Writing and Publishing

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS OLD TIME LORRIES, COMPANIES AND DRIVERS (INTERACT
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Old Pond and all the other publishing houses are only interested in selling lots of books and making big profits. Most trucking books will sell a certain amount but only to a limited group of buyers. There are trucking book collectors who buy every book on lorries; this is where most of my sales have come from. So Creatspace and Lulu are perfect for this little niche market.

Old Pond is a small fish in a big pond of publishing giants. When I was trying to get my book published twenty years ago they were all looking for a J K Rowling write-alike. Then Salman Rushdie had death threats because of his Satanic Verses and I was advised to delete all the Arab references in my book because no publisher would ever touch it. Nowadays, publishers are searching for Game of Thrones genre writers and not Game of Fodens. You can’t win. Unless you are a popstar, film star or sports star; then you can get a book deal with a great big advance.

So, Mick is right when he says Createspace is the way to go and his posts are pretty much spot-on on how to go about it.

Good luck and I wonder which TruckNet writer will get a film deal first? And moor his yacht in St.Tropez next to Ashley Coghill’s.

22

Cheers Chris, don’t know about the yacht though, maybe a private jet instead!
Gotta work out who could play me in the blockbuster, multi award winning, Oscar nominated, film version of the book (that I haven’t written yet)! :laughing: :laughing:

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bullitt:
Cheers Chris, don’t know about the yacht though, maybe a private jet instead!
Gotta work out who could play me in the blockbuster, multi award winning, Oscar nominated, film version of the book (that I haven’t written yet)! :laughing: :laughing:

There you go Bullit. Have a word with Louis Hamilton about how to avoid tax on your private jet.
And see if Tom Cruise is up for the movie role. :laughing: :laughing:

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Vodka Cola Cowboy:
…There you go Bullit. Have a word with Louis Hamilton about how to avoid tax on your private jet.
And see if Tom Cruise is up for the movie role. :laughing: :laughing:

Im sure Lewis can give me a few pointers regarding paying tax. As for Mr Cruise, I`m 6ft 3in, 16.5st with a bald head and a London accent. I think he would need to get some shoe lifts, a voice coach (gaww blimee mery poppins!) and spend a few days in make up first!! Apart from that we look like twins! :laughing: :wink:

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bullitt:

Vodka Cola Cowboy:
…There you go Bullit. Have a word with Louis Hamilton about how to avoid tax on your private jet.
And see if Tom Cruise is up for the movie role. :laughing: :laughing:

Im sure Lewis can give me a few pointers regarding paying tax. As for Mr Cruise, I`m 6ft 3in, 16.5st with a bald head and a London accent. I think he would need to get some shoe lifts, a voice coach (gaww blimee mery poppins!) and spend a few days in make up first!! Apart from that we look like twins! :laughing: :wink:

Perhaps you would be better of with Arnie Schwartzenager then Bullit. Cos I am sure that you will be back mate

26

If Tom Cruise can play Jack Reacher, who in the books by Lee Child is built like a brick sh**house, then he can play anyone!
Les

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Speaking from personal experience of writing for other publishers and then starting Gingerfold Publications then I would say if you have a book written then go for it, preferably with a publisher, or failing that, self publish, which is easier to do now than it was a few years ago. But whichever path you take don’t expect to make any money out of it and the readership will be small. My print runs were 1,500 copies for the Commercial Vehicles Archives Series, which were published annually in time for the Christmas market. Typically each new title sold about 900 copies pre-Christmas which covered my publication and printing costs. The remainder would sell in the following months and years. Company history hard back books were much more expensive to produce, John Corah’s Brian Harris book had an initial print run of 2,000 copies and went to a 1,000 soft cover copy reprint, then a second reprint with Old Pond. The Gardner book again was 2,000 initial print run with a 1,000 soft cover copy reprint. These two titles were my best sellers by some margin. Did I make any money? Yes, a little bit but only from a paying hobby perspective. Did I enjoy doing it? Yes, greatly. Why did I close down the business? Sales fell substantially because of the growth of the Internet, and also because of forums such as TN, so the tiny profits became a loss which I couldn’t sustain.

28

gingerfold:
Speaking from personal experience of writing for other publishers and then starting Gingerfold Publications then I would say if you have a book written then go for it, preferably with a publisher, or failing that, self publish, which is easier to do now than it was a few years ago. But whichever path you take don’t expect to make any money out of it and the readership will be small. My print runs were 1,500 copies for the Commercial Vehicles Archives Series, which were published annually in time for the Christmas market. Typically each new title sold about 900 copies pre-Christmas which covered my publication and printing costs. The remainder would sell in the following months and years. Company history hard back books were much more expensive to produce, John Corah’s Brian Harris book had an initial print run of 2,000 copies and went to a 1,000 soft cover copy reprint, then a second reprint with Old Pond. The Gardner book again was 2,000 initial print run with a 1,000 soft cover copy reprint. These two titles were my best sellers by some margin. Did I make any money? Yes, a little bit but only from a paying hobby perspective. Did I enjoy doing it? Yes, greatly. Why did I close down the business? Sales fell substantially because of the growth of the Internet, and also because of forums such as TN, so the tiny profits became a loss which I couldn’t sustain.

