PUBLISHING WITH CREATESPACE

Can't decide what to do with your book now that it's finished? 

Writing can be such a solitary journey and deciding how to go about publishing your book when it's finished can be mind-bending. Most writers will have heard of CreateSpace, but for those that haven't I wanted to share my experience with you.

My first book, Marie's Voice, was mainstream published 20 years ago, and when I finished writing my second book I wanted to have complete control over my work and (foolishly) published with Authorhouse. After throwing pot after pot of money at them I got wise and broke off my association with the company. 

I was on my own.

In the last year or so I heard so many authors speak favourably of publishing with CreateSpace that when my book With a Little Help From my Friends was finished I made my own enquiries and expected to fork out all kinds of money just like I had for Authorhouse. So imagine my surprise (and delight) when I learnt that CreateSpace publish books for FREE!! I couldn't believe it!

CreateSpace is a POD publishing company owned by Amazon. All advertising and promotion would be my responsibility and the printing, theirs. Unlike mainstream publishers, I would not be under contract and would retain the rights to my book. I won't waste time going into all the benefits as their website will explain far better than I can. CreateSpace 

My heart soon dropped when I checked out the CreateSpace site. Uploading a book in the correct format was far too complicated for my non-tech mind. I knew it had to be done properly. I don't know about you, but I find it so irritating when writers upload onto Kindle or other apps without taking the time to do correct conversion leaving broken sentences and chapters starting at the bottom of the page. It puts me right off. Where is the pride in their work?

Then a facebook friend gave me the details of a lady that formatted his book for CreateSpace, so I contacted MaryChris@TheBookTeam.com based in New Jersey, USA. After a few emails back and too, I sent MaryChris my word document and she converted my book for Kindle and also CreateSpace. Not only did she provide that service but she also uploaded the files for me, and at a very reasonable fee. 

What happened after file was uploaded? CreateSpace checked file for errors and then contacted me (within 24 hours) to either order a paperback proof copy of my book or have it sent through a PDF file. When I was satisfied with proof I went to my account and clicked on 'Approve' and my book was for sale on Amazon almost immediately.

My experience with CreateSpace has been very positive. The system is simple to navigate and book deliveries are reliable. When I found 6 six books (in a box of 40) with damaged spines, I informed CreateSpace and they immediately replaced the damaged goods, which I had not expected them to do.

I find a word-of-mouth recommendation far more helpful than having to browse the internet looking for - I don't know what? I've met some fab authors on Twitter @michelledalyliv and Facebook, which is why I wanted to share with you what friends have shared with me.

So go on, if you have an ebook and can't decide whether or not to publish a paperback, you could have it done while you're thinking about it. 

UPDATE

Delighted to announce I also published my books in hardback with Lulu (CreateSpace do not offer this service - yet!) I used my usual book formatter and all went without a hitch. The only snag was hardback failed to show up on Amazon, so after a month or two I contacted Lulu to ask why. Apparently, although publishing with Lulu is free, a Global Distribution package (£47 per book) has to be purchased in order for them to distribute book details to retailers. Once the Global Distribution package is purchased book details take about five weeks to reach Amazon and other outlets.

  My books are now available in paperback, Kindle and hardback. 

 Follow Mary Chris Bradley @The_ Book_Team on Twitter

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Celebrating my two publications with special cakes

Well, it's that wonderful time of the year again! I am sitting here on this Christmas Eve waiting for Patrick and Anna to come home. Marie is carried along with the excitement awaiting her brother and sister's arrival.

This time last year my son and daughter were working over Christmas and I spent most of the festive period writing With a Little Help From my Friends.  And now a year later my book is published and already received some great reviews. I also dropped Authorhouse and published 'I Love Charlotte Bronté' myself. So this year in fact, I became my own woman. Haha, I know most of my friends will laugh at that remark because I have always been bossy and like all my own way and 'my own woman' is all I've ever been. 

Do you like my dolls? They're like Marmite; people love them or hate them but I will tell you how I came to possess them.

Some years ago when I was living in the west of Ireland I was driving through a little town called Castlerea, in the county of Roscommon, when I noticed these five mannequins in the window of a childrens clothing shop. I am one of five girls and they immediately reminded me of my sisters, so I stopped the car and went into the shop. I told the woman how lovely I thought they were and asked if she ever wanted to sell them to give me a call. I left my contact details with her and drove on home. Imagine my surprise when she rang me a couple of weeks later to say she was retiring and her shop was closing down. She invited me to make her an offer on the five mannequins. That kind lady gave me them for next to nothing, saying how glad she was that they were going to a good home. She even threw a baby in for luck! There are four of them in the picture. I have the smallest one and baby in another room beside our 2nd Christmas tree. So that's the story behind them and they remind me of happy times with my sisters when I was little.

