Occupational Therapy News OTnews October 2018 | Page 29

CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FEATURE
She adds: ‘Most websites have online forms that you can complete to “pitch” your idea to
a publisher, but be prepared to answer lots of questions about your work. My approach was
to contact one publisher at a time, but you may want to have several interested parties and
negotiate the best deal.
‘When a publisher expresses an interest in publishing your book, you must direct their legal
department to yours to work on the contract. Make sure you are aware of the details of the
deal being made; you should be consulted on the details by your employer’s solicitor.
‘Another reason to start this early is that the legal process can take time, particularly if
there are issues to be negotiated and agreed. Signing that contract makes it all very real and
exciting.’
The second major factor to consider is time, she says. ‘Take your time. From its conception
to its publication, my book took me seven years to produce. During those seven years I was
also working part time and bringing up children, so it would be true to say that the book was
not my sole focus.’
Rachel’s book is also a series of programmes, so she wanted to run them as a pilot
scheme in schools in order to gain some practical feedback as to how functional they
were for users. This added another year to her timescale, once the programmes
were accordingly edited.
‘Frustrating as it felt at the time to be taking so long to pull everything together,
I was confident that when I finally submitted my completed manuscript it was as
good as it could be at that stage,’ she says.
‘I cannot stress strongly enough the need for thoroughness and precision in your
writing. Reference all the sources you use – be they human resources that you acknowledge,
information gathered online or other authors’ works. It makes sense to take the time to do
this as you write, as your publisher will only ask you to supply this on submission of your
manuscript.’
While Rachel acknowledges that the writing process ‘may at times feel overwhelming and
unachievable’, she believes she got through it by applying her occupational therapy activity
analysis skills, ‘breaking down each task and making lots of lists to work through’.
The third factor is feedback. ‘My book at times felt like my third child,’ she remembers. ‘I
felt extremely protective towards it and found it challenging to show it to others in order to get
some feedback. It was however the best decision I made.
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