This is a guest post by Alastair Humphreys. Alastair is an adventurer, blogger, author and motivational speaker whose expeditions have included cycling round the world, walking across India and rowing the Atlantic. Alastair was named as a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year for his pioneering work on the concept of micro adventures. He has also written five books about his adventures. Find out more here.
I get asked regularly about how to publish a book, and whether it is best to find a publisher or to self-publish your story.
First of all I suggest you work your way through my sophisticated flow chart:
Done that?
Now read some of these articles:
- Some thoughts on Travel Writing today
- Why I have returned to self-publishing (though have now since returned to working with a publisher!)
- On the agonising process of sitting down to write a book
- How to become an author
- Some cold water about the difficulties of getting started
- What does a literary agent do?
- Do you need a publisher?
- 10 Steps To Getting A Literary Agent
By far the most useful resource I recommend to everyone who contacts me is The Creative Penn website. Joanna is a prolific author, a savvy entrepreneur, and knows everything worth knowing about writing, self-publishing and marketing. Anything I could tell you about my very positive experiences self-publishing There Are Other Rivers, I learned from Joanna and her website.
My final word of advice: GET WRITING! Don’t worry about your “shitty first draft“. Just brain-dump your story down on paper (computer). Once you’ve written 100,000 words you are in a great starting place to begin deleting almost all of it and writing something decent. But this is the very best way to actually write a book (as opposed to the easier option of just telling people you are writing a book but actually getting nothing done…)
For more information about writing and getting published read my post: Riding to write. Or writing to ride.
IF YOU WANT THINGS TO CHANGE, YOU HAVE TO TAKE ACTION. GET READY TO L.E.A.P.!
‘L.E.A.P.’ is a mini ten-part course designed to help you find the courage, commitment and focus to make a major leap in your life, and see it through, to get your closer to doing what you love.
In this very simple ten-part mini course, we offer you a fun new way to make any kind of important change in your life. This could be something small but important, like a new way of nourishing yourself, or something major like quitting your job and changing career, or making time to do something you dream of, like writing a book. Sometimes we can get so caught up with thinking about the thing we want to change, and so hung up on what might happen if we make the change, that we go round and round in circles and never actually get anywhere. (Sound familiar? We’ve all been there!) This mini series offers you a whole new perspective—or set of lenses—through which to view your opportunity and make decisions to help you make that change, whatever it may be. Try it, it might just work for you!
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