I wrote a few blog posts here last summer about what it is like to self publish with some how-to information. Since then, I have launched two books of my own at Sea Crow Press, which I created because all books need a home.
Now that I know how to make books, the press is growing and has just signed on its first author who isn’t me!
JOIN SEA CROW PRESS IN WELCOMING AUTHOR FRAN MCNICOL
Fran is an accomplished surgeon and horsewoman and she writes from Nelipot Cottage in the English countryside.
What if we could keep our beloved horses in a way that is governed by their needs, rather than our convenience? What if we could offer horses a life that fulfils their need for friends, forage and freedom, as well as our goals and desires?
This seems a fair exchange in return for allowing us to share their grace and beauty. A healthy, happy and sound horse would be a partner in a dream come true.
This book is the story of my journey, from horse-mad child, through goal orientated doctor training horses for competition, to listening to my horses and learning from them about life and love.
Fran McNicol
An afternoon spent reading Fran McNicol is a journey through the English countryside with her band of horses and loyal dog. Along the way, she shares her best practice techniques to achieve barefoot healthy horses pastured in social groups with access to forage in fields rewilded to combine best horse nutrition with best environmental practice.
Barefoot Hooves and Open Hearts will be available on March 30 from Sea Crow Press and wherever good books are sold.
Until then, stay tuned for our cover reveal, and a series of blogs from Nelipot Cottage.
ABOUT FRAN
Fran McNicol is an amateur equestrienne living in the UK. As a full-time surgeon, she obviously knows a huge amount about the human animal, but the most useful product of medical training, from the horses’ point of view, is that she learned how to research, evaluate evidence, and then apply theory to optimise the care of her horses.
Her writing is therefore a mix of opinion and her current state of learning from 25 years of doctoring, time working around the world as a polo groom, and many years of keeping her own horses. She loves training young horses and focuses on riding the sport horse both classically and holistically. She competes regularly for her local riding club, especially in One Day Eventing.
Nelipot Cottage started life as an educational blog to share learning and best practise to promote the benefits of a barefoot and holistic herd lifestyle for whole horse health and to reflect on life lessons learned along the way. She believes that horses exist to bring out the very best in humans. Fran hopes that sharing these tales will bring new friends, kindred spirits, exchange of knowledge, and lots of positive energy into the lives of the Nelipot herd.
‘The best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry…’
“The best-laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley…”
That’s some nice Robert Burns to start the day: “The best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry…”
And they do, especially for authors launching books in the middle of pandemics.
Old school. How I launched my first book in 2017 at my fabulous local library.
Before COVID-19, authors introduced new books with in-person readings and signings. Maybe a party. Definitely a celebration, because it’s no small thing to write a book. In the last few months that has changed completely, for both traditionally and self-published authors.
Suddenly we all need to figure out how to launch books without actually leaving the house.
This is even more challenging for the self-published or small press author because most of us do not have an army of publicists and a big publishing house to support our efforts. The regular challenges of promotion are compounded by not being able to engage with your audience in person.
In Amsterdam, as the most beautiful spring weather on record eased the strain of lock down, I spent a lot of time eating stroopwafles. The classic Dutch waffle/syrup cookie sandwich, best cut with strong coffee, stroopwafles are the perfect size to balance on the top of your coffee cup so they get warm and gooey.
Dutch still life with tulips, Moon Tide galley, and coffee with stroopwafle.
I may have looked idle, but I was trying to figure out how to promote a book about Cape Cod to other people who love Cape Cod. As you probably know, Cape Cod is on the northeast coast of the U.S., and that is a long way from Amsterdam.
I had planned a beautiful, garden book launch on Cape Cod with the local historical society, with a reading, flowers, wine, and a book signing. I had plans for another reading down the road in the lovely Swedenborgian church, and I was grateful for the community support the book had inspired.
But all I could think of was Robert Burns. He pegged it. The best-laid plans do go awry, sometimes in ways we never imagined. Many, many writers have been caught short by the quickly changing circumstances brought on by COVID-19. The entire publishing industry has been caught short.
