Self Publishing Workshop Alert

English: Open book icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Rather to my surprise, the workshop on publishing and promoting your book I gave at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature earlier this year was a sell-out. Given that tickets cost Dhs200 (about $55) a pop, I was impressed at the level of interest - it points to a larger coterie of would-be novelists out there than I thought existed.

I'm doing another one at the Sharjah International Book Fair. on Monday 12th November at 7pm. This one's free.

So if you want to know how self publishing works, if it makes sense compared to beating your head against the bastions of 'traditional' publishing, how to format a book for publication, which platforms to choose for ebook and print book editions and why, how to design a cover and how to negotiate the red tape of creating a book in the United Arab Emirates, come on down. It'll be about an hour of frenetic brain-dump that should answer all your questions and even some you hadn't thought about yet.

If you're Dubai based, don't worry. The traffic's not as bad as you think (but, yes, you will spend 30 minutes in the queues unless you decide to pitch up at about 4 or 5-ish and have a mooch around the exhibition halls before the workshop, in which case the traffic's fine), dragons and spiny tailed bandersnatches don't actually wander the streets of Sharjah eating unsuspecting maidens despite what you've been told and no, you won't catch diphtheria by contact because Sharjah's unclean. Incidentally, the exhibition halls are packed with publishers and books, with a strong turnout from international titles and there is literally something there for everyone.