Transcript of AE 1371 - The Goss: How Dad Self-Published a Book in Australia

G'day, you mob! Pete here and this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news. Whether locally Down Under here in Australia, or non locally, overseas, in other parts of the world, okay. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss.

So, these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So, it is particularly good to improve your listening skills.

In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy Membership at AussieEnglish.com.au, where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising, and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

Dad.

Pete.

How's it going?

Good. How are you?

Good. Welcome to this episode of The Goss.

Yeah. Thank you.

Scrappy's here as well.

He's half asleep, but he's here.

Scrappy. He's up on the couch..

He won't be asleep for long. He'll be all over us.

He'll be asking me to get out. You guys won't shut up.

He says, well, he was in the office first. He was asleep when we came in.

He was. He was. So, I can pick a topic for today. We haven't decided yet. We've just sat down.

Yeah, we just sort of made it up.

Or if you've got some that you want to do off the top of your head, as a lazy episode.

A lazy episode!..

You don't have to look anything up. Yeah.

I was going to talk about the self-publishing, the book on birdwatching, which I've just done.

Yeah, give us the deets on that.

Give us the deets.

And where can people get a copy? What is it? Why would they want to buy it?

Why would they want to buy it? Well, if they're interested in birdwatching on the Bellarine Peninsula, where we live.

It's very niche. It was a good example of.

It is.

Becoming, going very, very niche and carving out a market, right. So anyway, tell us the story about what it is and the conceptualisation.

Yeah. Well, you know, obviously we've talked about it before. I'm a bird watcher and photographer and have been for a long time. And one of the things that I do is check out bird books wherever I go. I really buy them these days because I've run out of places to put them, and I figure there's not much point in buying these books and then packing them in a box and sticking them in the garage. It's got to be on its shelf to be used. Um, but there seemed to be a gap in the market for, just local area, the local area and where to go and how to find birds.

Is that here specifically, or is that every local area?

Well, a lot of, a lot of places don't have that. But there's a few around.

Because I imagine when you're a birdwatcher..

You can..

Books that you can buy.

Yeah, you can buy the, you know, the 100 best places to go birdwatching in Australia or birdwatching in Victoria.

And there might be like one in..

There's a couple of really good books on that. Um, but there doesn't seem to be one, um, in the local area.

So it's the more, there's, there's room now for people to create those types of books for more specific locations that give you more in depth information about it.

So in this case, there's, um, I decided I'd do, you know, the top 25, or whatever? You know, I didn't call it that. That's in the description. But, you know, often people do, you know, the clickbait marketing built into the subtitle, but, um, it's it's just 25 locations around the peninsula that I go birdwatching. Um, and descriptions of what you can find, when you can find it, how to get there, what's there. So yeah, there, you know, walking trails or are there picnic grounds or and there are there toilets or there shops nearby if you want to buy food or a coffee or something. So it's that sort of book in that. It's not a sit down and read it cover to cover. It's a guidebook that you stick in the car and go, oh, well, oh, we'll go off to Indented Head. What is there to see? There's a couple of spots there and we'll go and have a look.

Which is pretty much what most birders do, right?

Yeah.

You just sort of like, Oh, I want to take some photos or I want to see some birds.

Yeah.

And they just, wake outside. What sort of a day is it? Where should I go?

Yeah.

What time is it?

Exactly. And the other thing I did was go through a, not a full taxonomic list, but a list of, basically, families of birds that you can find on the peninsula. Um, in part two of the book. So if you want to look at parrots, where do I find parrots? And where can I find honeyeaters? And which species of honeyeaters are more likely to find?

How much a thing is that, for most people, who are deep into it? Who are, you know, twitches, who are really into bird photography and want to go and hunt these things down? How much do they actually get into the weeds of looking for specific species or families of birds and then targeting those locations? Or do most people just say, oh, I'll just go to this location and whatever comes, comes.

Well, if you want. I sort of defined as three different types of bird watchers. There's the.

The weirdos, the weirdos, and the weirdos!

Super weirdos! Yeah!

Yeah.

No, there's the people who like me. When I started, I started when I was a kid, and I didn't specifically go out looking for birds. I was just interested in finding birds wherever I went.