So we need to be agile.
We need to harness the technology that made self-publishing possible in the first place, and we need to move it all online. Even though we miss the experience of direct contact, this is how we can still connect to readers.
In the end, I grabbed my phone and recorded my book launch at my desk. It took a couple of minutes, and it was far easier than I had imagined as I sat there eating stroopwafles.
I posted it online, and people liked it.
It’s doable people, be brave and think outside of the box, and if you’re launching your book in these times, I’d love to hear how you adapted to the situation.
Is writing supposed to be this hard? Is the muse so fickle?
The blank page. It looms in the half-light of the computer, a sterile surface untouched by text, empty of emotion, quietly waiting. We’ve all faced it. Is writing supposed to be this hard? Is the muse so fickle?
photo credit Dysprosia at English Wikipedia
It’s chilly and prone to extreme downpours right now where I am in the Netherlands. The summer started with beautiful sunny beach days, but now we are back in the ice-box.
The rain pours. A trapped hornet whines in the window. I cast around for something to blog about, and find only the blank page.
I’m thinking about inspiration and how to find it.
First, grab a cup of coffee. Then think about what grabs you. Google it.
History and poetry grab me, so I googled the earliest woman poet.
Have you heard of Enheduanna? I can’t believe I’m this many years old, and I’m only just hearing about Enheduanna.
Enheduanna, extract from the Disk of Enheduanna
Ancient Sumar, c. 2300 BCE. Enheduanna, the daughter of King Sargon of Akkad, is history’s earliest known poet.
“My king, something has been created that no one has created before,” she wrote. Her religious writing helped her father secure power in the south of his kingdom.
Echoes of her work resonate through history, in the verses of Homer, and the words of the Bible.
When I wrote Moon Tide, a collection of Cape Cod poems, I was in thrall with the Moon and poetry. I guess I still am. At that point, inspiration was an open spigot.
Today I’m facing the blank page. It happens to us all, but not always.
For inspiration, try taking a walk a day in nature.
While I wrote Moon Tide, I walked the marsh and beach daily with my dog Daisy, and for every walk, Daisy somehow gave me a poem.
Inspiration and magic usually come together.
Daisy came from the Animal Rescue League in Brewster, on the north side of Cape Cod. If you are looking for a dog on Cape, start there.
One of my best friends went there looking for a cat but called me instead because he had inadvertently found my next dog. I drove down there the following day to check it out, and there was Daisy.
She was a pointer-lab mix, black with a white pointer stripe on her chest, and she looked like a classic Cape Cod black lab.
Logo of the Black Dog Company
Daisy and I spent three years roaming the Cape, and the poems piled up. The inspiration to write was somehow dog-induced, and somehow a gift from nature.
It is still pouring here in the Netherlands, but I have let the hornet out and managed to write an entire blog.
“I, who am I among living creatures?” Enheduanna asked.
Indeed.
Writing is not always easy, and hitting it right is an uncertain science.
Think of it as a combination of magic and coffee and sheer persistence.
Inspiration is where you find it, people, and the best way to find it is to keep writing.
The written word is powerful if people can access it.
When everything stopped suddenly due to COVID-19, and those who could stayed home to flatten the curve, a bunch of couch-bound, new writers in residence began a conversation on social media about the current state and future of publishing. We were wondering how best to get our work in front of actual readers.
Otherwise, why were we writing?
First, a disclaimer: I do not claim to be an expert on the publishing industry.
But I am a writer, and I do have work to share because what use is it to anyone stashed on some hard drive far from the light of day?
In the course of this writerly, couch-bound discussion, an agent piped up advising writers to do it yourself, to just go for it, especially if it’s time-sensitive. Because traditional publishing takes years to produce a book, after you’ve already spent years trying to get noticed, and by then, you’ve missed your window of opportunity.
I was happy to go with that.
Think about how the printing press completely revolutionized Europe by putting books into the hands of the people, effectively moving knowledge from the confines of the monasteries and the universities to the commonweal.
