Thank you to everyone that has picked up a copy of our book, One-Pot Camp Cooking. We appreciate your support. The initial response has been fantastic! In this post we’ll share the origin story of the story, and our journey to bring a small book into the world.
One of the questions we are frequently asked is, “Do you plan on making a book about your Alaska adventures?” It’s a great question. We have plenty of interesting stories to share – you’ve read many of them on this blog. And plenty of photographs – some of which may actually be print-worthy. The only real obstacle – we know absolutely nothing about writing or publishing a book!
We decided to wade into the shallow end of self-publishing by starting with a small project. Something that would allow us to see how hard it was. To learn the process. Something that, if it were a total failure, would at least be a small, total failure. We had learned a lot about cooking on the move during our trip and decided that was information worth sharing. Stuff that could help other people. Stuff people might be interested in learning.
The hot mess also known as the Very Rough Draft.
We started pounding words into the computer. How-to information. Recipes. A few anecdotal stories. It was a mess, but when we printed it out on paper and took a look it wasn’t terrible. It needed organization, and formatting, and editing, and a hundred other things, but it had promise. Enough to justify taking the next step and exploring the world of desktop publishing.
In our digital world there are many tools you can use to create and distribute books. One of the largest and most popular is Amazon’s Kindle Desktop Publishing (KDP.) The general process is super simple – upload your manuscript and cover art, provide some additional information, and ta-da, you have a book on Amazon. Or, more likely, a tragic facsimile of a book that only your mother will read, reluctantly.
In reality it is a little more complicated. There is a gauntlet of technical details you have to navigate to get things right. If you have a publisher you don’t have to worry about typography, font copyrights, interior design, cover art, color space, or what the “gutter” means. (Gutter is the extra space along the inside edge of the page that is used to bind the book together.) If you have a publisher a team of specialists handles all these details. When you self-publish you either go it your own, or hire someone to help you out. We did it on our own, and after countless hours of watching “how-to” YouTube videos and cursing at the computer we ordered our first proof.
The first proof - a slightly less hot, less messy, draft. And also a book!
It was still a mess, with tons of formatting issues and typos. But it was also a book. You could hold it in your hand and flip through the pages. It still needed work, but for the first time it felt like something real. Something that might deserve to exist in the universe.
Back to the keyboard. Adjust the margins. Learn about text justification. More typos. More proof reading. No matter how many eyeballs review – still more typos. How do I embed a font in a PDF? How do I convert my cover image to CMYK? What is CMYK? (It’s a color model that tells the printer how to print your color images.) So many details. Then we ordered what would be our final proof.
The final "not great, but not bad" version. And for a brief period the #1 Bestseller in the Camping and RV. Cooking New Releases category.
To borrow a line from Chris Dugdale, the mentalist that performed on our recent cruise, “It wasn’t great. But it wasn’t bad.” It felt complete and it felt like it was ready to be released into the wild – and it is the version that you can now purchase on Amazon, as many of you have. [You haven’t picked up a copy yet? It’s never too late! You can find it here: link]
To circle back to the original question, will we make a book about our travel adventures? Yes, that is definitely our intent. We have much of the content, and have learned the basics of self-publishing. But please don’t hold your breath – we also learned that it is a LOT of work, so it is going to take some time. But we now know it can be done!
Below the Line
Book Reviews
For those that have purchased a copy of One-Pot Camp Cooking - we would really appreciate it if you would post a review on Amazon. Customer reviews are an important part of the algorithm Amazon uses to show folks their options when they are searching for a book. The more reviews, the more likely a book will show up in search results. It only takes a few minutes – and you don’t have to say anything fancy. Just a few lines is fine.
Not sure how to do a review on Amazon? You’re in luck! We made a short “how-to” video just for you! Thanks in advance for your continued support!
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