Newsday Tuesday—What Goes Into the Production of a Book?

Lily recommends Catnapped

Lily recommends Catnapped

This is a question I’m often asked when I’m out and about sharing my expertise on authorship or simply chatting with a friend or colleague over designer coffee. If it’s something you’ve wondered about, stay tuned.

All authors don’t operate the same—so all I can share is my experience—how I do it. Today, unlike when I started in this business in 1973, there are scads of options for authors. Writing a books is much easier than it used to be because of technology and the support for authors is amazing—some of it amazingly great and others, virtual scams. It used to be that a writer wrote because he or she was passionate about the process or because they had something to say or a story rolling around inside that wanted out. Now, people become authors for a whole variety of reasons—to prove something to themselves or someone else, to make a point or a statement, to promote their business or a point of view, to jump on what they think is a lucrative bandwagon, because it is just easy to do and seems like the thing to do.

I write from passion. I tell people that I can’t not write. I loved the process so much that I figured out how to make a living at it. I wrote my first book because of my passion for writing as well as my passion for horses in 1978. It was such a labor of love that I did most of the writing by hand from bed where I was recovering from a back injury. Once I was able, I typed it up on a manual typewriter and presented the manuscript to A. S. Barnes, a New York Publisher and they published Hints For the Backyard Rider in both hardback and paperback (the only choices at the time—there was no such thing as an ebook).

Fast forward to the computer age. By 2012, I had published over 40 books. All nonfiction—give-me-the-facts-type books on all sorts of topics from horse care to presenting a Hawaiian luau to youth mentoring to authorship and book promotion. In 2012, I decided to start writing fiction and it’s the fiction books I want to talk about, which I will do tomorrow.

In the meantime, check out my author page at Amazon.com http://amazon.com/author/patriciafry

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