When I was a teenager I was pretty sure that I would be a writer when I was an adult.  I am, it seems but I haven’t really published much, so sometimes I wonder if it counts.  It does, I know, it is my choice if I want to know how to publish a book or not.  Sometimes I don’t really want to, which is probably the main reason that I have not.

Why don’t I want to? I ask myself this question. The basic answer is that I am not the most organized person in the world.  So I have written many pages of poems and lyrics and short stories and I have sat down several times with the idea of publishing in mind. Those times I made what I called a publishing file and I sorted through my writing with publishing in mind.  When it comes down to it, though I guess to publish a book is not really my priority though I know it would make me more respectable in the eyes of people who know I am a writer but wonder why I have not published much of anything.

I used to think that I would publish a book of fiction such as a novel but when I sat down to try and do it, I wasn’t able to get the writing to flow. Short pieces such as short, true stories flow out of me much more easily.  So the closest I have come to writing a book is to write five hundred pages of short true stories.  I have published some of these in a sense because they were used at my college for a student publication and for a student concert.  I read a bunch of them outloud to some music a friend composed.  They played a few of the stories read to music in between each song they were playing as part of the student concert.  I couldn’t be there as I lived in a different town at that point but I had a song included too.  I felt good about it because only about a third of the people in the program had anything in the concert and I was one of that third plus they used my writing for the intermissions.  That was kind of a long time ago, but still it is my choice if I am going to publish anything, or if I’m happy to just store up writing.

This is an unusual age different than any other in human history, mostly because of computers, the internet and the ability to communicate long distances in a flash.  In past times it was a big deal for people to travel thirty miles down the road to visit relatives for Christmas.  And before telephones no one could even call each other to say when they were coming to visit.  People nowadays are completely used to the easy information we have access to and our ability to communicate across the world via computers.  Almost anyone can be a writer these days because of the internet.  You can make a personal website in a flash and start book publish online.

I know a guy who has been publishing online for years by maintaining a simple website which he programs in HTML.  It’s a form of daily journal.  He makes dated entries that contain both pictures and text about specific experiences in his life.  He is a photographer and has been using a digital camera for about ten years now.  It’s a pretty amazing thing the way individuals can become internet artists and writers so easily these days.

The guy I mentioned just celebrated his eleventh anniversary of publishing online.  He started the visual journal on a whim but then found out it was a really good medium for his feelings so he continued on.  When I was studying performing arts I started thinking about how if every individual had to give a performance how the performances would vary.  It’s kind of interesting to think about web journals in the same way.  Everyone’s day is filled with unique experiences and sequences of images.  If each person had a journal of one moment from their day with text and images it would be pretty interesting to see how each individual would do it differently.  In some ways I would prefer to live in the past where people were sequestered away in their individual lives.  But then that was also very limiting.  I know that I am fortunate to exist now when the world feels much smaller because of computers and the internet.

One of my favorite children’s book authors fell into his writing career in an unusual way.  He was in the military and took part in a conflict that needed to be told about afterwards.  A popular magazine hired a well known writer of books to write about soldiers’ accounts of the experience.  This man got approached by the well known writer who interviewed him, but then because of timing or something, asked him if he could just write down the details and mail them.  The ex-soldier did this, and he ended up writing it as a story and gave it a title and everything.  He sent it along to the writer who ended up calling him back and telling him of his amazement at how good the writing was.  “You’re a writer.”, the writer told the ex-soldier.  The story got published and the newly discovered writer  started writing a bunch of stories, making his living by getting paid for each one.  He later became one of the best known children’s authors of all time.  Of course this is a very unusual story about how to publish.

Most authors have to approach getting their books published along the usual pathways.  They have to harbor a desire to write, complete a manuscript and then learn how to get published.  From what I hear it usually takes a lot longer than it did for the man I wrote about.  Many wonderful writers have received large numbers of rejections for long periods of time when they first decided to learn how to get published.  You have to be willing to be in the process for a long haul, and you have to be ready to handle the rejection.  Unless you are one of the very lucky few, making an effort to try and get your books published will probably take a fair amount of blood, sweat and tears.

Have you ever been in a warehouse where you’ve seen boxes and boxes of a book publish?  I have worked in a warehouse that shipped out books to booksellers large and small.  It was interesting to see the way books arrived.  If it was a popular book then many boxes of it would arrive. If it was a niche book or a special order, then it might be in a big box full of many different books.  It’s funny to see a box full of one book and to think about all the people who will be reading it.  I liked thinking about who might be special ordering a book as well especially if it was something strange and esoteric like David Icke. I like collecting books though I haven’t lived in a house of my own for a while. So I realize that collecting books is like collecting anything else, a big pile of stuff.

