To publish or not to publish.. that is the question..

Apologies to William Shakespeare… hell if he can read this then good luck to him… Once more I have reached a cross road in my book scenario…

When I began with the book it was to share stories from my growing up, something my family felt I should do for future generations of our family… this was never done to be published, but my writing took on a life of its own and the more Linda read the more she encouraged me to write with the intention to publish….

I wrote and re wrote and then did so all over again. My English was terrible and this I felt would be the deciding factor “To publish or not to publish”.

The Good Lord put Anneli’s blog on my email list and after quite the while I had found an Editor… I think she regretted taking on this book in the beginning.. her question to me “do I understand the passive word or passive verb”, brought tears to my eyes and my answer being “what are you talking about?” I think brought tears to hers. But it gave her a better understanding of my terrible knowledge of the English language… However with perseverance she turned my book into something I love..

Then came the questions from others “Are you going to include photos?” My answer in the positive was made without even thinking it through…

A book with photos is going to cost between $ 69 and $ 89… this puts it out of the market before we begin.. yet without photos, or maybe just pencil sketches we come to a publishing cost between $5 and $8… far more reasonable… but would people be interested in my story, my escapades and experiences? I’m not sure of the answer to that….

So do I publish this as a book and eBook and follow with a coffee table photo book later, is now what I have to decide… a coffee table book of my photos is a lot cheaper when not including 300 pages of my stories… What to do, what to do, is where I find myself… could this giraffe give me the answer?

Maybe I should hop on a plane and go somewhere … maybe I’ll find an answer…

Until I come to a decision … I will continue to bang my head against the wall….

The Brick walls of Publishing in South Africa.

The more I research the more despondent I get. Publishing on Amazon or CreateSpace for us (not difficult) but is not the best way to go. The biggest problem is payment. Neither can make and EFT payment to an account in our country. So how do they pay? Per cheque and then only after one reaches a royalty level of $100, then it is posted… POSTED… Oh boy our postage is not of the best.

So where do we now stand? Self printing or publishing… yes the set up of a paypal account is simple, people can pay you and you can send them the eBook version via the internet…. great, that will work well… now what about the hard copy? Printing in China is by far the cheapest. How many copies must I print? A minimum of 500 copies.. Can I sell that many? Don’t think so…. How would I pay for it? Another good question…. and what price would I have to make the book? That I still have to calculate…

So one gets an order, how do I send it to them? Well buyer pays the postage, but I have to use the same incompetent Post Office….  and there is the “catch 22”… so maybe my book is only going to be available on eBook for the time to come…

I took the camera and went for a walk… I do my best thinking camera in hand… I found this guy and asked his opinion… he first scratched his head on the one side….

Then tried the other side….

and then gave me a long look and said “Can’t help you Bud, you’re on your own with this one…”

Now that was helpful…