Printing c. 1770
Books, which had previously taken years to create from vellum, pen, and ink, making them expensive and rare, suddenly became cheap and affordable with the mass production made possible by the printing press. Next thing you know, vernacular language overtakes Latin, the fledgling middle-class is off and running, the Reformation is underway, the nation-states are rising, and Capitalism, for better or perhaps worse, is becoming a thing.
What would the American Revolution have been without Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, fresh from his printing press?
The written word is powerful and revolutionary if people can access it.
Next, consider the internet, which is the equally revolutionary successor to the printing press, allowing writers to share their work with readers far and wide, maybe without even leaving the couch.
Modern digital printing press connected to the internet
I went back and forth for a long time about the validity of self-publishing and the apparent need for the Official Publisher Stamp of Approval, and I concluded that because the technology to publish has fallen into the hands of writers and they are using it, the stigma of self-publishing has begun to fade. At the same time, traditional publishing simply does not have enough room for all the good writers out there, so self-publishing provides the obvious alternative route.
This article will be duly shared through my blog on my website, i.e., self-published.
You could argue publishing houses are the gatekeepers preventing loads of rubbish books littering up the place but, plenty of rubbish is also selling through traditional publishers right alongside the good stuff.
Self-publishing isn’t much different, some of the books are good, and some of the books are bad.
What is different about self-publishing and the small press is how they level the field, allowing voices that might never have been audible a chance to share their work. And before you get too excited, promotion is harder than writing, but that’s a story for another blog.
I spent the COVID-19 lock down laying low in Amsterdam, creating things out of thin air, mostly on my couch. So now there are two new things in the world: One is a book called Moon Tide, a Collection of Cape Cod Poems, and the other is a small press called Sea Crow Press.
Moon Tide is my second book, but it’s my first self-published book. Sea Crow Press evolved because Moon Tide seemed to need a home, and it was just worth creating.
I am following the news from the safety of my couch, and I am watching with the rest of you as the systems we took for granted fail. Self-publishers and small presses have always worked outside of these systems, and joining their ranks is a liberating experience, especially now in the current climate.
If not now, when?
I would not be at all surprised to see a wide selection of exciting and new self-published books coming out of the COVID-19 lock down. Mine will be among them, and so far, creating my own poetry book has been an incredible experience.
I am excited to share this book with you, potential readers, and I am pretty sure this is why most of us are writing.
It starts with the vision of a book and evolves into learning how to create a new business for a new time. Sea Crow press is fledgling but already has several new titles in the pipeline to follow Moon Tide. One is a guided journal for these difficult times, another comes from Nelipot Cottage in the cozy English countryside bringing readers a collection of essays about barefoot horses and holistic riding practices.
To create books, I had to outsource cover art while embracing a steep learning curve that continues to rise, and I had lots of help from other generous writers who have traveled this path before me.
If you are thinking about going for it yourself, check out Vellum software for interior formatting. Make sure your cover art is good because that is your first impression, and you only have one chance to make your first impression. Get up to speed with Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), paid on delivery (POD), why you need ISBN numbers and where to get them, and give the process the time it needs.
Read and re-read, and maybe find an editor.
Keep writing people, and be very, very brave.
An independent imprint curating creative non-fiction and poetry.
Sea Crow Press is named for a flock of five talkative crows you can find on the beach anywhere between Scudder Lane and Bone Hill Road in Barnstable Village on Cape Cod.
According to Norse legend, one-eyed Odin sent two crows out into the world so they could return and tell him its stories. If you sit and listen to the sea crows in Barnstable as they fly and roost and chatter, it’s an easy legend to believe.
Sea Crow Press is dedicated to telling stories that matter. Moon Tide, a collection of Cape Cod poems, is its first offering.
If you can’t get to Cape Cod, Moon Tide brings the Cape to you!
Horseshoe crabs, ghosts, tree men, black dogs, and daffodils. These characters come alive in Moon Tide, a collection of poems charting the course of a Cape Cod year.
Mary Petiet 