Depending on whether you know me from the family business days, my current freelance position or you’re just stumbling onto this post, you might not know that while I was studying to become a graphic and web designer, I self published a book.
At the time of self publishing, (despite having the incredible help and guidance of my mother, Jenny Mosher, who had published two or three books for friends and clients by this point) the process was long, tedious, expensive, and resulted in very little exposure. Essentially I had an ISBN and a print run done – no distribution, no marketing, nothing to actually help with sales. I had a total blast creating and producing the book but it wasn’t really a sales-friendly method.
This was around the same time the fire was starting in Jenny’s mind. She’d been constantly researching better ways to get our books out there and hitting dead ends left, right and centre – mainly because of our location in Australia. All the innovation was happening in America and despite the internet and globalisation, we Aussies seemed to be locked out. It seemed impossible to get access to all these great opportunities being created in the US.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learnt about my mother, it’s that you don’t tell her something’s impossible! In the six years between my modest ‘publishing’ job and now, Jenny cracked the American market, tapped into Amazon’s print-on-demand service, created a reliable self publishing model for Australian authors, and now we offer that to authors all around the country. It’s called IndieMosh. We republished my book using the IndieMosh model and I now sell enough copies every month to cover a few bills without a single cent on marketing.
This is what I’m doing if I’m not working on your flyers and newsletters – I’m laying out books for print, creating ebook files, and designing covers. It’s an absolutely brilliant industry to be part of – Aussie authors are among the smartest, most fun people to work with and their creativity constantly astounds me.
But we do find that when authors first approach us, they’re already exhausted and confused from trying to navigate the self publishing scene. What we offer is a guided self publishing process where their book goes out under our publishing label, but what if you want to completely DIY it? Or what if we’re not a good fit for you? Where do you turn then?
In response to that confusion, misinformation and lack of guidance available for Australian authors who want to self publish, Jenny has written Self publishing for Australian authors: What you need to have, know and do. It’s a practical guide in down-to-earth language helping you sort out the decisions you’ll need to make, elements you’ll need to think about and steps you’ll need to take to either self publish your book or find and work with a self publishing facilitator such as IndieMosh.
Obviously I can’t sing Jenny’s praises too much as I’m her daughter – some might say I’m biased 😉 – but I had the honour of beta-reading this book (and updating some of the ‘boomer’ language for my own generation!) and it’s a punchy little book – full of meat with no wasted time. Despite actually working in a self publishing company I found myself learning from it, and I’m full of ideas for my next book now!
If you’re looking into self publishing or you know somebody finishing their new novel or non-fiction masterpiece, have a look at Jenny’s website for more details. You can grab the book as a paperback or an ebook and as at July 6 Jenny is running a pre-order special.
We’re always fascinated to hear about the self publishing experience other Aussie authors have had! If you’re having trouble, or better, if you’ve had success, self publishing, comment and tell me about it – and if you have any questions about what it is we do at IndieMosh, hop on over to the website or feel free to comment here and ask.
