book publishing

[KevinH]

Hi, has anyone written about their adventures/dreams/disasters on moving to France and tried to get it published.  I am thinking along these lines and was wondering a) if anyone else had tried it and b) if I self published it, would there be a  market for it.

I would be very interested in any feedback (this is my way of doing some market research to see if it is worth doing!).

Thanks for any advice.

Kind regards

Kel

[zeb]

Judging by the travel section at Stansted, many have succeeded, but, I suspect, many have failed!

You could try Susie Kelly's website. She has written a couple of books about her adventures in France, and helps budding writers.

www.susiekelly.com

Good luck and let us know when it's published.

[Hirondelle]

Bookshops these days seem to be awash with these kind of things, so I don't think you'd be filling a gap in the market as such. However, clearly a market does exist so I suspect it's not an entirely fruitless exercise. In my experience, most aren't that great being neither funny nor instructive. If you can manage to make yours at least one of these, I think you'd be doing better than most.

[Will]

Since Peter Mayle started the current crop of such books there have been hundreds - try a search on Amazon - most of them pretty dire. In my own opinion the best is the series by George East, though some don't like his rather exaggerated humour. He manages to be both funny and informative, though the former tends to swamp the latter at times.

George has had to struggle with publishing the books himself from1994, when the first appeared, up to last year, when he got a deal with a proper publisher to re-issue the books in updated form. It would be well worth contacting George through his web site www.la-puce.co.uk, he is a very nice chap, extremely friendly and helpful.

[PossumGirl]

I've actually just done one, Kevin.  I'd be happy to talk to you about it if you email me or PM me.  I don't want to do anything that might be construed as advertising on the forum!

PG

[Jo53]

Be sure to do a lot of research before you enter into any self-publishing deal. Be very wary of ads in magazines etc that say 'new authors wanted' or whatever. These companies do not want 'new authors', they want people to pay them to produce books. You could end up paying more to get the book produced than you could make back in sales.

But good luck; there are lots of books out there, but there is always room for another if it's original enough.

Jo

[PossumGirl]

There's self-publishing and self-publishing. Doing it yourself with a company like Lightning Source which does POD (print on demand) is not the same as those vanity press companies that try to get you to pay for them to publish your books.

However, you then become an actual publishing company and have to deal with publicity, selling, marketing, etc.

PG

[tetley]

we thought about writing a book of our move, from a childs point of view.  our 8 yr old son kept a diary for 6 months starting with our departure from uk, looking for our new house, all the meetings they had to endure, moving into new house, starting school etc....but 9 months on it has lost its appeal.  We are still meeting with challenges, so I don't know when our story would be finished.  Nice to look back over the diary though.