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Continuing our series of inspiring interviews, this one is with Peace Mitchell.
Her story is interesting because she is an author who is now helping other authors get published. Here is her story.
Tell us a bit about you and your books
I am a teacher however since being at home with my three boys while they were young I found I had interests in so many other areas – including writing, photography and publishing. I have been involved in a number of collaborative projects and really love working with others to produce a book, I usually take on the role of editing and layout design while we’re putting books together and then also enjoy the marketing and publicity once the books are all ready to go. In my new role with Boolarong Press North Queensland I will be working with authors mostly in the marketing and publicity side of things but will also help out with cover design and layouts too as required.
You started with self-publishing – what are the pros and cons with that?
Self publishing is a lot of work but is very rewarding too as you have a complete sense of ownership, however you also have the ongoing distribution process to contend with and establishing and chasing up retailers can be time consuming. You may also find your house quickly becomes a warehouse for books with self publishing and storage can be an issue. If you don’t have any experience with marketing and publicity this can be a difficult process too especially on your own.
You have recently been published. Can you tell us how you managed that and a bit about the process?
My sister and I have recently been accepted to be published so we’re still in the process of it happening right now! It’s very exciting! We had sent our manuscript to a previous publisher and were knocked back, they sent us some feedback with the rejection letter and we made a few changes to the format, we weren’t too disappointed the fact that they’d accepted to look at our manuscript was a win as far as we were concerned! (Chicken Soup for the soul was rejected 140 times!)
Rather than resending to them we found a different publishing house which was Queensland based and made contact with them, we briefly described our idea and were told to put something together and they would have a look, so a few months later we got in touch and made an appointment to go and see them in person, I would recommend this over sending a manuscript cold. We put together a brief presentation which outlined our previous self publishing and marketing experience, an overview of the book and its target audience and our ideas for the promotion of the book itself.
As far as production we are doing the typesetting and layouts ourselves. As the book will contain lots of photographic images we have a clear picture of the look and feel of the book and like to have control of this side of production, your publisher will organize all of this for authors not confident in this area though. I have Photoshop experience for the photography manipulation and we have the design program Adobe Indesign for all the layouts and cover design as well.
We’re expecting to launch later this year.
You are now working with the publisher regionally. Can you explain how you help authors?
We’re involved with identifying new and emerging authors, which is very rewarding, because we know how hard it is ourselves. Previously there has not been a publisher in this area so aspiring authors would post their manuscripts off to Sydney or Melbourne and hope for the best, often receiving a stock standard rejection letter. For some this would be the end of the process and they would put their dreams aside, others would go down the self publishing path investing thousands of dollars in printing books themselves but often overlooking important aspects such as an ISBN, barcode and registering with the National Library. We hope to be able to help both of these sets of people. By meeting with them face to face and holding local seminars on publishing, self publishing and the whole process including marketing and distribution, other people we will work with include local historical societies and writers groups. Boolarong Press is both a commercial publisher and also provides printing services for self publishers through the sister company Watson Ferguson Printing.
We met on Twitter. How do you think authors can use Twitter and other social networks to promote themselves?
Twitter is an amazing resource it’s an excellent way to promote yourself but of equal importance is the ability to keep up to date with the latest news in your industry and make contact with people all over the world. I always enjoy reading articles that you have recommended. I’m also on Flickr, Redbubble and Facebook.
How can people contact you?
Peace Mitchell and Katy Garner, Boolarong Press NQ, Box 1420 Innisfail Q 4860
nq@boolarongpress.com.au
Follow me at twitter: http://twitter.com/peace_
http://www.boolarongpress.com.au