I wonder what 2013 has in store? Now that my writing projects are finished I am going to concentrate on getting I Love Charlotte Bronté on  stage. The script is ready, I just need an enthusiastic director. Fingers crossed and let's hope it's up and running this time next year.

Finally I would like to wish all my friends and those on Facebook and Twitter too, a merry Christmas and for those who've lost a loved one this year, I hope you won't feel too sad over the holiday.

Michelle xxx

WHAT TO WEAR FOR AN INTERVIEW WITH A PUBLISHER

  

  

Just what do you wear for an interview with a publisher? Oh my goodness, I was stumped! It was the early 90s in Ireland and I was living in County Mayo; a time when the late great Gerry Ryan was entertaining the nation with his RTE radio programme, the Emerald Isle’s football team made it to the World Cup and Mary Robinson was the first female to be elected President.       

Arriving home from a weekend at my friend Anne’s, and where I'd left the children for an extra overnight stay, I had the contents of my wardrobe strewn across the bed. Blue and black – black and blue - were the only colours I ever wore. Should I look smart? Casual? Smart-casual? Then again did it really matter? Yes, I decided, it did, but I needed to wear clothes I felt comfortable in so I could relax and be myself. Not too relaxed though because I had to try and convince this publisher that my story deserved to be published. Yikes, it was a scary thought.

I settled on a light-blue top and gypsy skirt with navy sandals. I thought ‘bright and breezy’ was the best option and reminded myself the most important thing to wear was a smile.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I hoped the weather remained dry. Rain would be disastrous for my curly hair. I only had to go near a boiling kettle and it frizzed up. 

My biggest nightmare would be arriving at the publisher’s office like a drowned rat or worse still, like I’d had an electric shock.

I arrived in Dublin in plenty of time and strolled up O’Connell Street weaving in and out of the lunchtime crowd, up past the famous Floozy in the Jacuzzi and the Gresham Hotel. 

I was excited about meeting the publisher, and pleased too that the sun was shining. So far so good; all was going to plan. 

"WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS"

Well, it's finally here - that labour of love that has consumed me for the last two years - that is of course when I wasn't caring for my daughter. I don't mind telling you that juggling writing and being a full time carer to my lovely daughter has been exhausting. I know many of you will understand what I mean because lots of you are also carers. Our priority is to care and nurture a family member that is totally dependant on our love and support, which often leaves us little time or energy to develop our own interests. We become isolated and can easilly forget there's a world out there that still holds a place for  us.  

So last Christmas I made a pact with myself; writing and caring had to somehow be separated and I had to establish some kind of writing schedule or I would never finish my book. I needed peace and quiet, without any distractions.

I decided that when Marie went to bed at 11pm (well, she is 47!) that I would also hit the hay. I set my alarm clock for 2.30 in the morning and crossed my fingers. It was difficult at first. I would fall out of bed at that Godforsaken hour telling myself over and over it had to be done. It was the only way I would ever achieve my goal. I wrapped myself in my pink fluffy dressing gown and slippers (resembling a big fat marshmallow) and headed for the kitchen to make a cuppa. Then I lit a candle and placed that burning flame of hope on my desk, rubbed my sleepy eyes and switched on my computer.

1970 Age 5 Learning to walk

You see my daughter inspires me more than anybody. She has a severe learning disability, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, dysphasia and scoliosis, yet she goes to bed and awakes with a big smile on her face. If she can cope with all that life's dealt her then I should be able to do anything. No excuses. 

It was hard - so so hard, but I stuck with it night after night, week after week, month after month, until With a Little Help From my Friends was completed. 

I look back now and wonder how I did it. But I didn't do it alone. With my  lovely daughter's courage and inspiration and my determination, I say we wrote that book together. 

Michelle Daly's - My Recipe for Writing

When some people hear you've had a book published what's the first thing they ask you? 
You guessed right. 'How long did it take you to write it.' 
I think that's because everybody has a book in them and loads of people want to write one, but they want to start it tomorrow and finish it yesterday. I was hardly 'writer' material. On the day I left school my Headmaster handed me a reference on which he'd written, 'Michelle thinks life is one big joke!' Well, you can't really argue with that when you're fifteen, can you?

My first book, Marie's Voice, began as a rant on my Brother typewriter in the 80’s. More than a decade earlier, at the age of sixteen, I had been working in a children's home (Nazareth House) where I met a little girl named Marie. (Pronounced Mar-ree). She couldn’t walk and dragged her feet along the polished floors, infuriating the nuns who would then banish her to the pram storeroom. Marie would be placed on the floor in the middle of the room and the door would close on her, leaving her alone for hours. She screamed and screeched until she knocked herself unconscious, and was only brought out at mealtimes, when she was fed on baby cereal.

