I get many queries from people who have written or want to write. Which goes to prove that writing is not dead and burried in Ghana; the writer is fighting back - though many don't know what to do after the masterpiece is created.
So,to do my bit in helping budding writers who want to see their work on bookshelves, I have put together a four part series of articles, using the happy and not so happy experiences of my journey in getting 'The Imported Ghanaian' out of my head and into the bookshops.

Living in a country where it seems we strive, in the main, to put ourselves on the world map through sports, music (mainly to Ghanaians abroad), cocaine and sakawa, my heart verily burst with pride when, along with Nana Awere Damoah, author of ‘Excursions in my mind,’ I was invited by Albert Ocran, author of thirteen books and host of the Joy FM programme, Springboard, to be interviewed about the writing process and publishing. Albert referred to the programme as the ‘virtual university’ and, gosh, was he right. I learnt so much, even though I was presented as a bestselling author, I presumed – with hindsight - because I have had the experience of self-publishing a book that has sold well. I felt a bit fraudulent at the time but the feedback afterwards was immense – so, I didn’t feel so fraudulent - and it felt good to know that the programme was of great interest and beneficial to all the budding writers and book lovers out there.

You’ve all heard the joke, ‘if you want to hide anything from a Ghanaian, put it in a book,’ and this was, dare I call it, a myth I had bought into. I used to tell friends that the best place in the house to hide important items was to cut out the centre part of the pages of books and hide the items inside; jewellery, money, ATM cards, you name it, it would be the last place any armed robber would look. They could toss your entire house upside down but the bookcase wouldn’t be touched; not a fingerprint for the CSI mob to play with. It was a given.

But that was a few years ago.

Now, a quiet revolution is taking place. Let me get this straight, years ago, reading for pleasure was virtually unheard of. Ghanaians read text books, motivational books, romance and the Bible, and to a certain extent that is still the case, the difference now is that more and more Ghanaians, particularly, young Ghanaians, are writing and writing interesting books that Ghanaians are willing to pay for and read. I first became aware of this revolution when I participated in the first ‘Expressions’ event for authors. The venue, Smoothies in Osu, was jam packed to the hilt; writers and book lovers spilling out of the woodwork and gathering to show the solidarity so necessary.

Since publishing my book, I’ve had potential authors regularly seeking my assistance; within a week of the first Smoothies, at least six writers got in contact to share their work with me or to seek some sort of assistance with the creative process of making their book a reality. Since the recent Springboard programme, I’ve had even more contacts and am amazed at the amount of people out there with a passion for writing. I was always under the impression that we writers in Ghana where that weird small bunch of people, sitting in our solitary corners tapping away on our keyboards, talking to ourselves and hoping that, someday, someone would be interested in what we had to say. That obviously, isn’t the case. Writers abound.

A week after the programme, Nana Awere Damoah put together some indispensable notes – types of genre, advice for writers, skills needed and writing tips amongst others - to encourage all of us on our journeys of literary creativity, and published them on Facebook. The response was fantastic. He ended his opening paragraph with, ‘We need more African writers, writing for Africa and the world, telling our own stories.’ Never a truer word said.

So, with that as the inspirational springboard from the positive end of the spectrum - adding my voice to the cause - to the other pain in the butt end of hearing more than my fair share of people saying, ‘I’ve been planning to write a book,’ or, ‘I was thinking of writing a book like your’s,’ or any of those sentences that end with a nonexistent book. Oh, let me not forget all those people who assume that writing is something that anyone can do by simply putting pen to paper or bashing away on a keyboard as has been made so apparent by the many screenplays – I use the word with trepidation - unfortunately turned into equally diabolical television programmes, and voila, fame beckons. Oh, and let me not forget those who say things like, ‘Ei, you are really chopping big money. You wrote a book and the money is now flowing in.’ Do you know how much I want to slap those people whose words trivialize the hard work and long hours writers put into their craft. One of the notes from Nana’s write up was, ‘Never depend only on inspiration for writing; inspiration is only 1%. Rather depend on perspiration, which will contribute 99% of your success as a writer.’ That’ll give you a good idea of what we go through during the journey of creatively making our words a tangible reality.

Okay, this is not a whingefest of ‘the sufferations of an unappreciated writer.’ I’m following Nana’s inspirational lead to continue talking about the process. From the mails I get, many people want to write but don’t know how to go about it. There are a gazillion great ideas floating around people heads and being talked about, and then evaporating into nothing – ‘I’ve always wanted to write a book.’ We need to write our own stories and now with the internet putting information at our fingertips and the ease of self-publishing, all writers can make their dreams of writing a book come true.

