Is this cheating?

[Reb Williams]

I'm not going to post on here recommending myself, because that really would be cheating, but I'm posting in the hope that someone else might want to recommend ME. I've written a book - Grow Your Own Cows - which has just become available on Amazon. It's about my family's brave but vaguely incompetent efforts to be self sufficient, back in the Good Life days, with a cow in the back garden. If you've ever picked slugs out of your potatoes, and I'm guessing that's most of you, it should raise a smile.

You can read samples of it on the www.growyourowncows.com website so you can see if you want to recommend it.

I'm sorry if it's cheating to mention it on here but it seems a shame not to when people MIGHT enjoy it. And the pictures are nice (I didn't do them!)

Reb
PS if any of you are in the London area I'm doing a book launch in a pub. Well, I'll be there with a pint and some books, anyway, not so sure what else should happen.... 3 Nov, 7pm, Barrowboy and Banker at London Bridge.

[Shadylane]

Your book looks like lots of fun. I might buy it. Though it sounds like you have some serious emotional scars from being terrorised by a homicidal cock. You poor thing. Made me chuckle though. Does that make me a bad person?

[Nicos]

Looks fun!

[Reb Williams]

Your book looks like lots of fun. I might buy it. Though it sounds like you have some serious emotional scars from being terrorised by a homicidal cock. You poor thing. Made me chuckle though. Does that make me a bad person?

It could have been a misery memoir couldn't it...!? but enough time has just about passed for me to find it funny too. To be honest, having to eat kohl rabi all winter scarred me more....

Reb

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Read more about growing up in the Good Life at Grow Your Own Cows

[seasprout]

Looks a good, fun book.
And I appear to have started a Twitter posting about it. Lets see if it spreads around the world.


And I've just joined your Face book Page as well, not bad for you for a mornings work.

[piskieinboots]

Twittering as we speak/type

[Brengirl]

Do hope you've hit the jackpot Reb.

No way can I get to the 'signing' but would love a signed copy.

Please form an orderly queue.

Bren

[Tomatoking]

Hi Reb, very well done with the book, it looks a fun read and I know how much work it involves, as I am in the process of writing a book about life in France for a naive, English family. It is not us by the way! I made them up.
Your book has a great unique slant on the good life, so it should capture a good slice of the market.
However, I wondered if you could tell me briefly how you got it published, as I realise for budding authors like myself, that this is a major obstacle that you have overcome, so again well done and I am sure there are probably a few other budding authors on here that would welcome your advice.
Good luck with the book, and just in time for Christmas too.

Tomatoking

[Reb Williams]

thank you everyone for such kind words and for twittering/blogging about it. What lovely grapes you all are!

However, I wondered if you could tell me briefly how you got it published, as I realise for budding authors like myself, that this is a major obstacle that you have overcome, so again well done and I am sure there are probably a few other budding authors on here that would welcome your advice.

Well, in fact the story of how it got published is quite an odd one. It came out of an article I did for the Guardian - I'm not a journalist but I sent it to them on the offchance, and they published it- you can see the link on Grow Your Own Cows. People who enjoyed the article kept asking when I would write the full story, so I did.

Now at this point, the wisdom is that you prepare the first three chapters and you send to agents. And they reject you, and you pick yourself up and send to more agents. I think JK Rowling sent Harry Potter to about 25 agents (every time someone tells me that, the number of agents goes up...)
However, I sent to one agent. She said, it's very well written but "the time for that kind of book is past". I did a little google search and noticed that the number of times people look for 'Grow Your Own' is rising very dramatically, and I wasn't really sure I agreed with her. I mean, I'm sure she's right, she's an agent, she knows that publishing is going through a really tough time and only ghost written books for Cheryl Cole and Jordan make any money. But I also thought, I know people who grow their own and who have a sense of humour about their failures, and I think they'd buy enough copies of the book for a small print run.

So I decided not to send the book to any more agents, because she'd told me it was well written, so I knew I wouldn't be making a total fool of myself by going it alone. I made the Grow Your Own Cows website and originally had a voting button on there so when people had read the samples, they could tell me if they liked it. I sent the website to friends and asked them to pass it on. And within 2 months I'd had over 2,500 individual visits, and 98% of the votes said "yes, publish".
So published it myself, which is in the tradition of Grow Your Own after all.

I will say: although it's going well, although Amazon has reordered from me three times in the first fortnight, I have not yet even begun to break even. I may NOT break even... it depends if all those people who said they liked the book actually buy it. But even if I don't, I have had such a lot of fun. I never realised how many kind, clever, helpful, friendly people there were out there in cyberspace; it is incredibly heartwarming. I have had supportive emails from people in America, Malaysia, Finland, Lithuania, New Zealand... people I have never met or heard of but who are connected to me via friends of friends of friends, or via this forum, or via twitters and facebook fans. It has been a fantastic experience.
But don't do it for the money!

I'm sorry this is such a long reply... but hope it was helpful.
Reb
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Grow Your Own Cows

[Tomatoking]

Hi Reb, first of all, many thanks for taking the time out to reply. I presume that you will have a busy day today with your book launch and I am sure we and everyone else on here wishes you a successful launch.

Your story about publishing, I think is the route that many people have taken and as you have said, it's more for the pleasure of having your own book printed than for financial rewards, but I am sure it will give you the experience and courage to write another book.

I find writing a book is as much fun as reading a book when the words flow, but I am realistic enough to understand that if I ever wrote a book good enough to be published that I would probably have to go down the same route as you took. However, the JK Rowling story, which most of us have heard even with more numbers, is encouragement for anyone persistent enough to keep sending their book to publishers. Saying that there are probably millions of budding authors out there waiting to have their books published!

Once again, thanks a lot for the reply and very very good luck.

[Reb Williams]

Thanks all - and the book launch was a huge success, see The London launch Reb's Blog. Did any of you Grapes make it? I didn't get a chance to ask everyone how they knew about the launch.
R

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Adventures in self-sufficiency - Grow Your Own Cows

[seasprout]

Can you just confirm the publication date..?? Amazon is saying Oct 19th, but also saying unavailable as yet.

Is it them being silly..?

[Reb Williams]

Can you just confirm the publication date..?? Amazon is saying Oct 19th, but also saying unavailable as yet.

Is it them being silly..?

Yes! it's them being silly. It's published and available, but very annoyingly they just haven't stocked enough and every time I send them more, they sell out immediately. You can still order as normal. People are getting them fairly quickly I think, but just not next-day.

[Janna]

Brilliant!
Of course this isn't cheating, no one is forced to read your posts, and I'm glad I did.
My order is in, I shall buy it for my mum for christmas too.
Good luck.

[seasprout]

Cheers reb, I'm getting it soon.