When I worked at the place where I packed orders of publishers books into small packages that would be shipped to various booksellers around the country, I liked to think about the numbers of books and the numbers of people and all of the words that had been generated to be read. It’s interesting to me who will want to read something.

At the book wholesaler where I worked, there were weird hippie health books about being a fruitarian which meant you could only eat fruit.  Some of the fruitarians were strict enough that they thought they should only eat fruit that had been dropped by a tree where they could see it.  Supposedly if you became a fruitarian it was a normal thing for your body to develop big oozing sores because this meant you were cleansing.  This seemed crazy to me and my friends but we still found the books about it to be endlessly interesting and hilarious to make fun of.  I thought that if you were developing huge pus filled sores, it probably meant that since you were only eating fruit, you had nutritional deficiencies. The people who wrote the book on the other hand, thought it was healthy and natural.  There were many different books on every different subject under the sun, from different publishers that were fun to look at and think about.

Before taking your manuscript to Kinkos (or any copy shop) you must understand that printing and publishing are two different things.  To “publish” a book, you need to buy an ISBN number and bar code.  Once you have that, you can take your book to any printer and have it bound, with the ISBN number and bar code printed on the cover.

Kinkos acts as a Print on Demand printer.  The look of the finished product is cheaper, but you get to keep all the control and all the profits. With other POD printers, you have to buy your books from them at 40% of the retail price.  You also have to buy back the rights to print your book if you ever want to print it anywhere else.  With Kinkos, you pay less for the printing, and you keep all the rights and control of your book and profits.

Kinkos is a good way to give your book a trial run and see how many copies you can sell.   If it takes off, you can try courting royalty publishers or hiring another book printing company.

There are 3 methods for having Kinkos print your book.

1.    Walk in – Bring in your files on thumb drive or CD.
2.    On Line – Go to the Kinkos website and select “print online” and “start a new print job”.  You will be prompted to upload your files and select paper, printing and binding options.
3.    File, Print Fedex Kinkos – Kinkos now has a downloadable piece of software that will add a virtual printer to your computer.  Once you install it, it will put an icon on your Office toolbars.  You can click the icon to launch the “File, Print Fedex Kinkos” program. Alternatively, you can simply select “print” from any application.  When the print dialogue box comes up, you will have the option to choose the “File, Print Fedex Kinkos” printer.  You will be prompted to select your binding and printing options.  You will be able to preview and pay for your job before it is printed.  You have the option to pick it up or have it shipped to you via Fedex.

This option is really great for selling ebooks to people who would rather have a printed volume.  You can offer your customer the option of having you send the book to a Kinkos near them.
Kinkos offers a range of binding options. The binding types offered are:  book, booklet, coil, comb, wire, tape, and strip.

If you want to learn more about how to publish a book at Kinkos, they are usually pretty helpful. One of the great advantages of doing it this way is that they will usually give you tips when you run into problems with layout.

Kinkos is especially great if you are on a shoestring budget or if you just want a handful of copies of your book for family and friends.

It is enjoyable to further one’s knowledge about a topic if it is an interest that you engage in.  I like skiing so at one point I read a book about how to get in touch with my inner skiier.  It helped me be more in my moment of experience when I got the chance to go skiing.  I also read a book about the tao of singing since I studied voice, and I did some alternative workshops about non-classical ways to experience the power of my own voice. Books about most subjects especially if they contain a hands on approach really do help a person to learn and grow. It’s really nice to have a physical book with you in your own home so you can pick it up at anytime and use the information and exercises it contains.

All of these books and activities I mentioned above helped me out a lot. Another activity I enjoy doing is writing.  By now I have read as many books as I’ve been able to easily find about writing.  I wish more people would publish book writing tips.  I own several books full of writing tips but if more people would publish book writing tips then I would definitely want to read the books, and probably own them because it is a special interest of mine. It seems that any topic you develop a special interest in, usually only has a certain amount of others who have devoted their life’s work to writing about the topic so it can be fairly easy to almost exhaust a topic.

Unless of course you are willing to branch out and read the opinions of laypeople on the internet.  That can be informative too but if more people would publish book writing tips it would make me happier because the quality of the writing on the internet does tend to vary.  And if someone puts a bunch of time into writing and publishing a book about a subject it is usually more comprehensive and larger in it’s scope.