You’ve decided to write a memoir or the biography of a family member, or perhaps an autobiography. Where to start?
1 Consider your source material
Perhaps you were inspired to write by coming across some old diaries in the attic? or perhaps a collection of letters? or perhaps it was some old calendars? – or perhaps just memories of an interesting life? Whatever your source, it’s sensible to back it up with as much contextual research as you can manage. So you saw the Beatles in Liverpool in the 1960s but when was that in relation to their return from Germany? How big was the hall they were playing in? What record was Number 1 at that time? So you were fighting in Afghanistan in 2010 but what were the reasons for Britain’s intervention? What other foreign forces were there? What had Pakistan and Iran to do with it? Contextual information will help your readers to position themselves in relation to the central theme of the book and will add to its interest. It’s worth spending time on additional research.
2 Decide on a structure
It’s amazing how many people start to write without first considering the structure of the book they’re about to write – as if they never went to school and the teacher never told them to divide their essay into three or more paragraphs with a beginning, a middle and a conclusion. Once you’ve completed the background research, it’s vital to think hard about the structure of the book before you start writing it. It can be helpful to sketch out a possible list of contents, listing the various chapters, or divide the book into parts containing chapters. Without such subdivisions, the book will be indigestible. Also, from your own point of view as the writer, even a short book is a major undertaking. As with all large undertakings, it helps to break it down into smaller parts otherwise the work can become overwhelming and lose balance.
3 Choose an editor
So at last you’ve written the book. The next thing is to get it copy-edited. We do this for you at YouCaxton Publications but you may know someone who’s willing to undertake the work for you. Either way, it’s important to have it done. Even the most experienced writers can’t see their own mistakes otherwise they wouldn’t make them. Copy-editing involves careful line-by-line inspection of your manuscript, looking for errors of grammar, spelling and consistency, also any factual errors that are easily apparent to the editor.
4 Decide how to publish
Most memoirs and biographies are written for the benefit of friends and family but quite a number appeal to a larger potential audience. Nowadays, with digital and print-on-demand printing, it’s easy to produce a limited edition for family and friends and also to make the book available to the public online via Amazon and other online retailers, and perhaps also to publish an eBook version. Online availability can be especially useful if some of the potential readership is overseas. How you want to publish or print should dictate who you commission to do the work.
5 Choosing a publisher
Nowadays it’s possible to do everything concerned with publishing yourself but this is usually a false economy given the amount of time taken to write the book in the first place. If you have the budget it’s worth commissioning the services of a company such as YouCaxton Publications to ensure that the book is professionally produced and published. There are a number of us to choose from. One should never forget that a book will still be around in a hundred years’ time so the investment is justified.
5 Steps to publication with YouCaxton
Publication breaks down into a number of fairly distinct stages and these are costed in detail on the Publishing Page of this website:
*Editing – which we’ve already dealt with.
*Design and layout – once you and your editor have agreed on the final manuscript, the next stage is for YouCaxton’s designer to produce print-ready PDFs for your approval. This can take some to-ing and fro-ing between you, and we never upload to the printer for a bound proof until we have your approval of the design of both the cover and the interior.
* Bound proof – the next stage is to order a bound, printed proof from the printer. It’s important to check that the book is correct physically before proceeding
* Final stage – once you’ve approved the bound proof, we’re ready for the final stage: printing and producing any bulk order of copies for circulation to friends and family (and possibly reviewers); registering the ISBN, uploading to Amazon; making the book available through other online retailers.
YouCaxton has been involved in the design and publication of Oat to Joy by Olympic Medallist, Ella Pooley. Emma has now announced her first two launch events:
