What’s a word that means stepping out into a rickety bridge, one wrong step can send you down the wrong path? Like if you rush to the Amazon store without setting up your ISBN, LCCN first... then you have just created a book, which will never be sold in any indie bookstore anywhere.

The process of publishing a book is straightforward, but not easy. Maybe its like baking a cake; it’s not just the ingredients you add, but the way you do, the order in which they are added and the time it takes for each step. I dunno. The ingredients are not secret, they are all out there on the Internet.

It’s the bakers skill that matters.

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Your sales dashboard is not the measure of your book’s worth.

We’ve been conditioned to think in scale. Viral! Bestseller! Millions of downloads! Writers internalize that pressure before they’ve typed a single word so they soften their edges, broaden their premise, sand down the burrs that made them want to write the book in the first place. Maybe they make the book longer than the story holds to increase the page count to give the book more heft.

Then they wonder why it feels empty.

A micro-audience isn’t a consolation prize. It’s a different game with better odds.

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Think about the books that actually changed something in you. Not the impressive ones you’d list at a dinner party—the ones that rewired something. Odds are they were specific, written by someone who needed to say a particular thing to a particular kind of person. You happened to be that person.

Specificity is the whole mechanism. A book trying to speak to everyone ends up speaking to no one.

Your readers will carry something from your book into their lives, their work, their conversations. One reads a chapter at exactly the right moment. Another buys six copies and hands them to people she loves. Someone emails you two years later to say it helped them through something hard. Scale doesn’t produce moments; precision does.

Little legacy books work exactly this way. A grandmother documents the family history no one else thought to preserve. A retired teacher writes down everything forty years in a classroom taught her that never made it into any curriculum. These books don’t trend. They persist.

The question worth sitting with is “am I reaching the right people?”

Write the specific book. Name the specific reader. Trust that somewhere out there are people who need exactly what you made, not a softened focus group version of it… the real real.

That’s enough. It has always been enough.

I’m probably never gonna write a novel. I just don’t have the attention span and I know for absolute certainty I don’t have the platform a publisher is looking for to market my book.

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My memoir won’t be all that exciting either. “He was born, he did some sh*t and he died, with a $1.00 reward left on his Panera card.”

How long would it take to write that? Would you pay 9.99 for the paperback copy of that? (Send me your email address if you will. If I can collect one million email addresses, I’m pretty sure Random House would publish me! 🤗)

But I have “written” four books just by collecting a bunch of related stuff I wrote here on Substack and there on Medium and glued it together. (True, Search me at Amazon!)

I don’t know where this story is going, other than I’m never gonna write a novel.

If you’ve written at least fifty essays here on Substack, you’re already well on your way to a Little Legacy Book. You should plan your publishing path now before that all gets out of hand. Drop an email.

There is some creative elasticity around publishing your book, but the basics of registering an ISBN, cover and interior design, trim size by genre, copyright, front and back matter … these things are pretty much rules that don’t have a lot of flexibility if your goal is to be able to print and make your book available for sale.

You are always free to produce a book however you want if your goal is to not sell any of them. But if you are writing to make your book available in the marketplace — or even producing a small limited run for a specific audience and be taken seriously as an author — there are some expectations and rules that need to be followed.

And no amount of Googling or ChatCPTing for the answer you are looking for that agrees with your opinions is gonna change that fact.

So, best to gettin’ workin’ with someone who knows these rules and also understands how much they can be bent to accommodate your creative vision without compromising your ability to get your book on shelves, physical and virtual.

🥔🥔🥔🥔

Hi, my name is Gérard and I know how to get your book through the sausage grinding process from manuscript to published book. I’m pretty easy to work with, but I am firm when you want to break a rule that can’t be broken. I’ll sure as heck help you bend it, though.

If you have a collection of essays you’ve been writing on Substack, HMU and let’s get to bending some rules together.

Why the row of potatoes? 😀😀 Questions are windows into your brain.

Here’s what kills a lot of books; the idea.

Most ideas have enough oxygen for 300-1600 words (ok, it’s really 183-1586 words but I just rounded up … where was I .. oh, yeah, the idea) 300-1600 words is an essay.

