A Few Drops Short of a Plug

One more person I wanted to mention from my night at Mary Ryan’s is a guy called Chris Dowding. He and his wife Kerryn travelled down from the Sunshine Coast to attend the talk and hand me a copy of Chris’s own travelogue, A Few Drops Short of a Pint.

The book chronicles Chris and Kerryn’s time spent living and working in Ireland. It is one of the few books about the Emerald Isle that doesn’t read like it was written by Ireland’s national tourist board. It’s an honest account of the good times and the bad and you can find out more about it at Chris’s website.

The thing about Chris’s book that’ll be of real interest to the readers of this blog is how he got it published. He entered a national writing competition for unpublished manuscripts called IP Picks and his was chosen as the winner in the Creative Non-Fiction category. (Other categories include Best Fiction, Best Poetry and Best First Book)

The competition is run by Interactive Publications, a small publishing house based in Brisbane. Looking at their website it seems they do a bit of self-publishing, but the winners of the competition at least are offered royalty publication – i.e. they do all the work and cover the costs and you get a royalty on each book sold.

There’s a $AU60 entry fee for each manuscript you submit to the competition, but hey, if you’re having problems getting an agent or a mainstream publisher to look at your work it may be worth a shot.

After all, it worked for Chris.