’ve now got a distributor – Central Books – and a publicist – Midas. So I feel somewhat more in control. Still no proofs from Bookforce – but I woke last Wednesday night and thought about their estimate – which was for 130 pages – the book is 260 – and I had thought that’s … Read more
Get to the end of the bookseller C’s … talk to another publicity firm; send some queries to Central Books. Think of getting some leaflets printed £157 (including delivery) for 5000 full colour A5 fliers. I’m not quite sure what I’d do with 5000 fliers – but it seems a bargain. A firm in Dundee … Read more
Spend much of the day continuing to go through the Directory of Booksellers and inputting their e-mails into a database. Only get to the end of the ‘Bs’ – its arranged by town – and that’s about 160 bookshops. But the best news is that Central Books agree to distribute the book – I need … Read more
Fiddle with things over weekend – obviously NOT going to be able to do Wikipedia which – probably quite rightly – has a filter getting rid of anything vaguely commercial. There are probably ways round this but they’re beyond me at the moment. It turns out Bookforce (who are doing my proofs) left their London … Read more
The postcards arrive and I send them out to people who have sent me cheques – letting them know that publication has been delayed from March until May. I now have 40 members on my Facebook group – Halfway to Venus. I look into how to write pieces for Wikipedia – and shall attempt to … Read more
Start a group, Halfway to Venus, on Facebook – 24 members within a few hours and some funny and encouraging messages from friends. Discover that the labels I have aren’t compatible with any templates I’ve got – spend an inordinately long time fiddling – but finally decide to give up and buy some new ones. … Read more
I can’t remember what happened and why I failed to do the blog on Tuesday … Anyway I was finishing the fact checking, doing the bibliography and other important but fiddly things. I finally get in touch with Bookforce about the proofs – lets hope they manage to do them soon. On Wednesday afternoon I … Read more
Send off the PDFs to Bookforce for the proofs – but fail to hear back from them. Spend most of the rest of the day checking and rechecking facts and the endnotes. I could never be a proof reader – I’m far too impatient. But I am getting there.
Spend day fact checking and sorting out end notes again. More exercise as up and down between manuscript and Google. Hear that Vertigo Communications don’t want to take on the book for distribution – so everything points in the direction of my doing it with help from the Travel Bookshop. I know getting a distributor … Read more