Tuesday, November 30, 2010

MY BOOK IS SO CLOSE

Most of you may already know this and for those that don't you soon will. I am writing a book, which evolved through my research and love of California native plants. It was a day in the making by forces more powerful than me. I was making 8.5x11 plant fact sheets for a client for her native garden design concept. The sheets contained the basic plant information as well as lots of pretty pictures. Before I knew it I had 80+ sheets and realized one day that I had the basics of a book. I laughed at myself thinking yeah right! ME! write a book? I ignored the idea for a few months until one day I realized that making this book would be a great way to promote my business and the subject matter.

I started out calling the book "Easy to Use California Native Plants For Your Garden", which was nice but just not right for the audience I was going after. So after much thought and advice from fellow designers, the book took a turn in the right direction. This led to a name change calling it "60 California Native Plants to Experiment With in Your Garden". Easy to use, readily available and forgiving plants that you should totally try. Life is an experiment of trial and error, but these plants are the experiment that works the first time and lasts a long time.

At the moment the book is 90-95% complete, with no publisher other than my pocket. Hey maybe I will one day meet a generous donor hee hee. Either way I intend (god willing) on getting the book done before February or March. That does not mean that it will be printed by then but at least it will be ready for printing. You may be happy to know that I have contacted two publishers and will have to patiently wait and see. Wish me luck. On that note I would like to do a series of blog posts about upcoming books that you should check out when published as well as others that have already been published worth reading.

If you have any questions, suggestions or comments feel free to share them. Constructive criticism is always welcome.

1 comment:

Jeannie Hanson said...

are you on the garden writers today wave length? Lots of community cooking up lots of projects. It would be a good networking place for you. I love te idea of your book and think it would be very well received. You should check out Timber Press and Cool Springs Pubs (think those are the two names). If you can't get a publisher, there's also lulu.com where you can format and publish and then print on demand. Good luck. Jeannie
(let me know if you need more specific links and I'll get them for you)