The writers group that I belong to published a volume of short stories with a holiday theme. Writing these types of short stories had been a tradition for years. We would read them the last meeting in November because we did not meet in December. Someone suggested we put them together in a book and The 12 Tales of Christmas came to life.

Eight other authors learned the steps of writing, editing, planning, decision making, marketing, more planning, and finally printing. It was nearly a year-long process. We at Half Acre Publishing did the interior formatting and the writers themselves designed the cover. While I don’t normally encourage that practice, they did a good job.

The book is just under 100 pages and there are author bios in the back matter. It retails for $10 (CAD). They have marketed it as a great hostess gift or stocking stuffer. The book has been sold at local Christmas fairs and the downtown indie bookstore purchased three copies. It is also available on Amazon. The newspaper published our press release and gave us free publicity. Hopefully that will help sales.

Did it make big money? No. Did it pay for itself? Yes. Did everyone have fun? Definitely yes. Publishing your first book is quite an adventure. This group of authors have done a great job.