So, you’re reading this article and thinking, ‘Yeah, I’ve always wanted to write a book about . . . but how do I go about it?’ Look, it doesn’t have to be a book; it can be an idea, something you want to get out into the open space, do it, because you need to do it for you. Forget the rest of us. YOU!
Once you’ve gotten that sorted out, you need to follow this adage: ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step,’ and that is how every writer starts their creative journey.
 
The first step:
The first step, funnily enough, happens to be writing. You start your literary journey by writing and writing regularly. In fact, get into the habit of writing every day, the quality at this point doesn’t matter, the act of writing does. Katherine Mansfield puts it as, ‘Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But far better write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.’ The sports wear giant Nike puts it even more succinctly, ‘Just do it!’

Find the best time of day when you are at your most creative, shut the world out and write. For some people, first thing in the morning is the best time. For me, first thing is exercise; the best time for my writing, when my creativity flows excessively, is during what I call the ‘witching hour.’ It’s that corridor of time between 2am and 5am, when I fancifully believe that the gates from the spirit world open, making high levels of creativity possible. It may sound like poppycock but that has been the time when I have done some of my best writing.
When working for the BBC on ‘Story Story,’ I wake up around 3am to work my scenes and have very few moments where I don’t know what to write. I write in the daytime and find more than one excuse to be playing computer games. Find the right time of day for you.

It is essential to write but also important to read, to see what others are doing. Books are the windows into places and lives you may never experience, those pages are a great source of knowledge. I read indiscriminately; from romance, to thrillers, to detective books to the crazy world of Tom Robbins, to the surreal world of Isabel Allende to James Lee Burke - in the Bayous of America’s Deep South - who has some of the sharpest and violent dialogue I’ll ever read. I love Buchi Emecheta and practically every African writer I come across. I read anything I can lay my hands on, including the bad tacky stuff, because, even there, amongst the manure, you can find a nugget or two of gold.

If you already have a story idea, great, you are well on your way. Get writing. Fiction, non-fiction, novels, short stories, essays, poetry, flashes, whatever you want, the world is your oyster. Oh, and don’t be afraid to experiment. When I first wrote ‘The Imported Ghanaian,’ many who saw the addition of the cartoons told me that I was mixing genres, which wasn’t good. Who said? I asked, but no one had a good answer. The cartoons gave my book an edge and it’s a style others have adopted.

If you don’t have a story idea but want to write, start with what you know. Write from your own experiences or that of those around you and jazz it up with a little fictional imagination – after all, true life can get a little boring, so, a bit of creative pizzazz won’t do it any harm. Many of my articles and stories have sprung out of catching a snippet of a conversation, seeing something from the window of a trotro, sometimes, all it takes is a phrase and my imagination starts blossoming, thinking, ‘what if . . .?’ and before I know it the story has started. Another style I like to use is what I call ‘the collage’. A few centuries ago, Flemish painters created a style where the people in the paintings were Flemish (including cloths) but the background would be from another place, say, Italy. They created their paintings by using elements plucked from different environments and wove them into a new whole.

Don’t be too literal; try to create pictures with your words. Use words and phrases that jump off the page and grab the reader by the throat. ‘I was walking by when he shouted at me,’ doesn’t sound as good or as pictorial as, ‘I was walking by when his voice exploded like a grenade in my ear.’ The second sentence is much more descriptive, that’s the kind of style I like. You will find your own. I like to call myself the queen of ‘one liners,’ and collect them wherever I find them. Hey, I have more one liners than a cocaine dealer, that should give you a good idea of how many I have collected over the years. Some people like to collect proverbs.

Again, many writing website have excellent tips and writing exercises to help improve your writing. Use them, that is what they are there for.
Don’t get worried; certainly don’t kill yourself looking for perfection on your first try, you won’t achieve it. I have stories I started over ten years ago that are still in a state of semi nakedness, shelved for the time being but definitely not forgotten. Start small and build up but don’t stop, it is not an option for a writer.

Pen and paper is good, but writing on a computer, for me, is much, much better. I’m one of those bizarre people who have to start all over again on a fresh piece of paper if I have to delete a word, change a phrase, or reshuffle paragraphs. You can imagine how many trees would face an untimely death if I were a pen and paper woman. Give me my laptop any time of the day, it’s faster.
For those who have experienced the heart wrenching pain of a hard drive crashing on them, this should come as no surprise. Always make sure you have backups of your masterpiece. Be it on a flash drive, an external drive, a diskette (old school) or CD, do a regular backup. One of the best places to save written work, I’ve found, is to e-mail it to yourself. Yahoo, Hotmail, G-mail or whoever will keep your work safe.

