slip-sliding away…..

Continuing from part 1, this series chronicles the journey of publishing my upcoming book.

Let it Flow was originally supposed to be a “best of” – bringing together what I considered my most meaningful creative pieces published on this blog from 2006 to 2016. Given that I posted quite regularly over that decade, I had a huge body of material to work through – spanning poetry, reflections, musings, and a lot of photography. I didn’t have any specific formula I wanted to follow in terms of what would make the cut. My only guide was intuition: whatever felt like it belonged in the book was what made it.

Is it book-worthy?

Initially, the project was supposed to produce a PDF – which I would make freely available on the blog, just as I’d done a few years earlier with my Hajj Chronicles e-book. However, the further I progressed, the more it felt like this needed a more formal treatment. My gut told me that this should be published as an actual book – whether that was through traditional publishing (either a commercial or independent publisher), or by self-publishing. But, given my lack of experience in the publishing world, my opinion didn’t necessarily reflect the reality of whether this was actually good enough to be a book. So, my next step was to seek an assessment from professionals in the field. This felt like a fairly unique project at the time, and a professional would be best placed to advise me on the feasibility of pursuing the book route.

Green light

After receiving a positive response, I roped in an old acquaintance who had – by that time – become a talented typographer and book layout professional. Unfortunately, with an almost non-existent publishing budget, I couldn’t offer much in the way of compensation. She kindly agreed to take it on for a minimal fee – though, of course, my project would be low priority for her. And that was fine with me, because I had a long road ahead to refine the body of content into a workable final book. I was just happy to be getting a high quality service from someone with the creative vision to make this an elegant final product. Initial discussions were productive, even leading to some samples that showed what a print book would look like:

Looks promising, right? Well, unfortunately, things didn’t go smoothly from there, as you’ll find out in the next edition…

Other parts in this series:

1. How it all began
2. From blog to book
3. Things fall apart
4. Publishing decisions
5. Making things happen
6. Don’t dream it’s over
7. Paper rules