But this was before cameras, right?

Yeah. Oh, exactly.

You were just..

Well before I had a camera. So, you know..

You go to the islands, right?

Oh, yeah. And, you know, I can remember the the specific instance. And I must have been about, I think, 5 or 6 years old. And I was down at the local beach with my parents one summer, and I saw what I now know are greater crested terns.

Mhm.

Um, with silver gulls, silver gull being probably the most common bird on the beaches around Melbourne. Mhm. Um, and I noticed that they were different and I asked Mum or Dad um because they were both there. I can't remember specifically who I asked but I said "Is that bird different from the seagulls?" Because that's what we call them, seagulls, because they are generically gulls. And and they said yes. And I went, Oh, there's actually a reason to look at these things now. And so from then on, I'd just, you know, wherever I went, I was looking at birds. So there's that sort of incidental birdwatchers, if you like. Then there are those who are the, that my book is more aimed at, as the people who are going, I'm going to this place for a holiday or I live around here, where can I find birds?

Yeah.

And so I might go, Oh, I want to go to Indented Head for a holiday. Are there a couple of places down there? I'm lucky to find birds. What am I likely to see?

And so I guess that would be, what, you sort of reverse engineered it, right? Because that would be your attitude if you were going to say a place interstate in South Australia.

Oh yeah.

That you weren't massively familiar with.

Yeah. What, what am I likely to find there?

Yeah. And where? Right. You would be like, which of the best locations I should go to. And I imagine prior to a book like this, you would have to do a lot of, you know, delving into blogs and.

Yeah. And and you can go to this uh eBird, which is a website, eBird.org, which is run from Cornell University in the United States.

And it just covers the world..

It's global thing where, oh, there's a cat running along your fence.

Neighbours cat...

Neighbours cat...

Scrappy is like, What?

Scrappy is going, What is that? No. Go back to sleep. Nope.

Every fucking day that I wished that neighbour would just keep it inside.

Um. And. Yeah. So the Cornell University have this giant database, and it's citizen science. So if people are out and looking and find birds, they actually record where they were, when they were there, how long they spent, how far they walked and list the species..

This is them, not the birds.

This is the. Yes, exactly. Yeah. The birds are going, Oh, I was here for an hour and I found this bird..

Yeah, I fancy to interview them..

Yeah..

They got the microphone. Excuse me, sir!

Yes. So, um, that's their giant database. So if you're interested in a location or a particular species, you can come at it from either way. Um, but up until then, when I first started, it was there was really nothing. You know, you just go and look. There wasn't any resources, pre-the web. There were no resources that you could go and search through.

Besides books and..

Um, but other than, other than broad guidebooks and they were sort of guidebooks on the whole of Australia, the Guide to Australian Birds. And you go there and they'll have a little distribution map.

Yeah.

Um, on a map of Australia with a coloured blob where you can find them. That's not very good if you go into a specific place. So, um, and then there's the third type, which are the twitchers, which are targeting particular species, usually. And most people who are in that are going I'm going to Eastern Victoria. I've never seen a, um, superb lyrebird before. So I want to go to the forest that I'm going to find a superb lyrebird and look for a lyrebird.

This is where they're using their eyes as the camera, and they just sort of like chink, seen it. They're the weird ones. The super weird ones, right? Where it's like they, they're collecting them all, but they're collecting the memory of them, right?

Yes.

They just want to see them.

Yep.

Seen it! Chink! Boom! Done off the list.

And there are photographers who do the same thing. They want to photograph as many species as they can.

At least they're you've got a hard physical thing you can show.

Yeah.

I don't know how, like, I remember we've, I've done some of these episodes around talking about twitching and everything and bird photography. And it was funny that there's like, competitions or whatever, where they go around the country and see how many they can see at the same amount of time. Yeah.

The movie that was made from the book.

Yeah. And.

About going and seeing them in, at again, North America.

It's like, who would you trust? You're just like, yep. Seen it, I saw it. Yes, I definitely did. Yeah. Like, surely you could, like there'd be bullshit artists.

Oh yeah. But usually in those cases usually people are not required to. But there's a sort of honesty system where you would need to have it verified that somebody else saw the same bird in the same sort of time frame, in the same location.

