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Self-publishing - a fictionalised story of how Annie published her own cake recipe book and promoted her business

Everyone always said that Annie’s cakes were fantastic, her home-made bread divine. In the intervals of bringing up her rambunctious three boys, she had built a business making and selling the cakes, until they became famous throughout Donegal.

Annie turned out to be much more of a businesswoman than she would ever have imagined. She had successfully scaled up her baking, so the cakes still tasted deliciously homemade. Now that the boys were off her hands she was ready to grow Annie’s Cakes a bit more by publishing a book of her cake recipes to sell in local bookshops and through the same outlets that sold her baked goods.

Annie had collected together her recipes and written an introduction, and was ready to get going. The trouble was that she didn’t know anything about publishing, so she wasn’t sure where to start. As a successful businesswoman she was sure she could sell her books, just like she sold her cakes. But how was she going to get the book printed?  How could she make sure that every detail would be correct?

Fortunately Annie heard about WritersServices from her friend Mary, who had been working on a novel for years and who had book-marked the WritersServices site. Annie had a look and decided to give it a go. She wanted a professional result, so she took WritersServices’ advice and paid to have her manuscript copy-edited, confident that her recipes were thoroughly road-tested, and that the all-important quantities and timings were correct. She was then referred to a self-publishing service to get the book printed.

She provided a photograph – her husband Gerry’s favourite one of her in the kitchen at home – and was pleased with the cover design that was produced. She checked the proofs of her book, confirmed the first order quantity and was delighted with the handsome large format paperback which was delivered to the office. Since she was a pretty good saleswoman, she sold it in to all the bookshops in Donegal and quite a few other local shops as well.  Then she used her excellent local contacts to do some successful local publicity for the book.

The first print run of 1,000 was quickly sold and Annie was soon ordering more copies, confident now that the book would sell steadily and help her to grow Annie’s Cakes as well.

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