Has any TFF members published anything?

[DartmoorEwe]

I met someone the other day who published a book and it got me thinking. What's out there?

 

[Lofty1984]

@Rarebreedewe

 

[pappuller]

I met someone the other day who published a book and it got me thinking. What's out there?

My wife created and had made 500 copies of a cake recipe book about 10 years ago during her cake making days.
Sold them all through word of mouth and local social media.

 

[Dry Rot]

In the trade, it's called vanity publishing. There are printers out there who will print your book for a price and give you x copies to distribute to friends and family.

A worthwhile writer should be able to find a publisher who will pay an attractive advance, then handle all the publicity and sales with a further royalties to the author for each copy sold. He might even get commissioned to write a book, especially if he is a known expert in his field.

Most publishers will not even bother opening a book (they don't actually read them but pay someone to do it!) for their readers read unless you have an agent to represent you, so that's a first step. But to get an agent, you probably need to be known or have some sort of reputation. A good way into writing is to get published in newspapers and magazines for which you might actually be paid. Letters to the editor is one way and writing on forums like this one is another. Good practice but not very profitable.

But be prepared. In the publishing trade, the writer is the lowest form of animal life and gets treated as such. Your articles may not even get acknowledged, let alone paid for! A book submitted without an agent will probably go straight into the trash.

Yes, you can publish a book. Best get a typographer to set it up for you, then hand it to a printer of which there are many. Then pay them and set about selling a few hundred copies which may not be as easy as you think it should be. Try farming. Shove a few seeds in the ground, harvest what grows, sell it at farmers' markets and make a fortune! Piece of cake!

 

[Al R]

@Global ovine may have? If he hasn’t then he definitely should

 

[sean m]

In the trade, it's called vanity publishing. There are printers out there who will print your book for a price and give you x copies to distribute to friends and family.

A worthwhile writer should be able to find a publisher who will pay an attractive advance, then handle all the publicity and sales with a further royalties to the author for each copy sold. He might even get commissioned to write a book, especially if he is a known expert in his field.

Most publishers will not even bother opening a book (they don't actually read them but pay someone to do it!) for their readers read unless you have an agent to represent you, so that's a first step. But to get an agent, you probably need to be known or have some sort of reputation. A good way into writing is to get published in newspapers and magazines for which you might actually be paid. Letters to the editor is one way and writing on forums like this one is another. Good practice but not very profitable.

But be prepared. In the publishing trade, the writer is the lowest form of animal life and gets treated as such. Your articles may not even get acknowledged, let alone paid for! A book submitted without an agent will probably go straight into the trash.

Yes, you can publish a book. Best get a typographer to set it up for you, then hand it to a printer of which there are many. Then pay them and set about selling a few hundred copies which may not be as easy as you think it should be. Try farming. Shove a few seeds in the ground, harvest what grows, sell it at farmers' markets and make a fortune! Piece of cake!

you dodged the question,how many did you write?

 

[Woolless]

I don't think I've got the Great Scottish Novel in me but I've had a fair bit of journalism published until I gave it up to take on a bigger farm and more sheep . I generally try to make sure that my posts are written intelligibly and the spelling is correct!

 

[Dry Rot]

you dodged the question,how many did you write?

I leave answering questions like that to my agent!
Well, I would if I had one.

 

[Tarw Coch]

@Charlie Flindt has wrote a book as well as regular pages in the FW

 

[Tarw Coch]

Not quite a book but @guysmirh did produce a booklet some years back intended to educate our customers about farming

 

[MRT]

In the trade, it's called vanity publishing. There are printers out there who will print your book for a price and give you x copies to distribute to friends and family.

A worthwhile writer should be able to find a publisher who will pay an attractive advance, then handle all the publicity and sales with a further royalties to the author for each copy sold. He might even get commissioned to write a book, especially if he is a known expert in his field.

Most publishers will not even bother opening a book (they don't actually read them but pay someone to do it!) for their readers read unless you have an agent to represent you, so that's a first step. But to get an agent, you probably need to be known or have some sort of reputation. A good way into writing is to get published in newspapers and magazines for which you might actually be paid. Letters to the editor is one way and writing on forums like this one is another. Good practice but not very profitable.

