How Making My Book Available in Print Landed It In The Guardian

How Making My Book Available in Print Landed It In The Guardian How Making My Book Available in Print Landed It In "The Guardian" When Katja Meier set out to write  about the joys and challenges she encountered when running a refugee home in Tuscany, she had only planned to publish an ebook. Little did she know, her memoir had other (bigger) plans, that hinged on being available in print as well. This is how she found herself desperately searching for a typesetting solution in the middle of the night, with a launch date looming... Saved by the Reedsy Book EditorI discovered the Reedsy Book Editor late one night when desperately raking the internet for a solution to my haphazard typesetting attempt. I signed up for a free account immediately, started to upload the 23 chapters of my manuscript at midnight, and by 2 AM, I downloaded the print-ready PDF.It looked great but had one issue I couldn’t sort out myself: Across the Big Blue Sea includes an excerpt of a research article which focuses on little-known facts linked to human trafficking in Europe. I had the author’s permission to include the text but only if it was formatted differently from the rest of the book. Since the excerpt is several pages long, simply putting it in cursive wouldn’t do.I sent Reedsy an email at 3 AM, trying hard to come across as a calm, seasoned professional (and not as the freaked-out, first-time author who had set herself the wrong launch date). In the morning, I woke up to a message from Matt Cobb (Reedsy co-f ounder and designer), who promised to investigate the issue. And that very same week, I received a new version of my manuscript with the excerpt beautifully set apart in a sans-serif font and the comforting knowledge that I’d be able to make my launch date.From self-published memoir to Guardian â€Å"best summer book†Some things you can plan, others you can’t. I had sent an email to The Guardian’s book-reviewing team a couple of months before the book was published. Not surprisingly, especially for an indie author, I never heard back.Luckily, a few months earlier I had taken marketing advice from Jesse Finkelstein of pagetwostrategies.com and written to some of my favorite authors asking for endorsements. This is not an easy thing to do - it takes courage to ask time from authors who are probably already flooded with similar requests. But it's well worth asking, especially if you feel the author might be truly interested in the topic of your book.By seem ing-providence, at the same time that The Guardian wasn’t getting back to me, one of the writers I had contacted for endorsements wrote back and said she’d be happy to receive a copy (and four more followed suit!). Taiye Selasi, author of the wonderful Ghana Must Go, didn’t just write an insightful endorsement for me to use, she also remembered Across the Big Blue Sea when The Guardian asked her for her favorite books of the summer. And unknown to me, Taiye had already mentioned my book a few months before in The Guardian’s â€Å"Books That Made Me† series.I got lucky twice, and I’m afraid I’ll have to contradict Louis Pasteur’s famous quote here: it turns out that chance doesn’t just favor the prepared mind, it also favors the well-prepared book and the courageous author. (Hell, it takes guts to contact your favorite writers for endorsements)!Print is far from deadFrom the day the book was first published in February 20 17, I have been selling more print books than ebooks. I wouldn’t want to miss out on the ebook version - after all, I care about people who live in forlorn places without a reliable postal service. But my sales would look dire if it wasn’t for the print edition. Whatever retailer I look at, the paperback fares better.And when I meet the American students whose universities use Across the Big Blue Sea as a textbook for their study abroad programs in Italy, I’m each time surprised and honored anew that they travel with a print copy in their backpacks.Back to the Reedsy Book Editor once moreWith Italian and German translations in the pipeline, I’ll be back for a few night-time dates with the Reedsy Book Editor early next year (beware Matt, more desperate 3 AM emails coming your way). But being able to easily update my book proved useful and necessary for the already-published English edition too. I already updated the manuscript once to add two pages of end orsements at the beginning of the book. And while we’re working on the film adaptation of Across the Big Blue Sea, I’m planning to keep readers jour of the progress there too.But being able to amend the manuscript doesn’t just mean I can shamelessly brag about film rights and cool reviews in The Guardian: more importantly, I can update the information on how to support the migrant women mentioned in my book. And that is, after all, why I sat down to write it in the first place.How has publishing print copies of your book affected your publishing experience? Leave any thoughts or questions for Katja in the comments below!