Read most business book and you can get the core thesis in the first forty-nine pages. After that, it’s just mostly cheap buffet-like sides and fillers. The idea is probably straight-forward and complete by then, but forty-nine pages is a pamphlet, not a book. Publishers need books; readers demand a whole book’s worth of stuff for $24.99. So the author keeps churning out words to fill pages, but rarely expands the idea.

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Don’t even get me started on a novel! How anyone tells a story over 250+ pages when most stories can be told three times over in the time it takes to drink a beer, I’ll never understand. But novelists get my respect!

So there you are, wanting to write a book but you are done talking in twenty-three pages. Your plot has wrapped up, your main character has traversed their hero’s journey and you are staring at a blank page again, two hundred pages from “The End.”

But a book of essays solves that problem. 250 pages is anywhere from 50-75 essays, depending on length. At one essay a week, you’ve got a whole book in a year. The biggest issue at that point is how to organize them; by theme, by narrative arc, by chronology.

A lot of writers aren’t novelists and that’s ok! That should not stop you from becoming an author. If you’ve been writing on Substack, Medium or even LinkedIn regularly, chances are you’ve already written a book. Now you just gotta publish it.

Hi, I’m Gerard and I help writers publish their work as a legacy in a print book I call a Little Legacy Book — “little” because of the portable size, not the value. Follow along if you’ve ever thought about compiling your online work as a forever print book. This post ran on about 200 words longer than it needed to, but you already knew that… 😀

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There’s a quiet moment that happens when you hold your own book for the first time. It’s not like scrolling through your own Substack or clicking through files in a drive. This is heavier. Literal. You feel the weight of your thoughts. You can flip through pages and land on something you wrote five years ago and read it like you’re meeting an old friend who’s grown up while you weren’t looking.

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For writers who live online, the idea of a legacy book might feel indulgent. But something shifts when your essay collection moves from the screen to the page. Your personal writing, your emotional storytelling, even your misfires, begin to feel real. There’s no algorithm deciding what matters. You’re the curator. You choose what survives.

Online, everything begins to feel the same under glass. This is a disservice to your unique voice.

A curated collection of essays lets you tell a fuller story than any one viral post. You’re not bound by clicks or likes. You can include the essays that were hardest to write, the ones that made you cry, the ones that only three people ever read. Those are often the ones that deserve to be preserved.

When you commit your work to print, you begin to think about memoir writing differently. You start to see patterns. Themes emerge and you begin to understand that a digital legacy doesn’t need to stay digital. A book on a shelf or in a loved one’s hands has a different kind of permanence.

The process can be daunting—choosing, shaping, letting go—but self-publishing a legacy book is one of the most grounding acts a writer can do. The writing process doesn’t end with the last sentence. It ends when someone holds your book, opens it, and reads a part of your life out loud.

And every ending is a new beginning…

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Over the years, I’ve written hundreds, even thousands, of essays online. Each one has captured a moment in time, a thought fully explored, an idea wrestled with until it found its shape in words. These essays span everything from personal reflections and philosophical ponderings to cultural critiques and stories of joy, pain and growth. As I sit down to compile a small legacy book, a collection that will outlast the immediacy of scrolling screens and short attention spans, I face an unexpected challenge: choosing which essays to include, and in what order they should appear.

The sheer volume of content is overwhelming. Some essays were written in bursts of mania, while others were carefully and painfully constructed over days, weeks, months. They each represent different seasons of my life, but not all of them can make it into this book. Deciding which ones deserve a place is both a logistical and emotional task.

I want to quit before I even begin. It’s just too much.

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It’s not just about selecting the best-written pieces. If it were that easy, I might simply choose the most polished, the most shared, the most commented. But a legacy book, at least to me, should be more than a “greatest hits” compilation. It should be a map—a record of intellectual and emotional terrain I’ve traveled. That means including essays that were meaningful for me personally, even if they weren’t popular or perfect. Some of these pieces didn’t go viral, but they changed how I thought, or helped me survive something. They mean something deeper than metrics can show.

And then there’s the matter of tone. I’ve written essays in defiance, in grief, in anger, in celebration and in solitude. Do I organize the book by emotion, by theme or by chronology? Should the reader experience my evolution in the same order that I did, starting from early, raw ideas and moving toward clarity and confidence? Or should I group essays thematically—love, identity, loss, curiosity—and allow the reader to dip into whichever subject calls to them in that moment?

