Book
At first glance you might not associate beadwork with technical writing. It’s true that writing Complete Beading for Beginners is one of the most fun things I’ve done!
I first had the idea for a book on beadwork in a technical writing class at the New Westminster, BC campus of Douglas College (in 1992). I wrote an eight-page sample in that class, and worked on the design in a desktop publishing class. The support I received from my teachers convinced me to try to self-publish the book. I produced four full-colour, 66-page prototypes, and generated orders for 1,500 copies of the book. However, when I approached the Royal Bank for a loan to cover printing costs, they turned me down.
I was outraged! True, I was fresh out of school, with student loans and only a few months at my first tech writing job. But what about all my years as a faithful customer at the bank? What about my clearly outlined business plan? What about the orders for 1,500 copies, from both Vancouver and New York bead supply wholesalers? When the bank turned down my request, I thought of giving up on the book. But eventually I summoned up the energy to develop Plan B—finding a publisher.
I was incredibly lucky, and my book was accepted by the first publisher I approached, BC-based Harbour Publishing. I thought I had it made, and all my work was over—now I’d just reap the rewards. It didn’t quite turn out that way—the book was accepted in early 1994 and released in late 1996. During the interim I learned many lessons about perseverance, compromise, and conflict resolution. Harbour wanted me to expand the book considerably, which I did. Then the book went through another major revision to fine-tune the tone and make it more suitable to the target audience. Harbour had done some market research and discovered that the teen market was untapped and keen to learn about beading, so this was the target audience we were trying to reach. Initially I had written the book with my younger siblings in mind. They were pre-teens, at least when I started writing the book!
I think mostly I was struggling with my own nature. I’d wanted to self-publish and have complete control. It was very difficult to trust that the people at Harbour knew what they were doing and were actually helping to improve the book. Of course, no one has good ideas all the time (not John Lennon—according to Yoko Ono—and not even the people at Harbour Publishing). So I also had to learn to distinguish between what I was willing to do for the sake of making a good book, and what I strongly disagreed with. Once I’d gained clarity myself, I had to communicate my feelings to the people at Harbour.
I know they also had to learn to trust me. For example, one area of contention was about using clear nail polish to make a knot in the thread more secure. This was something I’d been doing for years, but I guess it sounded kind of fishy. So I was asked to take this tip out of the book. I felt strongly that it was a good tip, so I sought and found proof that using nail polish was a recommended practice in several other books on beading. Harbour checked with a few expert beaders and received mixed responses, and in the end they decided to allow the tip to remain.
There were a few points during this painful process when I seriously considered giving up on the project. But somehow I stayed with the process, and Harbour did too, and the result is a beautiful book that I’m quite proud of. By the way, this process was not what Harbour Publishing expected either. They accepted my book because another book had been dropped from their spring list in 1994. They needed a replacement and thought that my book was ready to go (my full-colour prototype looked really good!). So looking back, I think I was lucky that Harbour didn’t decide to scrap the project when it turned out to be so much work.
Now, 13 years after its release, Complete Beading is a Canadian best-seller. Sales increased steadily from 1996 through 2003, when they peaked. That year, the royalty cheque was enough for me to buy a new car, my Tracker! The book has won local and international awards for technical writing (from the Society for Technical Communication). I’m pleased about the modest financial success, but there’s another reward I hadn’t expected. When I travel, I try to visit bead stores to see if they carry the book, or might be interested in ordering it. The nicest thing is discovering that the store has the book, and recommends it to their customers. That seems quite incredible to me—I created something that is now out in the world with a life of its own, contributing in some way to help others create.
If you Google my name you’ll find lots of beading stores that carry my book. It is available on Amazon.ca, Complete Beading for Beginners, or if you’re American, at Amazon.com, Complete Beading for Beginners. Of course, you can also pick it up at Country Beads on West 4th Avenue in Vancouver, where my book was launched in 1996. Or at Beadworks on Granville Island, also a strong supporter of the book.
