Another brilliant nonfiction book from Anna Featherstone! The depth of knowledge, insight, and research that has gone into this instructional work for self-publishing nonfiction is outstanding.
Featherstone has over ten years’ experience in writing, reading, research, and self-publishing on nonfiction topics, and she’s taken the very meta step of self-publishing a book about self-publishing, based on her comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the topic. This book contains absolutely everything you would need to consider before, during and after self-publishing a nonfiction work. Chapters start at Writing and Editing: 1. Why Write a Non-Fiction Book?, then progress through every conceivable aspect of self-publishing, from being careful of vanity and scam publishing schemes, to knowing what illustrations (if any) to include, to how to get your book into libraries, to podcasting and spin-offs, to what a structural editor does, to prioritising your marketing areas, to how to have your book recorded as an audio book. There is absolutely nothing that isn’t covered and Featherstone has interviewed experts and professionals across all fields of book writing, editing, design, publication, marketing, distribution, and so on to give deep insight into every aspect of the process.
The thing that I particularly appreciate in this work, and it’s the same in her other titles, is that Featherstone hits the perfect tonal balance between relatable-and-encouraging and clear-eyed-and-serious. There are no illusions here, no starry-eyed assurances that self-publishing is the best approach, that writing a book is an easy and glamorous way to get famous and rich, or that what works for one author and their topic will work for another. Every major decision that an author will face – from the fundamental traditional-versus-self-publishing route to whether or not to turn a book into an audiobook – comes with a pros and cons list. Like most things in life, nothing is all good or all bad, and Featherstone takes great pains to inform her audience of every option available to them, including case studies of others who have self-published and can attest to the level of work required and the mistakes they made along the way.
This book is an absolute must-read for anyone self-publishing a nonfiction book, whether they’ve already started the process, have self-published before and are looking to up their game the next time around, or are simply pondering the idea and where they might start. And as the book itself is a self-published nonfiction work, the proof is very much in the pudding; Featherstone’s experience shines through in the depth of research, the high level of editing, the genre-appropriate cover and interior design, the indexed end matter, the professional website with ‘lead magnets’, and the workbook that was released alongside the main book full of checklists and links for self-publishers.
Read it for interest, read it to educate yourself, read it so you can laugh and know that self-publishing actually isn’t something you want to commit to – this book gives you everything you need to find your own way!
I was provided a free copy of this book by the publisher in return for an honest review.