Now, after your ninety-nine percent perspiration has turned your one percent inspiration into a masterpiece, put it down for a few days, pop the champagne and give the middle finger to all those who doubted you. Afterwards, look at it again with a fresh eye. The imperfections you didn’t see the first time will rear their ugly heads up.

Revise and Edit:
It’s rare that a story, scene or even a sentence comes out perfectly the first time, so don’t be surprised that your work needs to be edited. Most of us cannot be brutal with our own work so the next step is to find a fellow writer to read your work and give feedback. Don’t trust family members or close friends, they will only want to please you. They will lie.

A great place to get feedback is from the internet. For that, you can go to Google and type in ‘writers groups.’ Go through the various sites and find one that serves your purpose. There are some sites where you have to review work by other authors and where your work would be reviewed by unprejudiced eyes. They don’t know you, so, they’d review based on your work. Simple. These sites give you the experience of being an objective critique, giving you another skill. Another great way – that was how I started before I got a website – is to start a blog (www.blogspot.com) or find one through ‘Google or Yahoo search engines, equally, you can post your work on Facebook. Once the reviews come back, take what you want and discard what you don’t want – don’t let your ego get in the way, be brave enough to take constructive criticism – because ultimately you make the final decision. You birthed the creation but be open to those who want to help you improve it.

I hope some of this has been useful to budding authors out there. If this has been helpful, skip along to the next article for ideas to help avoid the pitfalls – all of which I royally fell into, every single one. I have experience - of formatting your manuscript as it continues its journey to becoming your dream book on a bookshop shelf.

The last article left off with our budding writers popping the champagne on the great landmark of getting their manuscript written. The first draft, at least. Having reached this point, a writer can do one of two things. They can take the painless route by going to one of the many companies offering editing right up to publishing services, the whole gamut. This though, involves parting with mucho dinero, which you may not have. I certainly didn’t, after taking a few wrong turns. The second route is the DIY guerrilla route. I took a trip down each lane.

First, I tried the easy route and scanned the internet, coming across Authorhouse, a company that promised miracles. A terrible and costive experience that stressed me out no end.

My work had been edited and proof read twice, but from that point I hadn’t a clue as to how to continue the journey. Authorhouse seemed like the answer to my dreams and what’s more they had a special promotion offering a publishing package for just under four hundred dollars. I jumped at the chance and a friend in the US paid for it before the special offer ran out. I was assigned an account executive who would attend to my every need.

Within a short space of time, we were at loggerheads.

They wanted to change the cover of my book; they wanted to change the fonts, all without explaining why. My first proofs came back and I saw several things I wanted to change. Each change, even if a comma, cost an arm and a leg. I was also billed to rectify alterations I hadn’t asked for but they had made to my manuscript. In fact, from the moment I signed the agreement - which was supposed to cover my publishing deal – I found myself paying for things that seemed to spring out from nowhere. Obviously, I got even more upset when after paying everything, their accounts department started sending me threatening letters for supposed non-payment of changes, etcetera.
My cousin, in the US, who had sent the cheque, took them to task and finally they stopped sending me those letters, but no apology. After a few months of what felt like a visit to Hades, I painfully accepted that I had thrown money down the drain and cancelled my contract. Six hundred dollars down and I was back to square one. Authorhouse will definitely have their version of what transpired, but as they say,'the customer is always right,' and this customer was not happy at all.

After that, I took the DIY guerrilla route, but with a slight detour.

Saying all that, I know many authors who have found great companies to publish their books; it does cost a packet but it takes the stress off the author’s shoulders. I wasn’t lucky and made a bad choice of company. If you choose to go down this route, try to find authors who had had experience with the company of your choice and learn from their experiences. Have a look at Selfpublishing.com and Athena Press, both to be found online.

A word of caution, the above route is often known as subsidy press. Linda and Jim Salisbury, the authors of Smart Self-publishing, define a subsidy press as “a publishing company that applies its ISBN to a book and charges the author for the cost of production. The author receives only a few copies of the book, and is promised royalties on those copies that might be sold by the subsidy press.”

From their book, again, “If you have money to burn and only want a few books, this may be the way to go. If you don’t have money to burn, the subsidy press process will work something like this: step 1, send in your manuscript for evaluation; step 2, sign a contract for between $10,000 and $15,000; step 3, go to the bank to get a second mortgage or use your 18% credit card to make the payment; step 4, get a few copies of your finished book; step 5, experience acute attacks of buyer’s remorse while continuing to make payments on your mortgage or credit card for the next five or ten years.” It may sound cynical but they like to call a spade a spade.

