Article by Sarah Steel, Managing Director, The Old Station Nursery Ltd

After 7 years of running my children’s nursery company, I took the plunge last year and published my first book. Over the years I have enjoyed writing a newsletter for parents at the various nurseries and have often included a recipe we have made at nursery, or details of an activity that we have carried out that the children have particularly enjoyed. We produced an in-house booklet of nursery songs for parents, who couldn’t remember, or didn’t know all the words to some songs and wanted to be able to join in with their child.

So, slowly the idea formed that it would be really nice to produce a book which brought together lots of these ideas and activities and which parents, grandparents and carers could use to give them some inspiration when they were at home with an energetic child.

The hardest thing about producing a book is actually not the writing, but it is navigating the whole maze around publishing. I spoke to a couple of literary agents – once I finally managed to get through to them, which was achieved by personal contacts in the end, as e-mail, phone and mail produced few results.

Unfortunately, as our book was going to be full of photographs, none of the major publishers were interested in it as the margins wouldn’t be sufficiently high for them. So, I decided to be bold and self-publish, with support from an excellent graphic designer/photographer whom I knew, Mazz Image, and another networking contact, Terry Wells, from a company called Wrenshaws, who advise on print options. There is a lot of information available on the internet about self-publishing and it is relatively straightforward – you can either print a set number of books, or you can go for a print-on-demand option, which gives you less margin but also less risk.

We finally published last May and I was really thrilled to open the first box of books and admire my new delivery – a lot less painful than childbirth, but rather more expensive to give birth to! The final product was all that I had hoped and we had a great response as we launched it at the Lincoln Book Fair and around our company nurseries.

However, when you self-publish, the real work begins once the books arrive, as you then need to work out how to sell them. The large bookshops are very loathe to buy direct from an independent publisher and insist you go through a supplier, who takes about 50% of the cover price for the privilege of being the middle man with the book store.

Most of the book stores make their own buying decisions, so you then need to approach every single one individually to ask if they will stock your book. So far we have managed to get ‘All Aboard’ stocked in a dozen or so branches of Waterstones and several smaller independent stores. I am also running a series of talks and book signings, which usually result in good sales, but it is hard work.

I wouldn’t hesitate to encourage anyone who has a book bursting out of them to seize the moment and actually write it. Just make sure you are committed to the sales process, if you aren’t able to get an agent, which is the usual case for first books.  There is lots of advice out there, so if you are prepared to work at, you can see that seedling idea as a finished book before too long. If you’d like to see my finished product, you can buy it via our website, http://www.theoldstationnursery.co.uk . Perhaps it will inspire you to take the plunge…..happy writing!