As a COVID 19 isolation project a couple of friends and I are putting together a cook book with loads of ideas of things to do with excessive home garden produce and pantry items. It’s not meant to be a super glossy, all-things-to-all-people deal and is intended to be a self-published project which will, hopefully, be of use to some people (and it helps us keep our various writing and administration skills in check during the lock down).

When we started scoping out the project, I put forward a timeline of all of the various things that we needed to do in order to get the book out. I included everything from collecting and writing the content, to cover design, launch requirements and National Library submissions.

One of the group said how amazed she was at the amount of work that went into producing a single book. And she’s right. A huge amount of effort goes into every publication, regardless of whether you go through a traditional publisher, a hybrid publisher or self publish.

And that’s before you have to do the marketing component.

Reviews are essential to the promotion of a book and can really influence sales. I review about 60 books a year, from a variety of genres, for traditionally published, hybrid published and self published authors. They are of varying quality. Some I love, some I like, and some I don’t.  My reviews appear on this site, Amazon, GoodReads and LibraryThing. From this point on, I’ve decided not to publish reviews for book which I consider to be less than a 3 star rating. This is so I do not adversely impact their overall ratings. Free copies of books will be returned to allow you to give them to another reviewer.

It takes considerable time and effort to produce a book, work of art or any other creative project. Regardless of whether anyone else likes it, you should be proud of your achievement. Keep striving for your goals.

Are you interested in getting your book reviewed? Use the form on the applications page