Having finally completed the first draft of my book back in November, my attention in recent months has been focused on getting the book published. As outlined in my previous post on this subject (Publishers Rejoice!), the first step was to compile a ‘hit list’ of non-fiction publishers who accept unsolicited proposals in categories relevant to the book. This was not a long list, as I’d already ruled out academic publishers and other UK-based publishers of history of technology titles would appear to be as rare as a female programmer. I then set about drafting and submitting proposals to each of them in the specified format (which was indeed different for each publisher) and eagerly awaited their responses.
Of the 7 publishers contacted, I received 5 responses, a pretty decent hit rate considering the poor reputation of publishers in this respect. However, none were willing to accept the book for publication. The two most promising in terms of the relevance of my book to their core markets were probably the British Computer Society (BCS) and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). Both are well-respected professional societies with large international memberships and enviable track records as publishers of quality books in their respective fields. Unfortunately, my timing was bad, as both had recently chosen to refocus their publishing efforts on titles which address the specific technical requirements of their members and my book no longer fitted their requirements.
Of the other 3 publishers who responded, only one (Palgrave Macmillan) took the time to carefully evaluate the book before deciding that it wasn’t for them, being neither an academic nor a trade (general audience) offering. They also expressed concern over the length of the book which, at 235,000 words, was almost 3 times the length of a typical non-fiction title, making it much more expensive to publish. One solution would have been to divide it into two volumes but this would have compromised the comprehensiveness which is one of the main selling points of the book.
So, having tried and failed to secure a publishing deal, I then moved on to Option 2, self-publishing. Fortunately, this has become much easier in recent years with the advent of Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform. I’ll describe my experiences with KDP in my next post.
The Story of the Computer 