The Story of the Publishing of the 12-Minute Method
First published on December 3, 2021
There are times in this writing practice when, really, there is only one thing to write about. Today, really, that thing was always going to be - in some way, shape or form - my first book, How to Start (a book, business or creative project) When You're Stuck, which I can now confirm will definitely be out and ready to buy next Tuesday 7th December (sign up to my mailing list to be the first - after my wife - to hear).
And when sitting today in the practice, the 12-minute writing method, that created that book, the story of the book is ready to be told. As I wrote last week, the book in some way has felt like a swamp of Resistance. And, as David Reynolds said in the comments on that piece, perhaps the book arrived at the perfect time. That game - trusting that everything happens in the perfect space-time configuration (to paraphrase Louise Hay) - has been a big part of my journey over the last two years. If there are 12-Minute Method books that emerge from years 3-5 of the practice, they will probably be about that.
And at each stage, the choices I have made with the book have felt like the right ones. Even if the work done in between was disrupted by all kinds of things that we might call 'life' and we might call 'Resistance'.
The first 12-minute book could have come out in late 2019. That was certainly my plan. After conversations with my friend Steve over the summer, I had the book ready to go, essentially, on the third anniversary of the 12-minute blog. And then.
And then the idea emerged: I might as well send it to some publishers. Partly I came to that conclusion because... that sounded like the kind of thing that Robbie Swale would say to someone in my position. And then, in conversations with a potential illustrator who might work on the book with me (no illustrations in the end!), I pulled a book off my shelf as an example of how I thought the illustrations might fit and I thought... you know, this book is kind of exactly how I think the 12-minute book should look. And I thought - if I'm going to send this book to a publisher, it might as well be this one. I'd LOVE to be published by the same people who published this book.
And so I looked the publisher up and then I sent it off, with various bits of help with the proposal.
And then I waited. And here was another choice point. I remember it clearly as time ticked by, speaking to Katie Harvey, my coach at the time. I said to her, at the end of a coaching session: 'Good would be out by Christmas. Better would be published by this publisher.' I was possibly wrong about that, but I didn't know it yet.
And there was the choice, made. And time passed, almost a year. And then... in the end... an offer to publish it from that publisher! Not just that, but I'd sent another manuscript to them and they offered to publish that, too. I was going to be a published author.
My identity felt completely different. I walked around the park (it was summertime again by now) looking at everything differently. I, a little shy boy from a tiny town in North Yorkshire, was going to be a published author. I looked at all the people around me - the park was in an affluent part of London - and I thought 'No matter how successful these people are, now matter how much more successful than me, almost NONE of them are published authors. But I am. Ha!! Eat dirt, suckers!'
And yet. I could feel in the conversations with family members about the offer that something was off. I couldn't pin it down, and I thought it was just my upper limit problem stopping me from being happy. And partly it was.
But as I sat with it for a couple of days, and as I read through the contract sent to me by the publisher, something felt off. My wife ran it by a colleague who is a lawyer. My friend Joni Zwart, a publishing professional, looked it over. And they confirmed what I felt - it didn't feel like a great deal.
The previous spring, as a birthday present, after conversations about these books, my brother- and sister-in-law (and nephew and niece) had given me David Gaughran's book on self publishing (currently free on Kindle!). It was a great gift. I'd never heard someone not only talk about how self-publishing was possible - I knew that, my dad has published a series of beautiful poetry books - but to make the case for why it was the better choice. And to make that convincingly.
And so faced with this contract I couldn't help but contrast it with the control and financial arrangements of modern self-publishing. And of course I couldn't help but contrast with the possibilities of a big publisher.
And so when I met the publisher to talk about the contract, to talk about how things would work in practice (and I think the contract was written by a frightening lawyer, whose words didn't really reflect the likely practice of the publisher), I was in that powerful position: I could choose. That position, knowing I had a choice and seeing it clearly, is incredibly powerful. And incredibly stressful.
In the end, one of the most useful conversations I had was with a friend of my wife: Miranda Kauffman, author of Black Tudors: The Untold Story. It became clear to me that one of Miranda's dreams had been to be a published author, and I realised that had never really been my dream.
And I saw that there were pros and cons to publishing traditionally, although I loved the idea of having a team of smart people working with me on my book. But, outside of a big deal with one of the giant publishers (and maybe even then) for an entrepreneur for whom a book wasn't the be all and end all, but more a part of an ecosystem of business and impact, self-publishing provided something really quite exciting.
By the time, after learning lots about both traditional and self publishing from the beautiful writing community, Jericho Writers, and honest conversaitons with my friend Joni, I found Tim and Joseph at Self-Published.co.uk, I knew what the right option for me was.
I could build my team, I could indulge my entrepreneurial spirit, I could do things 'differently' and I could be a part of the new world, not the old world.
It took quite a lot of adjustment of my mindset around publishing, but it was the right outlet for the 12-Minute Method. And partly that was true because... well... in some ways it's the publishing equivalent of proof reading once and putting on LinkedIn.
But in some ways it's not. It's just the perfect platform for a certain type of book and a certain type of author. Or at least, I hope so. Let's find out next week.