Having gone through the process involved in setting up Wider Vision Publishing in order to publish “A Life Sold”, it occurred to me that I have left open the possibility to publish other books too.
I am now interested in helping out others who have their own stories to tell, and am open to all submissions of manuscripts that fall into the loose category of travel/adventure/personal journey.
I would like Wider Vision to maintain a narrow focus (oh, the irony!) on this type of book, and hope eventually to publish a small range of complementary titles, actively marketing them as best as I can alongside my own book.
Just before Christmas I stumbled across a blog about moving to Costa Rica to start a new life. Nadine and her husband decided to opt out of the rat race and move south, and make a fresh start. Nadine is a very entertaining writer, and has some hilarious stories – take a look at her blog “Happier Than A Billionaire”, and my particular favourite story, “Stop, or my husband will shoot!”
I made a couple of comments on her blog posts, and we ended up writing back and forth a little. Nadine told me that she is just about to start the arduous process of trying to find an agent to represent the book she has been working on, and then hope that the agent is successful in brokering a deal for her.
Prompted in part by Nadine’s story, and in part by my idea to help others who fit into the Wider Vision category, it occurred to me that there must be thousands of other people out there who have other types of book that they would like to publish, and are struggling to do so.
What if I set up a separate publishing company, with the view of publishing any type of book that someone wanted to get into print, whatever style of book it is – personal memoires, fiction, cook books, guide books, short stories, family histories – absolutely anything? I could be the publisher that will publish (almost) anything! After some excited discussions with my partner, Moe, the idea became firmly rooted as a strong possibility.
I thoroughly enjoyed the process of working my way through the minefield of information on setting up a publishing business, and dealing with one of the world’s largest printers. When creating something I tend to be very focussed on the small details, and like to have everything just right. I wanted everything to look perfect in the book, and happily spent hours arranging and formatting pages to make it look just how I wanted. I am very pleased too with how the cover looks. When I received the first copy of the book I was immensely proud of what I achieved.
It took me weeks to do all of this, and including setting up Wider Vision Publishing, I estimate that I spent over a month just on the practicalities of publishing the completed book. Now however, having completed the process, with everything in place, I could do it again in a much more timely fashion.
And so, on Christmas Day, when one of the presents I received was the domain name Moe and I had discussed in some detail, I realised that this was something I really wanted to do.
Dog Eared Publications had just been born!
To be continued…