But be prepared. In the publishing trade, the writer is the lowest form of animal life and gets treated as such. Your articles may not even get acknowledged, let alone paid for! A book submitted without an agent will probably go straight into the trash.

Yes, you can publish a book. Best get a typographer to set it up for you, then hand it to a printer of which there are many. Then pay them and set about selling a few hundred copies which may not be as easy as you think it should be. Try farming. Shove a few seeds in the ground, harvest what grows, sell it at farmers' markets and make a fortune! Piece of cake!

Loved your last book, very flammable!

 

[neilo]

Loved your last book, very flammable!

@Dry Rot will be asking you to write a reference for the back cover of his next one.

 

[Dry Rot]

@Dry Rot will be asking you to write a reference for the back cover of his next one.

Believe it or not, some of those are written by the authors themselves! There are little circles of authors all busily reviewing each other's books. I know a few authors and when the wine starts flowing the truth comes out.

 

[Derrick Hughes]

My wife .
But I did a lot of the Research for her
John Jones Tirbach and the history of . 1688 to 1993

 

[easyram1]

@Global ovine may have? If he hasn’t then he definitely should

He has.3 versions of GO's "bible" have been produced to date and so far over 2500 copies have been given away. All have been produced and paid for by EasyRams ( apologies to those who criticize our big promotional spend!!). The latest version entitled "The 5 Proven Game Changers" is shorter and more concise than the earlier versions and can be downloaded FOC off the EasyRams website.

 

[neilo]

He has.3 versions of GO's "bible" have been produced to date and so far over 2500 copies have been given away. All have been produced and paid for by EasyRams ( apologies to those who criticize our big promotional spend!!). The latest version entitled "The 5 Proven Game Changers" is shorter and more concise than the earlier versions and can be downloaded FOC off the EasyRams website.

Yes, but those are full of adverts...

 

[Exfarmer]

Publishing has got incredibly difficult over the last 20 years for budding authors, because more books have been published by so many and sales have dropped like a stone.
To get published you will need to have a famous face, in which case it will virtually certainly be ghost written. Or you will need to get a film or TV series. This gives you the chicken and egg situation , no film no book, no book, no film.
To be fair there are a very small number squeeze through the gap, but very frequently they just by chance happen to know the right person.
It is actually very easy to publish your self, there are millions of self publishers out there, Amazon is full of electronic books. many do indeed have actual books printed, but selling is another issue and garages across the country are full of copies which will end up pulped when the poor author realises he is running out of friends to gift .
This vanity publishing has been around since Victorian times, but the internet has made it possible for everyone

 

[Al R]

He has.3 versions of GO's "bible" have been produced to date and so far over 2500 copies have been given away. All have been produced and paid for by EasyRams ( apologies to those who criticize our big promotional spend!!). The latest version entitled "The 5 Proven Game Changers" is shorter and more concise than the earlier versions and can be downloaded FOC off the EasyRams website.

Aye I knew that but after hearing him talk a few years ago about his whole farming life in brief, I was genuinely interested in the ups and downs @Global ovine had encountered and how he’d smashed through them, a man of serious experience and the chat we had when I met him was an extremely positive aura and great enthusiasm for the industry as a whole, I’m not usually keen on “advisors” and find them pushy or lack practical experience but M R knew different scenarios/climates/breeds etc

 

[Global ovine]

Thanks @Al R for the vote of confidence. I don't really want to write an autobiography. However I am quite happy to use some of my experiences in working one's business out of a hole and becoming profitable (and thus happier) if it helps listeners/readers understand the point I am trying make.

I took my elderly father to a Returned Servicemen gathering late in his life. They initially were a jolly bunch yarning about crazy things they did during the war years. But near the end many had tears running down their face as they remembered the waste of their mates. Although my early farming experiences were nowhere as dramatic, I too easily get emotional at the memories of devastation of some families who lacked the tools to to each get out of their hole. Therefore I am much more comfortable discussing the main tools, those universal principles which work in all environments.
I am very appreciative of @easyram1 using some of these discussion points by publishing them in booklet form.

 

[Paddington]

I know someone who set up their own online publishing company to publish handbooks. Initially it was a one off, but she got lots of requests for further books and now has published several in the horsey world.