Current Issue - How to Become a Publisher

One of the pleasures of my college library was coming across books like Queueing Systems: Vol.1: Theory. It was comforting to know that a topic I had never given second thought to still had experts to document it in several volumes. The beauty of modern publishing is that it allows authors in increasingly specialized fields to share their knowledge with the rest of the world. As readers, doctors and patients, we are all beneficiaries of these fruits of knowledge expansion.

But the system is not yet perfect. Although anyone is technically an expert on something, not everyone can have his or her book published. The costs of paper, printing, distribution and marketing mean that minimal number of potential readers must be found before a publisher invests money in a book. Perhaps this is a good thing - traditional publishers will tell you that the world is spared many an unreadable text because of such a barrier. They are right.

But I also think that too many good books take too long to reach readers because of traditional publishers.

This series shows how new technology overcomes this barrier. If you have thought of writing a book, or know someone who should share his or her knowledge by writing a book, then I hope that this advice is useful to you. The first part explains how to create a website, a fast and affordable way to start off. The second details the process of writing a complete book, while the third part covers the process of publishing it. The final part shows you how to start your own publishing business and bring your book to the world. I hope that you have as much fun as I did when I had followed these steps and published my own book.

This series was written by Dr Mohammad Al-Ubaydli and

became the basis for a series in the British Medical Journal

Publish Your Website: It is extremely hard to do a search on the internet and get no results. Whatever topic you can think of, it is likely that lots of people have already had lots of things to say about it. The miracle of the World Wide Web is that they can get to say these things so easily, and that you can read these so easily.

Write Your Book: During the early days of co-founding Medical Futures, one of my jobs was to write articles, and one of those articles was about robotic surgery. An American that I interviewed told me that his wife had the “best job in the world”. Apparently, she would actually get paid to learn new skills, such as archery, and then teach these skills to others. She could do this because she perfected the learning process, and how to share it with others to speed their learning.

Publish Your Book: In 1965 WH Smith announced that it was moving to a purpose-built warehouse that would be computer controlled. One of the demands of the machinery was that every book in stock be given a unique number. Although many publishers already had their own numbering system, there was not yet a universal system that would be applied to every book by every publisher. It was urgent that such a system be set up.

Sell Your Book: There is a great feeling that comes from seeing your name in print, and many authors consider this to be the well-deserved end of their toils. However, to borrow the words of Sir Winston Churchill, “this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” If you are serious about getting people to read the knowledge that you have worked so hard to accumulate and document, then there is a lot of work yet to be done.