Damien Lewis is the author of Nostalgique: The wonderful things we no longer use, a coffee table art book featuring the history of and images of 50 items we no longer use, from the elegant to the unusual, things used by storytellers, singers, shopkeepers and spies. Lewis spoke to Independent Publishing about the experience of publishing his first book, his efforts at
Please tell us about your book Nostalgique
Nostalgique: The wonderful things we no longer use is a photographic coffee table book. The book showcases 50 beautiful photographs of intriguing objects from the 1800s to the 1960s and shares a little history of each. Every item is carefully arranged and shot in a vibrant period setting. Each object is portrayed in a spread across two pages, with information on the first page and a full-page photograph on the second page. This layout aims to focus the reader on one image at a time.
Where have you been selling your book, and how else have you approached the marketing and publicity of your book?
As this is my first book and having no expertise in marketing, sales have been my biggest challenge. I had always planned to sell my book through my website, driven by social media advertising. This is, however, a slow process, as it takes time to build awareness and trust with potential readers. It is only a few months into sales, so I will see how this progresses.
I obtained a stall at the Melbourne Antiques Fair this year, where I sold a couple of dozen books. While an expensive approach, this worked well, and having direct contact with your potential readers gives you immediate feedback on what people think about your book.
I have Nostalgique in a couple of bookstores now and await how that goes. To do this, I found that most bookstores have a section on their website about how to approach them to sell your book; failing that, just give them a call and ask. This approach will eat into potential profits for a small-run published book, as the retail bookstores seem to want margins of around 40%. On the flip side, they have the customer base, so it is something to be considered.
I have approached quite a number of publications to have a review published. However, it is hard to get noticed, and I have received few responses. So far, I have had an editorial published in an antiques magazine, which was great and even yielded a few sales.
So this is a slow process, but I enjoy the challenge, and the key seems to be persistence.
What has the reception been like from readers?
My book covers a fairly niche topic, so I was a little unsure how people would take to it. However, from my feedback so far, everyone who has read the book has loved it! I found it interesting that some people who bought the book, who were not necessarily interested in antiques or history, found it engaging and gained a new appreciation of the objects.
Can you tell us about any services you used in the process of publishing your book and what your experience was like with them?
As this was my first attempt at writing and publishing a book, I wanted to do everything myself to understand what was involved. A helpful publisher guided me through what was needed, although he said he would typically do much of the work for me.
In my case, I created the photographs, wrote the copy, designed the book layout, chose the colour scheme and the fonts, created the cover art and endpapers, provided the final layout to the publisher, and handled the proofreading with some help from friends. This worked for me as I am a technical person, detail-oriented, and reasonably well-organised. But this won’t be for everyone, so find a publisher you can collaborate with and work out which parts you want to do.
I naively wrote the first draft in Apple Pages; however, while it is a good product, it lacks some publishing features necessary for offset printing. So I had to copy and paste everything to a more suitable tool, Affinity Publisher. This is low-cost, reasonably easy to use, and works well. I did try using Adobe’s InDesign, but it had a much steeper learning curve and wasn’t necessary for what I needed.
The one service I used extensively was a paid subscription to Grammarly. This was great for spell-checking, spotting words I overused, and suggesting better sentence structure. However, it was not always right, and the suggestions did not always match the tone of what I wanted to say. So while it is not a silver bullet, it is certainly helpful for a first-time author.
What have you learned about publishing (and bookselling) since releasing the book?
In a word, everything. I have enjoyed learning the publishing process from inspiration to implementation, as they say. I am still working on the bookselling side. Like most things, the first time you do them, it will take longer than you think and be more challenging than you think. However, if you are passionate about it, just believe in yourself and keep moving forward.
What did you hope to achieve by self-publishing your book and have you been successful at reaching this? What would you have done differently in publishing your book if you were to have your time again?
I aimed to share my passion for antiques and history through photography and bring some of these wonderful objects back to life. I love finding things from our past that had a specific purpose, and I wonder who first purchased them and what the world was like then. I wanted to convey that feeling of nostalgia to people, and I hope I have achieved that. Doing most of the publishing process myself has given me a great sense of achievement.
So far, I would not change anything, as it is my first book, and it has been an enjoyable adventure. Therefore I would say it’s too soon to know what I might do differently. We will see!
What advice would you share to someone looking to self-publish their first book—especially an illustrated title such as Nostalgique?
I guess I have already covered some things I have learned along the way. This project took two years to find suitable vintage objects and then plan and photograph them, and about three months to write and publish the book. However, when a truck turned up in my driveway with two pallets of 80+ boxes of books, it hit home that I was only halfway through. Now I had to sell them! So be patient and persistent. I am only a few months into this sales journey, and things are moving slowly, but they are moving. It has been a great learning experience, and I am pleased that I took the plunge and published this book.
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