Being third eldest of seven children, it was hard for me to imagine not being wanted by anybody. I immediately bonded with this little girl, and when the home closed down six months later, I followed her to a hospital in Taunton for the mentally handicapped, where she was given a bed, and I was offered a job.

Me (16 on the right) at my sister Cathy's in 1970 after the convent closed down and just before I went to Sandhill Park Hospital in Taunton.

Working in the hospital was like stepping into another world; a world where human beings with over-whelming qualities were classed as sub-normal. Looking at the same view from the ward window year in and year out, the only stimulation being the clatter of the food trolley that called to the wards three times a day, but in those days fostering or adoption was not an option for a disabled child, and it seemed that once they entered the hospital, they never left it. 

After a few months I decided I had to get out of there. I also decided to get Marie out of there too. I traced Marie's mother, who very selflessly signed legal guardianship papers, enabling me to bring Marie home to live with me. By that time I was nineteen and Marie was eight. From then on Marie looked upon me as her mother, and I looked upon her as my daughter.

First few months at home getting to grips with a pencil

I loved being Marie's Mum but I could not believe the way parents were treated by so called professionals. I learned early on that we should be seen and not heard, that parents of disabled children were not encouraged to have ideas with regard to behaviour management or basic care, we were just expected to keep our son/daughter clean and well fed and leave the observations to the experts.
At school Marie threw her food on the floor and caused such a scene that the teachers felt they had to feed her. I asked them not to because Marie was able to feed herself at home, and I knew that if they didn't give in to her anti-social behaviour, that she would give up and feed herself. I was met with raised eyebrows. What did I know?
I asked if I could send a diary into school (long before diaries became the norm) to enable the school and I to document Marie's 'difficult' behaviour and work closely together, but I soon learned that what went on in school was none of my business.

The years passed by and conflicts with officials became a way of life. It was only after a very upsetting dispute about my parenting skills, and my refusal to be dictated to, that I'd had enough and knew I had to tell our story.

By this time I was married and had two children under three; Marie was nineteen. My days were already full, but I think it's true, that if we want to do something badly enough we will find a way. I did.
It was just after Christmas, which is my favourite time of the year, when everything stops for the holiday and I go into my thinking mode, that I decided to write a book. So I set up my own little corner in the bedroom and bought a wall paper pasting table, a dictionary, a thesaurus and some foolscap paper, so I could make a copy!

I'd documented most of my experiences, from bringing a child out of a hospital for the mentally handicapped in the 70's, to trying to adjust to life in the community. Fortunately, I am a hoarder, and had kept every piece of correspondence relating to Marie and my struggle with 'officials' Even the envelopes came in handy when enclosed letters were not dated, at least I had the postmark. I bought loads of diaries, one for each year, filling in the dates and ignoring the days, otherwise it wouldn't have worked. Then, I filled in the relevant correspondence from over the years. This gave me a really good head start, enabling me to fill in the gaps and make sense of things.

Every night when the children were in bed I'd be tap tap tapping away. I turned the pages into chapters and spread the chapters across my pasting table, and soon a book began to form.

Patrick having a cuddle on 18 year-old Marie's knee before bedtime.

Today, I say I wrote myself out of a nervous breakdown.
I had been so beaten down by the system. I thought I was a crap mother and was led to believe all the snide and slanderous remarks made against me by people who should have known better.

I finished the book almost a year later. I then decided to find an agent, but gave up after a while and sent it directly to publishers. When Virago sent me a rejection letter, they apologised for keeping my manuscript for so long, saying that all of their staff had wanted to read it, and had loved it. They also said their publishing house was too small for my book, and it would simply 'get lost' with them. So I decided to put my manuscript away in the drawer. There was no rush to have it published. I've never been very ambitious, I was just so happy that I'd written it.

Anna, Marie and Patrick

 It wasn't until I moved to Ireland in 1990 that I dusted my manuscript down, bought myself a word processor, and more or less re-wrote my book. So much had happened since the first draft I now needed to update it and bring some closure. 

I completed the book mid December that same year, and with a great deal of excitement, the children and I went into town on Christmas Eve to send it off to a Dublin publisher. 

For those who are curious, it took 10 long months before the publisher rang me with the news that they were going to publish my story, and six months later it was published.

I remember so clearly that spring day my book was due to arrive. There was a postal strike in Ireland, and the publisher had sent me a special delivery by rail. I was sitting on a bench with my children in the railway station in Co Mayo, smiling when I heard the train in the distance, knowing it had my freshly printed book on board. What a feeling when I opened the box on the platform to see my daughter smiling at me from the cover! At last my dream had come true.