Could we chip in and get your Marathon book published ? :wink:

29

ramone:

gingerfold:
Speaking from personal experience of writing for other publishers and then starting Gingerfold Publications then I would say if you have a book written then go for it, preferably with a publisher, or failing that, self publish, which is easier to do now than it was a few years ago. But whichever path you take don’t expect to make any money out of it and the readership will be small. My print runs were 1,500 copies for the Commercial Vehicles Archives Series, which were published annually in time for the Christmas market. Typically each new title sold about 900 copies pre-Christmas which covered my publication and printing costs. The remainder would sell in the following months and years. Company history hard back books were much more expensive to produce, John Corah’s Brian Harris book had an initial print run of 2,000 copies and went to a 1,000 soft cover copy reprint, then a second reprint with Old Pond. The Gardner book again was 2,000 initial print run with a 1,000 soft cover copy reprint. These two titles were my best sellers by some margin. Did I make any money? Yes, a little bit but only from a paying hobby perspective. Did I enjoy doing it? Yes, greatly. Why did I close down the business? Sales fell substantially because of the growth of the Internet, and also because of forums such as TN, so the tiny profits became a loss which I couldn’t sustain.

Could we chip in and get your Marathon book published ? :wink:

Paul, as it happens I had a look at the Marathon manuscript the other day to check on the Commercial Motor test results I put on another thread. I did wonder then if I could upload it onto a new Marathon thread. It is in the layout and format ready to go to the printer, minus photos. That was another reason I finished GF Publications, my official works photo source had become expensive. If I can upload it I will and other contributors can add photos, as I gave away the Marathon photos I had.

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gingerfold:

ramone:

gingerfold:
Speaking from personal experience of writing for other publishers and then starting Gingerfold Publications then I would say if you have a book written then go for it, preferably with a publisher, or failing that, self publish, which is easier to do now than it was a few years ago. But whichever path you take don’t expect to make any money out of it and the readership will be small. My print runs were 1,500 copies for the Commercial Vehicles Archives Series, which were published annually in time for the Christmas market. Typically each new title sold about 900 copies pre-Christmas which covered my publication and printing costs. The remainder would sell in the following months and years. Company history hard back books were much more expensive to produce, John Corah’s Brian Harris book had an initial print run of 2,000 copies and went to a 1,000 soft cover copy reprint, then a second reprint with Old Pond. The Gardner book again was 2,000 initial print run with a 1,000 soft cover copy reprint. These two titles were my best sellers by some margin. Did I make any money? Yes, a little bit but only from a paying hobby perspective. Did I enjoy doing it? Yes, greatly. Why did I close down the business? Sales fell substantially because of the growth of the Internet, and also because of forums such as TN, so the tiny profits became a loss which I couldn’t sustain.

Could we chip in and get your Marathon book published ? :wink:

Paul, as it happens I had a look at the Marathon manuscript the other day to check on the Commercial Motor test results I put on another thread. I did wonder then if I could upload it onto a new Marathon thread. It is in the layout and format ready to go to the printer, minus photos. That was another reason I finished GF Publications, my official works photo source had become expensive. If I can upload it I will and other contributors can add photos, as I gave away the Marathon photos I had.

Sounds good to me :smiley:

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Well, having just sent the final - hopefully - upload to Createspace, I think that I can say that the new book
“Champagne Truckers” will be on sale on Amazon before the end of the month.

In a moment of misguided optimism I would think that this represents somewhere around 600 hours work.
However, that is a conservative estimate.

Still, if I had not have spent all of those hours writing, re-writing, editing and re-fashioning the book
what would I have done with my time.