For those without much cash, yours truly included – especially, after throwing away all that dosh - the DIY guerrilla route is a great place to learn new skills and feel the immense satisfaction of doing it yourself.
The first lesson I learnt was that Microsoft Word is great for writing the manuscript but not the software to use when getting work ready for printing. Quark Express or InDesign are the popular softwares used abroad, here, like many others, I had to master CorelDraw.

How did I find this out?

First, I went to the bookshops to look for publishers and printers in Ghana. With that information, I started making the rounds. I was unimpressed with most of what I saw, until I was advised to try a company close to my house. A little expensive but they sounded like they knew what they were talking about, the only problem was they didn’t seem to take me seriously. Therefore, each time I went, I would be given a new bit of information that would increase my costs – the first trip’s estimate was just under 5000 Dollars. The next trip the price went up by another 500 Dollars and so on until I was being quoted something closer to 7000 Dollars. Initially, I had been told my word document would suffice, a few days later I was told I needed to provide the work as a Corel file, but, if I wanted them to do that, they would charge me the equivalent of one Cedi and fifty pesewas per page. With 315 pages, at the time, the cost was going to be a killer. I held my annoyance in and told him I would return. I didn’t because the man spoke to me as if I were an idiot, but I had learnt a vital piece of information; CorelDraw. That’s when I hit the guerrilla path. I was going to format my work and I was going to give it an edge. The idea for the cartoons came up.

A friend loaded CorelDraw onto my laptop; I bought a CD of cliparts, an ‘Idiots guide to CorelDraw’ book and started the difficult process of teaching myself the basics. Using books from my bookcase as reference, I finally chose ‘Love in the time of Cholera’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez as my model. I measured the page size, created it in Corel and typed out a page from the book. I then played around with the fonts, the kerning and leading until I had it exactly as it was in the book.

The cartoons?

I spoke to a few cartoonists to do a collaboration but they all wanted cash, up front. Cash I didn’t have, therefore, I needed to learn the skills of a cartoonist. I put my manuscript down and for a period of five months, at between 12 to 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, I slowly but surely created my cartoons.
Because of the cartoons, I opted to use size 6 x 9" for my book size until I was advised by a printer in Lagos that 6 x 8.75" would be a better use of paper and more economical for me. I switched to 6 x 8.75". Book size 5.5 x 8.5" is also popular. The best thing to do is look at book sizes that appeal to you and make your choice, your book printer should accommodate you.

I didn’t know it then but Times New Roman is not the ideal font to use in a book. I printed my first book in Times New Roman but I won’t make that mistake again. Times is the default Microsoft Word font and one that many people automatically use. However, if you want your text to be easy to read, you should use a serif typeface. Don’t use fonts that are san serif typeface, e.g. Arial and Times.

For something interesting and different, try Century Schoolbook, Baskerville, Garamond, Goudy Old Style, or another easily readable serif font. I’m using Century Schoolbook or Goudy Old Style for my next book. The fonts I’ve mentioned all come as part of the Microsoft Word font package.

With the cartoons done, instinct told me to do another edit of the manuscript myself – this is not advisable - but I’m glad I did it. Five months after putting it down, I looked at it with fresh eyes and saw where I had to make changes. I tightened stories, trashed others and slash the page count down from 315 down to 288. A few mechanical edits with the spell-check, a few more read throughs, a few changes and I was ready to take the plunge. I set up my pages in CorelDraw and checked how information was ordered in the book. As I didn’t have any reviews, my first page was my title page, with title and name of author. Equally, the ‘about author’ page could come first. The copyright page is normally found on the back of the title page, it includes copyright information, as is to be expected, the ‘no part of this book may be reproduced’ . . . blah, blah, blah, the name and address of the publisher and International Standard Book Number (ISBN) – a 13 digit number beginning with 978 - which can be bought from the George Padmore library in Accra. Not all books in Ghana have an ISBN but it does make your book look more professional and it doesn’t cost that much.

The dedications page follows next, followed by the acknowledgments page. While writing, it’s good to keep a document of all the people and organisations that helped you. How the rest of the book is ordered is up to you . . . a prelude, author’s thoughts or the contents page. It’s up to you. The best suggestion I will make is that you look through as many books to see how others have done it and choose the one you like. Simple. Before your work goes to the printers make sure your page count is divisible by four. If it’s not you will have to add blank pages to make up the number.