Yeah.

So you're not just going and making stuff up.

Yeah, I feel like that would be open to abuse, though.

Yeah. But again, it's one of those things like, why would you like- cheating at golf?

Yeah.

Golf is the only sport in the world where you score yourself.

People seem to cheat a lot in golf, though, dad. At least on the weekend. The weekend warriors, the ones on the weekend, moving the ball.

But you can understand people cheating as motivation to cheat at anything if it's competitive.

Yes.

But if you're going out there, mostly, most golfers are not competing as such. They might go out and play with other people, but really what they want to do is better their own score.

Yes.

And is there any motivation for lying to yourself about beating your own score?

If you've got Alzheimer's or something where you just thought you read, you read yesterday,

Oh shucks, 72 today?

God damn. But it says. Yeah, I did. I crushed it, like, far out.

Yeah. Um, so yeah. So that was really the motivation for the book, was to aim at somewhere around that middle thing of, you know, people who are interested in what they can find a particular locations.

What was the process of putting the book together? Like, where did the idea come from? And then how did you do it? Because I imagine a lot of the listeners here, whether they're into birds or not, may think I want to write a book or publish a book or potentially sell a book. And so can you outline that process of getting that done because you've done pretty well. You've sold it. I think you said 200 copies.

A couple of hundred now. Yeah.

You know, which is in no mean fix. That's probably better than the, the average book that gets released, right?

Well, I was..

I mean most books..

I was discussing that with a friend. In order to get on the New York Times bestsellers list. You have to sell 5000 books in a week.

So what you do..

Worldwide.

Usually, usually the people that are, that are sponsoring you to write the book will buy a crate of your books so that they end up on the bestseller thing, and then they'll sell them..

Be on sale, yeah. So, so 5000 books world in a week worldwide. Um, so the market is let's assume that there are 4 billion people in the world who have the market, who have the, the ability to buy a book somewhere.

1 in 1,000,000 book...

That's 5000 people here to 4 billion. Um, yeah. So 1 in 1,000,000 people. I've sold 200 copies in a population target of 70,000 people.

Yeah. So you've done pretty well, then?

So I'm way ahead of that.

You should be on the Bellarine Times, first page of bestsellers.

Yeah, well, I was on the bestseller list for one of the bookshops for June, but.

So what was the process like? How did you come up with the idea?

Well, the idea has just been bubbling along, and so I just started taking notes for myself. And obviously I've got photographs because I was going to be a photographic book as well. It wasn't just a, you know, 20,000 words of text.

Yeah.

It was going to be a photographic book as well, and not trying to be to cover every species in the region. There actually is a book that's got photographs of almost every species that you can find in this region more broadly, including the Surf Coast and Geelong. I didn't want to try and replicate that. It was, this is more of a guidebook. So I've got most of the photographs. Um, and so then it was just start taking notes on locations. And I did that over a period of about a year and a half.

Yeah.

And eventually I'd got enough where I thought, well, now I can start to write this. So just and it was just literally writing and, and then the locations just sort of a few dropped off and I added a couple for variation on habitat as much as anything else.

Yeah.

Didn't want to have 20 sites at beaches and one in the bush, you know.

And it's all the same birds.

It's the same 20 species of birds. Um, so it was covering as many habitats and as many species of birds as you were likely to find.

Mhm.

Um, and then I, then it was the decision as to how do I find a publisher, or do I self-publish? And I looked at it and thought, there isn't a market big enough for a publisher to say, because normally they would be in the in, in a sort of 1000, 2000 print run as the first run of a book. And they don't want a market that's, you know, very geographically specific.

And they're also, if even if you did, even if they said, yeah, let's do it, they're going to take a huge chunk of what..

We will end up with between 1 and $2 a book.

Yeah. So you're sort of like, what's even the point?

The publisher takes most to the resell and takes, it takes the rest. Um, so, um, so I thought self-publishing is the way to go, and I'd already self-published the family history book that I wrote. That one wasn't for commercial sale.

It definitely hasn't outsold the one that you..

Yeah. No, I've actually sold, I think, 28 copies of that.