Mick

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So I was told it’ll only be for a week and a half tops…couple of weeks at the most and you won’t any farther north than Sydney…B doubles only… probably just be singles… defiantly nothing with a dolly in the middle…

So here I am in Longreach waiting for a triple to turn up… it’s 38 in the shade but there is no shade and I’ve borrowed shaggers lappy for an hour or 2…

Writing books eh !!! Good stuff there Mick and Chris thanks for sharing…many words of wisdom… I’ve read most trucking books that are published in English and some by Ferdy as well… I need something to pass the hours sitting waiting in a dust bowl lounging on my chase long while my publishing intern peals me a grape or two…

I always thought that if you were a real masochist you should just spend your time writing a submitting unsolicited manuscripts to big publishing houses… I mean if your going to be ignored you may as well be ignored by large professional organisations. At one stage I was being ignored by 6 of them at the same time…

I started rambling on and banging away on the key board a few years ago… My wife has a work college who’s a shrink with lots of initials after his name and he suggested that I write things down, pretty much to see how much I could remember… Being reasonably dyslexic it was a bit of a struggle, but we got spell check and my wife’s pretty pedantic at English, punctuation, grammar, and all that… and as long as she left the computer on I was fairly happy to bang away on it for a few hours at a time… for some reason Dave Mackie got involved as did Mushroomman…
So things got going and after my wife giving it a good going over… some of it got sent of to a publishing house… I won’t say who it was but think of a flightless bird that hangs out in large smelly colonies round Antarctica… Oooooh’s and ahhh’s yes that looks good keep going…That was a big surprise as it had taken my wife years to even get a short story published … and I don’t think she was best pleased…
Spending 3 a 4 weeks at a time in a Kenworth 1000k’s a day 6 days a week…not a lot of time for key boards and when lappies cost about 2 weeks wage… By the time I got it reasonable and sent it back, who ever had said it was good had moved on to pastures new… Any way cut it back to 70,000 words and we’ll see what we can do… then just a few weeks later I got the we’re moving in a dynamic new direction thingy… which is the opposite direction to your boll lux …naff orf … oik…
I kept going as I just wanted to get it all down before I forgot it… and keeping in mind that it could only be 80,000 words tops… I managed to finish it round about 890,000… But that doesn’t include the stuff I’m doing now… and I take about 50 photos a day which I think should be included as well…
I’m not good at editing. every time I go into it to edit it I remember more stuff or try to explain it better… which means more words… probably not the right thing to do… Any way R.T. got involved as did Mr Smith… but that was at the start of Mango season and I was gone 6 weeks that time…

Lulu… My wife said they were pretty good… I had no idea what she was doing but from what Mick wrote about crate a space template and all that I think it’s pretty much the same thing… But we couldn’t work out the photos and when the proof came back the font was to small… We told Lulu … then one night about 1 am the phone rang and it was bloke from Lulu who talked to me then my wife for about an hour and got things sorted out… sort of… so we reformatted … Sorry I say " we "… but really I was just making toast and grovelling… then we pressed submit, and about a week and a half latter another proof turned up with photos … then I got a contract from Lulu… then … I had to do a thing with the IRS which meant that I could get paid any royalties by Lulu with a tax exemption… and then it got messy Lulu sent me a form to fill in but the IRS said I had to turn up in person with a birth certificate … 100 points… bla bla bla… then it got to…and I was back to …

Back in the truck chasing fish and any other cold stuff round Australia… My wife’s at home trying to find a plumber at 3 in the morning and all the usual stuff. kids of school sick… etc…It just got farther and farther away…

I would just like to say I love Vic’s stuff ( DBP ) especially the early rants about the unions… it should go out just as it is …I can follow it quite easy cause it looks just like what I write before my wife sorts it out… And that’s not a dig at you Vic I really do like your stuff…

If you have a reasonable story to tell and are willing to do it all your self Lulu, Creatspace kind of thing is a fairly good way to go. They have loads of help options like assisted editing, marketing, formatting, all the stuff that a big publishing house would have but you have to pay for it up front… And with most of them having a direct link to Amazon there’s even a distribution deal as well…

Got to go…don’t have time to read it though I’ll come back and edit it if I can scrounge a lappy again.

Jeff…

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Hello Jeff, Dave Mackie did ask me several years ago if I could have a look at a couple of your chapters at the start of your book and help him to edit it. As English was probably my worst subject at school I didn’t really have a clue at what I was supposed to do as regards putting it in format for a book. :confused: As it was also the time when my daughter was having a house built I am afraid that your story got pushed to one side due to lack of spare time and when Dave said that there was another 800,000 words to go then I had to tell him that I just couldn’t do it so I am sorry about that. From what I did read about doing your Dads tank jobs, it looked like it was a going to be a great read and I have been looking out for years to buy a copy of the finished article. So don’t give up Jeff as I know that from what I did read that you are on to a winner with stories not only about doing U.K. work to stories and experiences from distant countries that we can only imagine.
Jeff, I know that I am a couple of hours too late now for tonight but there was a campsite in Longreach many years ago on I.I.R.C. Ilfracombe Street or Ibis Street where you could park your unit and go and get a shower.
You could also get a cabin with an air con and they did great campfire meals and had a fantastic bush poet called Mark Kleinschmidt. If you buy one of Mark’s early C.D’s then it will pass away a couple of hours while you are waiting for those three trailers to turn up.
And Jeff, the next time you are coming up The Bruce Highway past Maryborough you couldn’t drop me off a sample crate of that fresh Tasmanian Salmon could you or a box of Bowen mangoes. :wink:

Regards Steve.