Obviously, you don’t have to put headers but I chose to have my name on all the right hand pages and the book title, in capital letters on the left hand pages, with the page numbers at the outer edge of the pages. Once I had the text and cartoons placed the way I wanted – oh, I haven’t gone through the nitty gritty of creating text boxes and flowing text from one page to another because I’m not giving a Corel lesson here – I converted the text into something the computer would read as graphics and not text. It sounds complicated but it’s not, it’s a simple matter of highlighting the text and pressing Ctrl + q and converting your text to curves. It becomes tamper proof. Having finished my formatting I rendered the CorelDraw file into a Portable Document Format, otherwise known as a PDF. My document was ready to go to the printers.

What about the cover? I hear you ask.

Having acquired cartoonist skills and still in ‘save money’ DIY guerrilla mode, I opted to design my book cover. I’ve read from the experts though that it’s essential to have your cover professionally done - normally, you are attracted to a person because of his or her face. The cover is your book’s face. An ugly or disfigured face discourages interest in your book, if you get the analogy. Apparently, abroad, ninety one out of every hundred book covers is professionally designed. I don’t know any professional cover designers – though I’m sure there are – so I did it my way. Thankfully, my book cover and the title caught readers’ attention and worked to my benefit. You can take a picture, or have a drawing done or find elements from the internet that you can put together to create something new that no one owns the copyright to. Like me, you can put a nice picture of yourself on the back cover and a short blurb about the book. Make sure you generate bar codes (black) to go with your ISBN, if your book cover is being professionally designed, putting in the bar codes should be the job of the designer.

I think I’ve covered most of what you would need when formatting your book DIY guerilla style. With your book formatted and your cover designed, skip along to the next article where you will find the delights of choosing paper stock and the printer who is going to make your book the reality you have dreamt of.

The manuscript has been written, edited, proofed, formatted DIY guerrilla style and converted into a pdf. So, for those of you ready to make your manuscript a tangible reality, how do you move on?

Having gone through the stress and excitement of getting ‘The Imported Ghanaian’ to the point where it could finally be made into a book that someone could pick up off a book shelf, flip through and read, I suddenly got scared. Yes, everything was done, but it was still only on a computer. What if it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to look? What if the margins weren’t the right width? Questions, questions, question. After my Authorhouse experience, I was scared about every step I took and imagined myself shelving out a lot of money, printing a large quantity of books, only to find out that it looked nothing like I’d envisaged. I would have positively died.

Thankfully, the internet and Google’s search engine came to my rescue. Again.

I found Lulu.com. A company that provides a PoD (Print on Demand) service, amongst other things. Their services are simple, free and a DIY enthusiast’s dream come true. Simply, they give you all the information and tools you need to get your work into their system. They were so helpful that when I had problems understanding some of the information, I was able to chat with an online help assistant to help clear up my queries. Following their instructions, I uploaded the pdf file of my manuscript, cover design onto their system, and asked my cousin to order a single copy. It cost twenty dollars, including postage and packaging.
The beauty of the Lulu’s PoD service is that the author determines the price of the book and how much profit they would make but without any capital outlay. A book is only printed when an interested party orders, meaning no cost to you, the author, or suffering nightmares as you wonder if you would be able to sell the thousand copies you ordered. The minimum order is one copy. Which is what I did.

Lulu has marketing tools to help anyone advertise their book to potential buyers; and at the end of each quarter, they pay the author a profit percentage depending on how many copies of the book they sell. So far, I’ve sold quite a few copies, I’m just figuring out how I get my money, but it’s knowing that the book is getting out there which is so satisfying. After all, apart from the time spent at the internet to upload my manuscript, I didn’t have to spend a pesewa.
With bated breath, I waited anxiously for the book to arrive and when it did, I nearly wept. It was exactly how I envisaged it. The feeling of a dream coming true was indescribable and I spent a long time, just looking at the book, turning it around in my hands and smelling the pages.