So when people ask, 'How long does it take to write a book?' It's a question I can't really answer. Do we count the years in between?

Of course, anybody can write a book and we each have our own recipes. The ingredients for my first book was passion, determination, the desire to put many wrongs right, and staying power.
Which brings me to the other common question: Where do I get my inspiration? Mainly from watching how we all treat each other.

Why I decided to write I Love Charlotte Bronté 

When I returned to England from Ireland I did agency work. People used to ask me why I'd never trained to be a nurse but the truth is the more you 'train' the further removed you are from the patients. I like to work on the floor with a hands-on approach to all the residents, not stuck in an office with paperwork. This kind of work can be very sad and yet most of the staff I worked with just rolled up their sleeves and got on with it. I felt proud to work alongside them and decided to write a book about an underpaid, undervalued, dedicated careworker. 
I worked nights and whenever I had a break I would sit at the radiotor by the window with my pencil and notebook and scribble away.

I grew up in Liverpool where my grandparents had settled when they came over from Ireland. When I chose to go and live in Ireland - because of my ‘Irishness’ - I was in for a shock. I soon realized how little I knew about Irish culture and history.
I had a wonderful time living amongst the Irish and felt compelled to write a novel celebrating the Liverpool/Irish connection. It was also an opportunity to leave something for my children and grandchildren to read after I had gone to the skies above.

And finally, I am a great admirer of Charlotte Bronté. Charlotte is almost as famous for her short tragic life as she is for her career. If we look to the beginning of her publishing career Charlotte and her two sisters, Emily and Anne, published a book of poetry under the pseudonyms of Ellis, Acton and Currer Bell, expecting their work to be taken more seriously if submitted as men. The book, which cost £37 to publish was almost a year’s wages in those days but sold only two copies. Did she/they give up? Fortunately for millions of readers she went on to her next project with unblinkered determination. It’s difficult not to admire someone who overcame so many difficulties and achieved so much; someone who gave us one of the greatest novels ever written. And above all someone who never ever gave up...However, everything I read about Charlotte was written by academics. I decided to write about this great author through the eyes of a working class woman and because Charlotte was half Irish everything just fell into place. So they were my main reasons...

Where there’s a will....

Being a carer can be very isolating but I’m quite a strong person, and a dangerous optimist, and I try to make the most of each day. When I decided on the title and wrote it down I couldn’t wait to get started; the story was just waiting to be told. I had a strict writing schedule. Marie and I would usually go up to the attic (office) after breakfast and I would work for most of the day. Her limited understanding can often present challenging behaviour but it was as if she sensed how important the project was to me. She would sit beside my desk scribbling away in her exercise book or playing with her blocks. I’d glance at her occasionally and feel so humbled it would make me all the more determined to stick with it. In my mind we wrote the book together because if she hadn’t been so compliant I couldn’t have written it.

I was far more confident and familiar with the publishing world when I wrote ILCB. I knew exactly what I wanted even down to the cover. But it was also a different publishing world. The market was saturated with writers. Nowadays so many people work from home and there are more opportunities to work on that novel. Publishers no longer had in-house readers and were far more unreachable. I remember listening to an author being interviewed on the radio. She was saying how thrilled she was with her agent, how he guided her with the storyline and book development. She said her name began with V or something but they’d suggested she change it to something beginning with C so she’d be next to Jackie Collins on the bookshelves..
I would never have agreed to that.

I realised the only way I’d have full control over my work would be to publish it myself. I had to work twice as hard because I didn’t have a team of professionals behind me but I’m glad I went down that route. There used to be a lot of snobbery towards self publishing but it’s becoming more acceptable as writers are taking control over their own work.

My office was a peaceful place to write. I didn’t answer the door or phone and I didn’t do much reading because when I wasn’t writing on my computer I was often writing in my head. Although I have to admit there were days when I dragged myself (and poor Marie) up to the attic whilst thinking of a million excuses not to write that day, sometimes writing is a labour of love and you just have to get on and do it. Besides, the characters are so alive they’re like friends. Some days I tell them what to do and other days I’m astounded at their unpredictability and the fun I have with them. I also have to think about Marie’s future and that’s a great motivator. So my reasons for writing are what drive me when times get tough.

When I Love Charlotte Bronté was published one of my proudest moments was visiting Haworth and seeing it on the shelf in the Bronte Parsonage Museum Bookshop. You should have seen the smile on my face.

I often wish I'd had a better education so I could be a better writer but then I wouldn't have met such incredible people and had these stories to tell and I wouldn't be me. I have learned to 'own' my writing. It's the only voice I have and I hope I speak up for and reach out to the people I care about the most.


Marie's Voice has been updated and published under the title of With a Little Help from my Friends...