to ask you to read this book

[lu9months]

Pear Shaped by Adam Blain. my 44 year old husband has written a book about his aggressive brain tumour. its frankly hilarious - i know, it shouldnt be. it is very dark humour. you can download it from amazon and it would be wonderful if his writing could reach as many people as possible

If you'd like it to get more recognition, tighten it up and enter it into literary competitions/festivals and send copies to various publishing houses/editors. Self-publishing/-promotion are great tools but if you can get some oompf behind you it'll be a hell of a lot easier

Much enjoyed the preview, so downloaded the rest onto my Kindle now.

We're no strangers to cancer in this house either. My DH was diagnosed 2 years ago. But for sure, we have found that dark humour helps no end!

Best wishes to you and your DH

It's downloading onto my kindle now. Can't imagine how tough life is for you all right now but I send my best wishes and will return here once I've read it to give my verdict.

Just downloaded it to the Kindle, I look forward to reading it.

Wishing you and your DH all the best

TheCountessofFitzdotterel, that's so helpful thankyou. please review the book everyone! how do we do a print-on-demand edition -is it easy? would we be best to get someone who knows what theyre doing to help?? keep on with the advice please all, its really helpful

It's not that hard - it depends on you really.
Createspace (which is Amazon's print-on-demand arm) is set up so that people who don't know anything about book formatting and have never done it before can do it without too much trouble. It's basically a case of making sure the page is exactly the right size and that there are blank pages where necessary and that the margins, font etc are big enough to be legible, but they make that as easy as possible by providing templates so you can just paste the text of your book in and go through and insert blank pages and page breaks where necessary, and one or two other things to improve the formatting.
How easy you find that would depend on whether you have a working knowledge of Microsoft Word or similar, or if you're one of those people like my dh who can't cope with it and gets wound up if things go wrong!
It's a job that ought to take 40 minutes, but in practice you spend longer than that because of dealing with random things going wrong, the program crashing because there was something wrong with their template, all your smartquotes disappearing for no reason, etc.
It also depends whether you're the kind of person who takes doing new stuff on the computer in their stride and thinks 'oh, I don't understand that bit, never mind, I'll just google it' 'Oh, I'm in a total muddle, I'll just ask on a forum' or if you get stressed about it all
TBH if your dh has negotiated the uploading to KDP he can probably manage the formatting for Createspace! Alternatively there are plenty of companies out there to help - I'm not sure how much it costs but I would imagine there would be something affordable but that would wipe out any profits.
It is very satisfying having a paper book, though realistically because POD is an expensive way to create a book, you wouldn't be able to flog it to bookshops - however, if it did well, the fact that you'd managed to do the POD edition would probably make you feel empowered to organise a proper print run somewhere (at a much smaller cost per unit but more financial risk).
You have to open a Createspace account and they can allocate you the ISBN.

really helpful, thank you!

Don't have any advice, but I've also bought after enjoying the preview. I can't imagine what it's been like for you both, but I hope the book continues to find success!

I'd just 'hit a wall' in my broken leg & arm recovery & self-pity had stolen my sense of humour - but this book has helped me turn that corner, it is very different to others about similar illnesses, and very absorbing, fast reading, nonetheless fact-filled & funny. Thank you so much for that .

I've downloaded a sample. Looking forward to trying it. I'm sorry about whats happening right now. Hope it all works out ok.

I haven't got a kindle but would love to read it! Is there another way?

Greetings from Germany. Just downloaded...a snip at 4 euros.
Will come back when I have finished and will post reviews.
Til then xx

Thanks for that information, Countess. Will spend today turning my books into paperbacks!

Oh one thing for writers here - if you have paper copies, give them to your local libraries. If you bring out more Kindle books, you should have a wider audience.

OP, hope your husband's feeling alright today.

I've downloaded too and will review on Goodreads, Amazon and Mumsnet

OP, is your dh on Twitter? I looked but there are lots of Adam Blains. Another way we can all help is by tweeting about it and following him on Twitter if he's there.

He is on Twitter now. AdamBBlain , please follow !

I'm about half-way through now, and it's a fantastic read, though I won't go on any more here because I don't want to connect any tweets I go on to write with my MN user name - hope that's okay!

if you enjoy the book, please spread the word on amazon, goodreads, mumsnet etc! and to friends and family

OP, have a look at Unbound:

Argh! Wrong button!
Unbound: unbound.co.uk

Went to a presentation on this recently and it's a really interesting new way of self-publishing. Rather like Kickstarter.

Also, I'm an editor (albeit children's publishing) so if you'd like me to cast my ed eye over the manuscript to try and catch any typos please PM me. Would be happy to help in that small way.

I've just bought it too.

thanks grumperlstiltskin, most kind!

Sorry to shamelessly bump this but want to reach loads of people if possible

Bought this last night after reading your thread, really funny, I recommend it. When I've finished I'll review it and tell my friends to get it too.
Sending my thoughts and best wishes to all of you