It was then that it suddenly dawned on me - silly me - that the pages of a book didn’t have to be brilliant white bond paper. You may not have noticed but most books printed in Ghana are printed on white paper. With all the books sitting on my bookshelves, I had never thought of paper stock, but with a sample of my own book in my hands, the choice of paper for my bulk print became my next challenge. Just as an interest point, the duty on importing books is a lot cheaper than the duty on importing paper stock. Make of it what you will, but it’s cheaper to bring in paper in book form than in the form needed to print books. Ergo, it doesn’t make much sense for printers to bring in a wide variety of paper stock. White paper is a national favourite, so, those who want choices have to look elsewhere.
Having saved lots of money by formatting the book myself, and then having a tangible printed copy and ecstatic with the results, I went back to the printer whose quotes increased by the day. I wanted to be patriotic, I wanted to print in Ghana but obviously, someone didn’t want me to print in Ghana, as I ran into a wall when I arrived at the printer’s offices. I asked if they could print my book using the cream paper used in the book printed by Lulu. Of course, they didn’t know what the name of the paper stock was. But, were they interested in finding it out in order to offer good service to a potential client? Hell, no. They told me to find out the information and tell them. Talk about chasing away a customer who is trying to bring them business. As they say, ‘Ghana is a grindstone and depending on the kind of person you are, it can either polish you up or grind you down,’ and since I had no intention of being ground down, I began researching paper. Again, the internet was my first port of call.

Lulu gave me the name of the paper; the printer said he wasn’t familiar with it, in fact, he argued that Lulu had given me wrong information. Silly me, I went and had an argument with the Lulu online assistant, who exasperated with my insistence logged off, leaving me with no answer. I went back to the printer who said that without the name of the paper, there was nothing they could do for me. I then sent mails to several printing companies abroad asking about paper but none of them could give me a name for a creamy paper that the printer in Ghana recognised. I began to worry if I was ever going to be able to print my book.

Enter my stepbrother’s stepbrother (complicated, I know) who’d just arrived in Ghana. “Hey,” he said, “why don’t you try Asia? They have good printers and their prices would probably be cheaper. You’ve done all the work a publisher would do for you, so self publish.”

That’s all it took, a simple sentence that cleared the fog from my eyes. Again, off the Google I went. I typed in ‘Asian printers’ and sent mails to the first four on the list. I didn’t know anything about printing 'speak' so asked for general information.

Now, this may seem spooky but I liked the tone of the mail from the first company I received a response from. My instincts told me that I would have a good relationship with them. “The company may be a fraudulent one, so check and find out if the company is genuine before parting with any money,” my stepbrother cautioned. Two of the companies were located in China, one in Hong Kong and the other in Taiwan. I made enquiries at the Chinese embassy and was told the company I had the good vibe about was a brilliant company with a fantastic record.

Regal Printing Limited, in Hong Kong was the company that was going to make my dream a reality. Right from the beginning, Fergus Kwong, the person dealing with my order gave me all the attention I needed. He answered all my questions, and I had many, within twenty-four hours of receiving them. However trivial the question was, he treated it with all seriousness. He explained every tiny detail of the process to me and even Fed-Ex-ed samples of all the paper stock the companied used. Each sample was clearly marked with all the details I needed to make the right choice. He even went as far as advising me on my cover design and the options of choosing a glossy or matt cover. I chose to have a glossy cover as that was the norm here in Ghana, but next time, I'm going for a matt cover (a bit more expensive) and I'm going to be environmentally friendly by using recycled paper.

At first, I wanted to be safe and print just five hundred copies to see how well the book did on the market, but it was quickly explained to me that the more I printed the cheaper the unit price of the book. I took the plunge, requested for costings for a few thousand copies, and as soon as I got the price, I sealed the deal. It was the best deal I was likely to get. Once I had transferred the fifty percent upfront money needed to get the printing process started, everything moved quickly, with a lot of communication and within a few months, my books were delivered to my doorstep. If I tell you how economical the whole deal was for me, you wouldn’t believe me, so, I won’t tell you.

In January 2010, while in Hong Kong, I had the privilege of taking a tour of the Regal Printing offices and factory by Fergus Kwong. The icing on the cake was being asked to autograph a copy of my book for their records. I’ll definitely use their services again and again and recommend them again and again.

They say that, ‘Writing is a love and publishing is a business.’ If you understand this simple concept, you are well on your way to becoming a successful publisher. I did a test on the internet and the result for me was that I was a serious hobbist. Apparently, I’m not taking my book work serious enough to be considered a bonafide self publisher. The way I dealt with marketing of my book was . . . I did nothing because I didn’t know what to do. I felt embarrassed blowing my own trumpet or more truthfully, I didn’t have the confidence in my book as I should have and didn’t push it as hard as I should have. Thankfully, the book has sold itself through word of mouth, but I learnt many valuable lessons for my next creative journey.

And now, for those of you who didn’t stop at chatting about writing that book you wanted to write, but went on to actually write the manuscript and are now ready to print, you can either go down the route of finding a company to do the work for you (be ready to mortgage your house or sell your clothes) or go on an adventure and do it budget DIY guerilla style. Whichever route you choose, once the books have been printed and delivered, they still need to be marketed and sold and that is where our ‘So, you think you can write?’ series ends.

