book details

Book: The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese - How to Avoid the Traps of Self-Publishing by Carolyn Poling Schriber

categories: Book, Writing, Editing, Book Design, Grammar Police, Marketing, Social Media, Amazon, Kindle, Self-Publishing

Carolyn P. Schriber

about this book: As a former college history professor, I am not a stranger to the world of writing, but the publishing process was something I knew little about. Publishing is relatively easy for academics. We seldom have agents. We meet publishing representatives at academic conferences. We rely on university presses to publish our books, advertise them in the right journals, peddle them at pertinent conferences, and make sure that the books are reviewed by important people in our fields. When my books came out, I had no input. Someone else designed the cover, line edited each page, and made all the decisions on layouts. I made no money on them and did not expect to do so.

Then I retired from academia, decided to keep writing about the things I loved, and was shocked to find out all I did not know about the publishing world! Now I had no help, no guidance, no well-oiled production company to do the scutwork for me. I did know, however, that since I was already in my 70s, I had a limited amount of time left--time I could not afford to waste while I waited for an agent or publisher to appear magically at my elbow. If I was going to keep publishing, I was going to have to do it myself.

As I worked my way through one historical monograph and another historical novel, I kept notes on my experiences and blogged about my triumphs and my more numerous mistakes. After some three years of fighting my way through the thickets of self-publishing, I was lucky enough to find a reading audience for my historical novel, Beyond all Price. It went viral in the summer of 2011, selling over 47,000 copies in a matter of weeks. I was thrilled, of course, and excited, but I also felt a sense of responsibility to those who were writing along with me. I felt like a lucky little mouse who had successfully found a path to that elusive piece of literary cheese. I wanted--and needed--to share what I had learned.

And thus this slender volume came into being. It is a personal account of what I learned, where I goofed, and what I wish someone would have told me before I started. I hope readers will find something useful in it. More important, I hope that they will be encouraged to avoid the traps and keep keep hunting that piece of cheese.

what to read next: if you read and liked this book...

Learn more about this book, Read reviews or Add to wish list

Find the best offer for this book

Other books by Carolyn P. Schriber	$Henrietta\'s Journal - A Life of Compromise by Carolyn P. Schriber$	$Damned Yankee - The Story of a Marriage (The Civil War in South Carolina\'s Low Country Book...$