+ Enlarge

On May 7th 2010, CISS researchers, Hadia Saad and Imranali Panjwani, attended a self-publishing workshop organised by CPI Antony Rowe and the University of Winchester. The workshop was held in Chippenham and aimed to give guidance to writers on how to write, edit, market and self-publish their books.

 The workshop, headed by Professor Barbara Large of the University of Winchester and Geoff Fisher, Sales Manager of CPI Antony Rowe, started by encouraging partipants to talk about their books. There was huge diversity in the room as fiction, academic and poetry writers were present. After this, Barbara Large showed participants of books which had suffered from poor editing, unattractive or irrelevant covers and which failed to capture the market. This was extremely useful in focusing participants' projects and ideas to appeal to an audience in the market.

We also received a tour of CPI Antony Rowe's printing factory which was extremely interesting in showing the printing process from the text, choice of paper and colour to the design andbinding. It homed in the point that self-publishing was a realistic possibility for writers who found the process of market publishing too rigorous, lacking in special interest areas and resulting in low profits for authors.

What we took away from the workshop was the notion that if any author is creative and focused enough wth a bit of markey savvy, it is entirely possible to publish a relatively successful book yourself.