That would sit on..

All the family members...

For quite a while in most bookstores.

Yeah, I don't think there'd be too many people would be buying that. Um, so obviously that wasn't for commercial sale, but it was the same process of kind of finding a printer to do it. It was also then go back and learning the software. Ironically, I used to teach the software that was being used.

Yeah.

20, 30 years ago, the original versions of it. Um, but then just, you know, relearning the software to do all the page layout and everything else.

Yeah. And then so what, you find are find all the details online, upload it.

And then found a printer.

Yeah. Organise how many copies you want and pay the fee. And they show up at the mail, do they?

No.

By post?

I go and pick it up.

Okay.

It's a printer in Melbourne, so it's a, you know, four hours drive, two hours there and back to.

Yeah.

To go and pick them up. And I picked up another 200 yesterday.

Boom. Yeah. And then okay so.

Well, you got five of those? Seven of those are gone.

So what do you do. What have you done..

.. Find another bookshop.

You've, you've printed them out. And then what do you do in terms of trying to actually move them locally, as a self publisher?

Um, well, there's a bit of self marketing. So, um, social media marketing, but other than paid marketing, which I'm not in a position to do that, I'm, you know, I'm never going to sell enough to start paying for ads, but.

Well, I guess you could, you could probably do it via Facebook or YouTube and just target the Bellarine area.

Oh, I, I know I.

Run the ads on it, but yeah, you would have to work out.

What you're paying hundreds of dollars to, to run an ads. And, you know, I make $10 a book. Um, I'm going to have to sell, you know, 30, 40 books just to break even on the advertising.

Yeah. You have to work it out.

So, um, there was just, you know, promotion on social media, um, Facebook, Instagram, um, and various, you know, birding groups and stuff on Facebook and then local ones on, you know, Bellarine Peninsula.

Yeah.

Um, and I sell direct through my website, so you can go to my website and find the link and just..

What's the website, Dad?

Take me through- IanSmissenPhotography.Com!

Yep, we'll leave it in here. I get a 50% commission.

Yeah.

Inheritance, right.

Yeah, exactly.

You'll see it in another ten, twenty..

You'll see it in, yeah. Whenever I drop off a twig, you can have, you can have it.

Drop off the twig. Is that a birding analogy or.

Well, yeah, it is actually.

Yeah. Good. Okay. So and then you, you've gotten these books, you're selling them online, but you've also gone in..

But also got found local booksellers.

Yeah.

Um, and what I tried to do was to look for independent bookshops because they're much more likely to take local authors.

Why is that the bigger ones won't, because the shelves basically paid for everything..

Well, the bigger ones, um, typically are franchised. So um, and they have, purchasing is all done through head office.

Yeah.

And then they send the books out to the shops. Whereas the independent bookshops buy the books themselves.

Yep, yep.

Some of them are buying the books and then reselling them. Others you put them there on consignment so they take a percentage of the, the price when it gets sold.

So for the nosy people listening. How much is the book selling for, and how much money are you taking as..

Alright, I'll do the typical breakdown.

Yeah, because I'm sure that's one of the things I'll be thinking. Tell us the money!

Yeah, exactly. So these are small books. It's 120 pages, A5 size. So if you're not..

Ah, novel size..

You're not in the UK or Australia. Yeah, it's not all, but finished in 120 pages. Um, full colour. Um, so there's photographs of, I don't know, 78 species or something, as well as all the locations and so on.

It'd be pretty useless if it was just text and black and white.

So, um, 200 books cost me roughly $10 a book to print. So $2,000 to print 200 books.

Yeah.

Um, I'm selling it for retail for $30. A couple of the bookshops have decided to sell it for more than that, which is their choice. Um, but if you go to my website, it's $30.

The recommended retail price.

So if you buy through me, Obviously I get it all and it's. Yeah, plus postage. So I add $12.50 postage, which, um, doesn't quite break even, but it pays for the, you know, waterproof plastic padded bag.

Yeah.

And the postage to send it anywhere in Australia. International postage is going to be more than that. But it's not really an international market so I haven't..

Oh, there's just there's lots of those people. There's...

All the people in Iran that want to go and buy a book on the Bellarine Peninsula..

They're just gagging to learn about the local birds here.

In Ocean Drive!

Imagine that you one day find out you have some small group of Iranians from, you know.

Exactly.

From the North that are just like, no, the Bellarine Peninsula birds are where it's at. That's, that's the cherry on the cake!

I know! Um, so. Yeah. So sell it for 30. Um, it's cost me ten. So there's a $20 notional profit there.

Yeah.

Um, and most bookshops will take between 30 and 40% overall of the recommended retail price.

So you walk away with what?

So if they- 40, I will walk away with $8 a book.

Oh, okay. Wow. Okay.

They make $12 a book and the printer gets ten.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It is funny how much it, you would think like, the book. It's when you go to a book store and you see something that's like 20, 30, $40, you'd think, fuck, the author must be raking it in, in terms of a fair chunk of that. And then you realise it's less, that it'll always be less than half, and usually closer to 10%..

$1 or $2.

Not even yet.

If it's from a normal publisher, you're lucky to make more than $2 a book.

Yeah, that's just not...

That's for a normal paperback style thing. You might make $10 a book on a, on an $80 colour glossy coffee table book, but.

Yes. So would you recommend this process to other people if they wanted to go through it and do it?

It's fun. If you like sitting in front of a computer for a long time.

And you're retired. And you got tired.

Yeah, you got the time. But you know the software I use, um, Adobe software for almost everything, but the software takes a while to learn to use, and you've got to have a bit of graphic design skills and stuff as well. And I did all the artwork myself, so drawing the maps and things...

I imagine you could probably outsource all this, but it will cut into your profits to pay someone.

If you're paying somebody. Well, and I did all the editing, so that again is a pain in the arse. It's one of the hardest things in the world is to edit your own work.

Yeah, I was about to say especially editing your own work because you just become. You get a blind.

Well, you know...

What a blind spot for...

So you read it without reading it.

Yeah. That was a really..

Hard to read, word for word.

Yes.

To check spelling and punctuation and those sort of things. But, you know, if I was to pay even for a 120 page book, there's only 20,000 words because most of it's pictures.

Mhm.

Um, yeah, it's probably less than 20,000 words. But if I was to send this off to an editor for 20,000 words, $1,000.

Yeah, yeah.

Because it's 3 or 4 days work for them to go through a couple of times to check it 100%. And if you're particularly, if they're checking for context as well, then it has to be somebody with local expertise.

Yes.

And bird experts, you know. Oh, You've labelled this bird incorrectly.

Well, this is where I guess. Yeah, I keep speaking AI to people, but I can imagine that AI would do all the grammar and everything, spelling, and that's like, straight away. If you need what you've done, you know.

But I do that up front. But again, that's only 98% accurate. There's still 2% of the time where it misses something. Particularly it doesn't pick up spelling errors. If the word is, if what you put in is a legitimate word.

Yeah. Okay. So context difference. Right.

Yeah.

Yeah yeah. Like if you wrote 'soar' S O A R, instead of S O R E or something, right.

Exactly.

Pronounced the same. Yeah. Cool. All right. Anything else to add besides; break it again? Where can people get this book if they're interested in bird watching down on the Bellarine Peninsula?

iansmissenphotography.com

Yeah.

And there's a link off the front page.

Well, and I guess to, you know, if you guys can't remember that, um, URL, just send me a message and I'll pass you on Dad's..

And if they can spell my name, they can find it.

Yeah.

I'm the only Ian Smissen in the world.

Isn't it just weird..

Which is bizarre.

And I'm like..

That's bizarre.

You're so unique.

I know, and and it's well, it's sort of it. It might end up trapping me at some stage in my life. You know, if your name's John Smith, there's plausible deniability for everything.

Yeah.

But if you're the only person with that name, there has been one other. My uncle. But he died a long time ago.

Fell off the twig a long time ago.

He did fall off a twig a long time ago, yes.

All right. Cool. Well. Thanks, dad. Thanks for sharing the story. And yeah, guys, if you're going to go birdwatching down here on the Bellarine Peninsula, go and do it.

Check it out.

Check it out. Yeah. Give it a burl.

See ya!

See ya!