All that’s left is for me to give you the low down on the marketing and distributions woes and joys of an author’s quest to get their books into the readers’ hands in exchange for money in the author’s pocket.

Welcome to the final instalment of, ‘So, you think you can write?’ For those hundreds and thousands of budding writers wanting to make their words and phrases a tangible reality, you’ve reached the ‘show me the money’ part of the equation. Yes, that all crucial point where all your hard work and sweat translates into physical bankable cash; ching, ching, your compensation per se.

Now, some people might say, ‘Oh, I write for the pleasure of it, the money’s not important,’ that is absolute and undiluted BS. We all want something from what we do and there are very few of us, still living on this planet, if we are to be truthful, who do things for purely altruistic motives; we all want something, a payday, but whatever you wanna call it, we ain’t Jesus. So, all those ‘I do it for the people,’ should get off the cross, because we are in desperate need of the wood.

So, when my books finally arrived on my doorstep and I cried buckets of tears of joy over my herculean – to me – achievement, I still hadn’t thought about the next stage, about what I was going to do with the books, now that I had them. Obviously, your average smart four year old would have figured it out but I was so giddy with excitement, I didn’t actually make the next move until my newspaper Editor called and said, ‘Alba, there is a man here in the office and he wants two copies of your books.’ That’s when it hit me with sledgehammer precision that it wasn’t over. The fat lady still needed to sing, and sing aloud, if I was going to make any money.

‘Someone wants to buy my books.’ You see what a knucklehead I was; I didn’t know that the real work was just about to start. As I wrote in the last instalment, ‘Writing is a love and publishing is a business.’ Just because you know how to come up with a great idea, write for hours on end without giving up and come up with a manuscript that is made into a tangible book, doesn’t mean you know how to market and sell books. I hadn’t thought of the selling part, because I naively thought that if I had put all that effort into writing a book, then people, knowing how hard – how would they have known? - I’d worked, would buy my book. No, it doesn’t work that way!

The way I dealt with marketing ‘The Imported Ghanaian’ was . . . I did nothing because I didn’t know what to do. I felt embarrassed blowing my own trumpet or more truthfully, I didn’t have the confidence, then, in my book as I should have and didn’t push it as hard as I could have. The subject matter appealed to a book buying target audience, the cover screamed for attention and, I’d like to say, the style of writing kept readers entertained. Thankfully, the book sold itself, but that is not always the case as many writers have found to their detriment. Some, after the herculean task, ran into enormous brick walls and gave up, their books piling up in a corner collecting dust, and therein, ended their writing careers.

Get this, if you want to behave like a wallflower, your books are not going to sell – unless it happens to be the super duper must read of the millennium or has been hyped by Oprah - and you are not going to eat or publish another book. You need to either get out there, beating on doors, shoving your books in people’s faces and blowing your own trumpet or pay someone to do it. Now, if like cash strapped moi, you did it DIY guerilla style, you aren’t in the position to pay someone to do the marketing and distribution for you. So, guess what? You have to do it yourself and there are many pitfalls.

Here is an excerpt from a mail I received from an ex-author in response to an article I wrote about the difficulties I faced in trying to sell my books. “Hi Alba, When I read your story, I laughed, and then I cried. Your story is not different at all from mine and many others I know in this 'world' called Ghana. I wrote my first book - a motivational, while I was still studying at the University of Ghana. I looked for the money, with some loans and published it! I did all I could to launch it. You should have seen me on the day my book was launched! For a writer/journalist with over ten years of experience, I felt on that day that I have finally arrived. But three years on, and I still have to go back and forth trying to convince some bookshops to sell my books. Others have sold them, have closed shop and I can't find them. Some still have copies on their shelves, and yet when people go there to ask for copies, they are told they are not available. Sadly, that experience has scared me from going on with my next project. I just can't imagine writing another book any time soon. I am still paying back loans! Just as book sellers are hard to find so also are publishers. That was how come, I had to self publish. I just hope and pray that this situation will change soon, before the writer in me is put to sleep by the nightmares of my first experience with publishing a book.”

Welcome to the book business in Ghana, because it ain’t easy, nor is it pretty.
Let’s start from the basics of the marketing and selling options available in Ghana. Your books have arrived and you have had a launch or not. What’s the next move? Well, before your launch, you should already have some books placed in bookshops. I didn’t know that. The most glaring option is to get your books onto bookshop shelves and I didn’t know that. But I learnt.