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Hi Steve I wasn’t digging at you… I don’t blame you for not getting involved… Any how I was just having a whinge… another Saturday night in the truck probably 3 more to go before I get back home … By the way last week I had 6 pallets of choc Easter bunnies for Melbourne … I’ve got both the air cons going in the truck and I can keep it down to about 18 degrees even when it’s over 40 outside… plus I can go to the crib room watch Foxtell, and make a meal have a shower… And as I’m a contractor and not an employee I can take the truck and nip down the road for a Pizza Chinese etc, while I wait for another trailer to come down the road with 8 pallets for Adelaide…

I should probably put a bit in here about writing book as well…

Jeff…

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Hi Jeff, I didn’t think for one moment that you were having a dig so there is no offence taken here mate. :smiley:
I did feel guilty about letting Dave and yourself down but I realised at the start that it was going to be a long time consuming job and like I said I didn’t really know what I was supposed to be doing.
Well it’s going to be a bit cooler in Longreach for you today, 34 C with a bit of cloud and back to 38 C on Thursday so if you are still waiting for that trailer get yourself around to The Qantas museum or visit The Stockman Hall Of Fame, both are very interesting and will pass away a few hours.
Have a good day mate.

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Today, I received notification that both the book and Kindle version of “The Champagne Truckers” are available on Amazon.
As with “Trucking Magic”, I published this myself through Createspace. Obviously, it being the second book that I have
published with them I already had a heads up as to what was required. This made it so much easier to perform the task.
In fact, there was a delay in getting the book out there but that was down to me not seeing a couple of typo’s and
having to resubmit it to the process. A moment of word blindness during the re-reading process.

I would suggest to anyone that wants to publish a book that you seriously consider the implications of using Createspace.
This book comes home at 348 pages and has a word count of 94,500. It is highly unlikely that any publisher would allow
you that amount of latitude. They would generally be looking for a word count of 60,000 - 70,000.
The reason for this is the cost of printing. This rises in line with the word count and number of pages.
They then have to set the print cost against the R.R.P.
They want to lower the R.R.P. so that more people buy the book.
Obviously, because they want to recover their initial outlay and make a long term profit out of your work.

However, in saying that what you may wish to consider is submitting your manuscript to
somebody like Old Pond, so as to get an appraisal of your work. Shaping the book up from what you have written
to what they want will teach you the discipline of editing. You will also learn a great deal about the publishing
process which will set you in good stead when you go down the self publishing route. Whether they take on your book
and you publish through them before publishing your next books yourself, or you self publish after they knock you back.

You could look upon it as being similar to the Owner Driver process. Most of us who were Owner Drivers
learned our trade as company drivers for numerous firms and having learned the system then went our own ways successfully.
I would imagine that very few people started out as an Owner Driver, without having driven for companies before hand.

But, there we are. I have successfully published my third book. Whether it sells or not is now down to me, as the marketing
operation is my responsibility. A bit like selling myself as an Owner Driver back in the day. :laughing:

Take good care

Mick

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What’s RRP? Never heard of it! :open_mouth: Robert

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ERF-NGC-European:
What’s RRP? Never heard of it! :open_mouth: Robert

Recommended Retail Price Robert. They set the recommended retail price which is what your book sells at,
directly to the reader, through them and other outlets.

For Old Pond, the cheaper that they can set the R.R.P. they feel that it will entice more people to buy the book.

Mick

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Good Luck with the new book.

Have fun with the promotion of it. I’ll probably be seeing your name on some of the Facebook Groups and don’t forget to send a copy to each of the lorry-driving magazines. What else have you got planned?

I found RRP is tricky to set with Creatspace. Amazon want such a big percentage of the price that it is tempting to cut down your royalties so that the book is better value for money. But then you get only peanuts for all your hard work. Amazon seem to want the big mark-up so they can offer free-shipping or discount the RRP if they think it will increase sales. I find the Amazon web-site is good for promoting a book through their “You-may-also-like” and their “Buyers-also-bought” features. That’s where most of my sales now come from.

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Thank VCC for all the info and help that you have posted with regard to writing and publishing your own book. There are some very helpful points in there. I can see your point about trying to cut down what you have written to what a publisher would want but without losing the gist of what it is you are trying to say!
Good luck with your latest and future publications. :wink: