Reading “Successful Self-Publishing in South Africa”really shed light on how much I didn’t know about this impending journey of self publishing. As it’s a very easy book to read, it was very simple to highlight the necassary areas of relevant information. Besides the obvious on what I had to do I also came to learn that not only bookstores buy literature, but also schools and the likes were also a target market. This was important to know as all of a sudden I realised that if marketed through as many avenues as possible, it would be likelier that I could recoup my costs. After all, we do want to make money now don’t we?

Heather’s book is a great starting point as, through reading the book, I also found out about  The Center Of The Book, which was being headed by Colleen Higgs. I contacted Colleen to set up a meeting.

The one thing I must stress is that people in the publishing industry are really helpfull once they find out you’re wanting to self publish. Colleen was very happy to meet with me and then did I find out that she is the author of “A Rough Guide To Small- Scale And Self-Publishing.

Both books are a fantastic source of very relevent information and through them I was able to learn about the 3 main aspects of self-publishing; Production, Distribution and Marketing.

I was also able to find out about associations relevent to my genre of book-children.

I signed up with these associations like IBBY and SCBWI and started to attend their meetings. At the associations were, publishers, editors, writers, illustrators and the likes.

My source of information was growing, and as it did, so did my belief in my dream becoming a reality.