So, this is the deal; you go to a bookshop and pitch your book to them. Take a copy of your book with you on that first visit as they will always ask for a copy for evaluation. The chances are they won’t look at it, but they will ask for it. They will promise to call you with an answer but don’t hold your breath. You will then chase them until they give a ‘yea’ or ‘nay’. With a ‘yea,’ you take copies to them, then twiddle your thumbs, and wait for them to be sold before you receive payment.

Bookshops, on average, charge 20 to 30 percent commission for stocking your books; it doesn’t include promoting your book or any other activity that would increase your sales. As they only pay after your books have been sold, the vast majority of them don’t give a damn how long your books sit unmoved from their shelves. When your books sell out, they don’t feel the need to inform you so you have to continually check, or be informed by people, as I have been on several occasions, on Facebook wanting to buy your book. You then chase your money. At some bookshops, when you chase after your money the accountants behave as if you want to extract their teeth without a local anesthetic. That is the average experience of dealing with bookshops. A necessary evil if you intend to sell books.

Hotel gift shops are another saga on their own and all I can say is that in the majority, they are bia-ches, especially, the attendants who probably don’t ever read, the same attendant’s whose neurons are eternally on vacation somewhere, their return date never to be confirmed, if their behaviour is anything to go by. Avoid them if you can.

‘What other option are left?’ I hear you ask.

One or two, and they are not selling tools that immediately spring to mind. Always carry a few copies of your book with you as you go about your day and put them in front of the faces of as many people you come across. Someone will buy, if only out of guilt or pressure, but at least you’ll make a sale – hey, play on the ‘we want to appear to be nice all the time’ trait that the vast majority of Ghanaians possess. Don’t feel guilty about shoving your books up people’s noses, it’s either that or watching your books taking up space and collecting dust in your house. Take your pick.

Do book readings. I did a book reading at Cuppa Cappuccino and made lots of sales. It’s a great opportunity for people to hear the book the way the author wanted the book to sound. And hey, if they made the effort to come out of their homes to listen to you read, why the hell won’t they buy a copy of your book. Smaller shops that don’t sell books are also great locations to place books; coffee shops, beauty and hair salons, in fact, anywhere where the clientele suggests a passion for the written word. Do book signings if you can? I didn’t with ‘The Imported Ghanaian’ but I will with my next book, ‘A Place of Beautiful Nonsense.’ Educational institutions are also great to get your work out there. I went as far as doing a book reading at the British School of Lome, in Togo, sold some books and made it onto the television news.

KSM. If you can get on his show and talk about your book. Do it. Thank God it’s Friday has a large audience, ergo, if you get yourself onto his couch, someone watching is going to want to buy a copy of your book. Try to get yourself on radio stations and breakfast television programmes, where you can plug your book. Whatever you do, take advantage of every opportunity to keep your book in the minds of people. It’s a lot of hard work, but it is necessary and fulfilling when the numbers of books in your possession dwindle considerably.

Create a page on Facebook and invite people to become fans. Sorry, that has now changed, it’s not become a fan, it is for people who like it. It’s free but if you have a little cash, you can advertise it on Facebook and reach a large target audience. You can also advertise your blogspot – you know, that free site you created for people to sample your writing before you published – to all your e-mail contacts and beyond.

If you can stretch the cash, buy yourself a website. It’s not as expensive as you may think. I bought my site from Moonfruit, which for the price of about twenty Cedis a year gives me five websites with all the tools needed to build the sites myself. Check out my site at theimportedghanaian.com created and built by yours truly. It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve had great feedback.

Obviously, you’d like your book to go beyond the shores of Ghana, but persuading one of those international publishers to take a look at your book could boarder on the impossibly. I have many reject letters to prove my efforts. But, you don’t need them, the internet is at your service. Lulu.com, through whom I’ve sold several books offers a free POD (Print on Demand) service. It costs nothing and as long as you are ready to put in the effort to market your book, you could make some unexpected money. Amazon.com also offers a POD service, which gives potential readers access to your book. E-books are also another source of getting your work out there and making some money. None of these marketing tools requires money up front, just internet time, and some hard work.

Of course, I did everything the wrong way when I published ‘The Imported Ghanaian’ but my knowledge base has now expanded and I’m going to put it all to good use with my forthcoming book, ‘A Place of Beautiful Nonsense,’ available in bookshops and everywhere else towards the end of the year. How about that for a nice bit of marketing.

I think that’s about it, I can’t think of anymore to tell you. Happy book selling and lots of good luck. We need more writers like you.

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