What To Do After Retiring
What To Do After Retiring
After twenty-six years of teaching I retired; during my last year of teaching I made lists of the things I would try to fill in my many hours of future leisure. I pondered a friend’s suggestion, and decided to write a book about my Antarctic experiences. I found four diaries not looked at for forty years, many slides, and I started some research. The result, after a couple of years was “South of Sixty,” a record of two years spend in the Antarctic as a meteorologist and husky dog driver in the 1960s.
My Antarctic Book
I wrote and rewrote, and many people critiqued the manuscripts. During this time I undertook a cruise to the Antarctic, which gave me four more chapters on the changes undergone in the Antarctic in the last four decades.
A Niche Market
For my book I quickly found out and had it confirmed by other authors that the Antarctic of forty years ago was a small niche market. I applied to several publishers. Some replied in six weeks, others in six months. The answers were all the same: not interested.
Publishing One’s Own Book
I could have had a publisher produce the book either as a vanity press where you pay to have your book published and it can be very expensive, or I could have a publisher select a book cover, allow a limited number of photographs, and have a price mark-up that suited them. Instead I went with self-publishing, and used a professional layout, plenty of photographs, and a professional printer so as to avoid the sometimes-amateur status appearance of the self-published. I now had a book I was proud of.
Book Promotion
Once the book was published the next few years were spent promoting my Antarctic book. I have my own website. You publish, you market. I have sent promotional materials including spare book covers to reviewers, bookstores, libraries, and wholesalers all over North America. Distributors are needed to get books into most bookstores, but most distributors do not deal with single-book publications; this is the catch-22 situation in trying to market one’s own book. I have spent much of my retirement in promoting my book. I have not yet looked at my small black book where I had written down all the things I would try during my hours of leisure.
Michael Warr worked as a meteorologist and dog handler in the Antarctic in the 1960s. He returned as an Antarctic tourist in on an icebreaker in 2005, and was an Antarctic historian on a cruise ship in 2006. He taught in British Columbia and is now retired. His activities are running, reading and gardening. Running his own business is a great experience.
Michael Warr’s website for South of Sixty – life on an Antarctic base is:
http://antarcticmemoriespublishing.com
Michael Warr -June 19 2007