As with many things, the digital revolution has reshaped the publishing industry, making it possible for people not only to share their life stories, but their accumulated wealth of knowledge, their passion or simply weave a tale.
Dr. Alex Willis, a retired optometrist, is one of a growing number of people entering the field of self-publishing. At 93 years old, he has just published his first book, Stressless Living, bringing together all the knowledge he has collected in 60 years of studying how to relax.
“It was a hobby more than anything,” said Willis, describing how he got interested in stress and hypnotherapy. “Finally, when I retired here in the Okanagan, I went more full time and started doing workshops.”
But putting it all together in a book took a little push.
“I had all this information and my wife kept telling me you should put it down and help people,” said Willis. He attributes his own long life and good health to having learned to keep stress under control and decided he was ready to share his thoughts with a wider audience.
“If you are under stress, you don’t learn as well, you don’t function as well. You don’t have as much joy and happiness out of life,” he said. “We all have the ability to relax in a very deep way, but we forget how to do that because of the stress that we build up over a period of years. By the proper training, you can recover that ability to relax.”
Like Willis, Craig Henderson of Naramata was something of a neophyte when it came to book publishing, though he had put out one book in the ‘90s, a fundraiser for the Big Brothers and Big Sisters organization. But it is his newly published Naramata Chronicles that is his pride and joy.
“This is my first real book. Two hundred pages is a lot to fill and I remember thinking this was going to come across very quickly cause I had a lot of the content already,” said Henderson. “But when I got right down to it, it took 3.5 hours to proof, each of the three for four proofreading cycles, I began to realize how much content there was there.”
The content of the book comes primarily from the archives of the community news site mynaramata.com, which Henderson operates for the Naramata Citizen’s Association, gathering together stories like The Peacock Plight, or his Interview with a Bear to help paint a picture of recent times in the small community.
“This new endeavour has really been able to happen because of the changes in the world of book publishing,” he said. “It is so much easier for either a self-publisher or a person who just wants to write their own life story, to document it for family to get that done.”
Computers, he said, have made physical aspect of laying out the book simple.
“You need to know a little bit about what you are doing, but you don’t have to cut and paste anymore, like the old days,” he said, adding that getting expert advice is still a good thing.
“I am a big advocate of hiring people that know what they’re doing, whether they are designers or editors,” said Henderson. “That’s a mistake a lot of new self-publishers make, is they don’t get proper editors to review what they’ve done. They find later that it shows.”
Willis also found expert help made the process smoother. In his case, that came from Yasmin John Thorpe of the Penticton Writers and Publishers group.
“I had a lot of help and because of that help, it was relatively simple,” said Willis. “I had people reviewing it and Yasmin was more or less taking charge of everything, and leading me and showing what to do.”
Distribution is also a key factor in publishing a book. While Henderson feels Naramata Chronicles is too local in interest to distribute as an e-book, Willis includes online distribution in his plans. But both authors also are distributing locally, through talks and book signings.
Willis will be at Leir House on Dec. 19 at 7 p.m. for a signing session, while Henderson’s next signing is at the Naramata Branch of the Okanagan Regional Library on Dec. 22 at 6:30 p.m. His book, along with those of many other local writers, is also available at Hooked on Books.
“Hooked on Books has been great,” said Henderson, adding that Penticton is fortunate to have such a supportive retailer. “This store has concentrated on having book events, celebrating local authors and being interactive with the consumers to respond to what they want.”
