𝑩𝒐𝒐𝒌 𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘 𝒃𝒚 𝑾𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆 𝑵𝒐𝒘! 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝑱𝒐𝒏 𝑻𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒆.
Pharmacy Half-Life: Maximizing Your Time At Steady State by John R. Marshall
My favourite new book on my bookshelf isn’t even one I wrote: it’s one I produced at Write Now! with Jon Tattrie.
Earlier this year, John R. Marshall was talking to a friend in Truro, Nova Scotia, as they waited for their kids. John told his friend (who happily is also my friend) that he had written a short book on achieving and maximizing success as a pharmacist. John had enjoyed a long and rewarding career in the field and wrote the book to pass his wisdom and passion on to others.
But then he ran into the technical black hole of turning his manuscript into a professional book people will want to buy.
His friend told him to contact me.
I know that pain intimately. I spent 15 years as an author NOT learning how to do that, and flinching if someone said “Vellum.”
But in my first two years in business, I realized I was not alone. EVERY writer hates the Vellum hurdle. It’s expensive software. You need to own a Mac. The formatting is intense.
So I mastered Vellum and turned it into an Easy Button for writers like John. He sent me his short book in Word. I formatted it flawlessly and used Vellum to create a beautiful interior design. I used John’s cover image to create a real ebook and paperback that just went on sale on Amazon last week. With clever positioning, you can see it is already the Number One Best Seller in the Pharmacy category.
“I never imagined having a book in my hand with my name on it,” the author wrote to me the day it landed. “Thanks again for your help and guidance; I couldn’t have done it without you.”
If you find yourself blocked by that technical wall, tell me! I can turn your manuscript into a globally available book published on your own account so you control the full income.
This is one of the reasons I’m so excited about the future of books. In the past, the publishers were near gods, controlling access to editors, designers, and the magic tools to turn a manuscript into a book. Today, we writers can do more and more of that for ourselves. You don’t have to accept it when the tenth publisher tells you your book is too short, or too long, or not with the right focus, or anything else.
If you believe in your book, I will do the ugly work to make it beautiful.
In weeks, you can go from daydreaming about publishing your book to holding it in your hands.
What’s stopping you?
