Guide for Hobbyist Authors, pt. 1
What if you don't actually want to make it your job?
Hey y’all, it’s KimBoo! I’m an author and a podcaster who is also a librarian, text technology historian, and former I.T. project manager. I write about a lot of interesting things, I hope you agree! Please consider supporting me (and my dog!) so I can keep throwing errata & etcetera into the Scriptorium! Find my fiction at the Bibliotheca!
“I’ve got an idea for a story! What do I do?”
I get this question a lot, as do most professional authors. Usually it is just small talk at a party, but occasionally I get asked for help by someone who really truly madly deeply does have a story to tell. It might be a family history, a memoir, a guide to their hobby or passion, or a fictional story that has haunted them for years.
It’s easy to just say: “Write it!” and move along. Often people are only looking for that permission by someone with authority (an actual author!), allowing them the right to do what they want to do, anyway. In such cases, “write it!” is enough.
But sometimes I am confronted by someone with a novel or a non-fiction work that they really want to share even though they are not, and have no intention of being, a professional author. They want to get their work out into the big wide world and be able to point their family, friends, and supporters to it. Some have no interest in even selling it, or plan to charge nothing more than production costs.
Such works of love are fully deserving of being published, in my opinion, and while the modern world of self-publishing makes it easier than ever, it’s not actually simple.
Back before ebooks and self-publishing took off in the early 2010s, about the only way for a non-professional writer to get a book published was to hire a vanity press to do it. This usually required putting a lot of money upfront for editing and publishing costs, no small investment for someone who had no intention of doing this for a living. The unfortunate part is that there were (and are) a lot of grifters who take the money and run, or use it to create a cheaply made book. There is a reason that most hobbyist writers are warned off of using a vanity press.
The flip side, of course, is that hiring someone else to do it means they do not have to learn all about editing, copyediting, formatting, cover design, proofreading, paper signatures, book sizes…the list goes on. Like I said, publishing is easy these days, but not simple.
Unfortunately, most “how to publish a book” advice out there is geared to people who want to become professional authors, or at least write as a side gig. A truly dedicated hobbyist can sort out the basics, but it takes a bit of work, and if you are not already a little familiar with writing and publishing in general, extremely confusing.
Which leads me to this new series of posts: The Hobbyist Author’s Guide to Getting Published.
The goal of this series is specifically to help hobbyist authors bring their vision to life. If they want to take that information and expand it in order to build an author career, they can do that too! But if all they ever publish are a few books about their family history, or that one single fairy tale they have worked on for 20 years, or the fly-fishing guide they promised their grandchild, then they have the resources to do it well enough to be proud of the end product…and all without breaking the bank.
Where to start?
First I recommend really thinking about the end result. We’re starting from the premise that you’re not interested in beginning an “author career,” but there are still a lot of variables to consider. Do you just have a fun story idea you want to share with friends and family? Is this something you want to give away for free or have available for sale? Do you want a bunch of hard copy books to drag around to the garden/chess/tai chi club?
The decisions you make through this process will rest on that final outcome. As a professional author, I have to look at things like writing to market, widely available formats, pricing, availability, and so on. You don’t, but you still need to know the target you are aiming for.
Just a reminder: no target is too small! If you just want fifty copies of the family history to hand out at a family reunion picnic, that’s entirely valid! If all you need is a web link to send people to so they can read your short story, that is also valid.
What’s Next
It will take a few posts will cover the steps, some of which take more work than others:
1. Writing the damn thing! Every writer knows this is the hardest part, and that’s as true for hobbyists as it is for professionals. In this post I will set you up with all the tips and tricks I know of that should help get that book written, along with advice on the best software/apps to use for what you are doing. You won’t have to spend a lot of money on anything, I promise!
2. Editing is next up, and while the best advice remains “hire a professional editor,” there are a lot of quid pro quos to that. Not all editing is the same, and you need to know what you need before you decide on what you can get. These days apps like Grammarly or ProWritingAid will help a lot with brute force corrections, but they are not the end-all-be-all of editing. This will help you through this tricky but necessary task.
3. Publishing! The fun part!…sorta. Publishing can get complicated quickly, but first I’ll advise you on how to narrow down what you really need (ebooks? Print copies? Print on demand? You have options!). You’ll need a cover! (Oh no!) Hobbyists don’t need advice on building a branded website or a following on social media, but you still need to have a way for people to find your work. This post will show you different paths you can take, from dead-simple to sophisticated.
In the end, I’ll give you a pared-down checklist for you to work from. The goal of this series to give hobbyists a simple, uncluttered path to bringing their dream to life!
Time to start with the next post, WRITING!
If you have any questions please leave a comment!
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Thank you KimBoo. As a hobbyist writer, I self-published my memoir in 2017 and this pt. 1 is exactly the first step I took. Now I am going back and trying to create an audiobook version. Perhaps you will get to that in future episodes on publishing.
Or they could, you know, serialise it on Substack. 😎😇😁 I need to start working on getting one copy of my third book printed as a prop, so I can “find” it as part of the conceit for my publication that I forget about 90% of the time. The last attempt at printing didn’t work so great, so I’m going to have to play with the Scrivener settings some more. I was thinking of a simple paperback that I could gussy up, but I may just call back onto binding it into book form myself.