Should I care about the reader at all in a legacy book?

Not every essay has aged well. Some ideas I no longer stand by; others reflect a version of myself that feels like a stranger. Including them might make the collection more honest, but it also feels vulnerable. It’s tempting to curate a polished version of myself, but that defeats the purpose of calling this a “legacy.” A legacy isn’t about perfection—it’s about presence. It’s about being remembered as real.

What makes the task even harder is the feeling that each essay I exclude is a small death. I remember where I was when I wrote them. I remember what I was feeling. To leave them out feels like leaving behind a part of myself. But I remind myself that this book is not a vault; it’s a doorway. It doesn’t have to contain everything I’ve ever written. It just has to open up the essence of what I’ve tried to say over all these years.

So I read. I re-read. I highlight and annotate. I feel the essays again. Slowly the shape of the book begins to form.

A legacy book doesn’t get published until the manuscript is decided, so I soldier through. For my next legacy book, I will stay on top of the essays1 and curate as I go. I will have a plan to visit the living manuscript at the end of every month and sort the essays as the book is shaping up.

I will. I promise. 😀

The hardest part is not the writing; it’s the letting go. But there is also peace in it. I know that these selected essays will carry forward a version of me that is thoughtful, imperfect, and fully human. That’s the legacy I want to leave.

I think…

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1

I swear I’m doing it… Here is a screenshot of my manuscript being curated in the layout software. You will find each of these essays in my main Substack, Tarnished Pennies Keep me honest! The Final Curtain is a working title of all of my “next books” just in case I kick before I publish. Macabre, sure, but one of these times, I am going to be right. 😉

Doing everything yourself means you only need to trust one person — you. But unless you’ve published a book before, there’s a lot to learn and most of that learning happens through trial and error which you may not get right. (Did my use of an em dash cause any distrust?)

Trust is the foundation of any successful collaboration. It becomes even more important when the subject is your own voice, your life, your collected thoughts. I’ve spoken with writers who felt misled by services that promised too much and delivered too little. Others had their work mishandled, their intentions ignored or their expectations brushed aside. These stories stay with me. They shape how I approach every conversation with a new client. Trust, once lost, is not easily repaired.

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I believe trust starts with clarity. Before I ever ask for a file or a payment, I start by listening. What do you want this book to be? Who is it for? What kind of legacy do you hope to leave? If I don’t understand what matters to you, I can’t help you build anything that reflects who you are.

From there, I explain my process in straight-forward and simple terms. I outline what I’ll do, when you can expect it, what decisions you’ll need to make and how much everything will cost. There are no hidden fees or vague tiers of service. You’ll know exactly what’s included and what’s optional. If something doesn’t make sense, I revise it. If you change your mind midway through, I adapt. Every detail is documented. Every deadline is visible. I do this not only because it makes the work smoother, but because I think transparency is the clearest sign of respect.

References matter to me. I don’t expect you to take my word for anything. When I say I’m good at what I do, I back that up with samples. Not generic templates, but real books I’ve helped bring to life. And if you want to speak with someone who’s worked with me before, I’ll make that happen. This isn’t just marketing. It’s the trail of evidence that lets you verify who I am and how I operate.

Another reason trust matters is because a legacy book is deeply personal. Some are sharing for the first time; and that is scary. Others are preserving work that has lived online but never found a permanent home. This can be emotionally loaded territory. You are handing someone your words, your ideas, your perspective. That requires more than technical skill. It requires care and empathy.

One of the reasons writers get burned is because they feel pressured to make decisions too quickly. If you’re not ready, I’ll wait. If you want to start small, I’ll help you test the waters. Some of my favorite books began as single essays and grew from there. There’s no one right way to build a legacy book, only the path that feels right to you.

So when I say I care about trust, I mean it. I’ve built my practice around it. I’ve chosen to grow one relationship at a time, so that every book reflects the writer behind it. That takes more effort. It’s not the fastest way to scale. But it’s the only way I know how to work with integrity.

If you’re thinking about preserving your writing in book form, I hope you’ll take the time to choose a partner who earns your trust. I’d be honored to be considered.

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If you write and publish weekly, you have enough material to produce a full book every year. That’s fifty pieces of writing that capture your perspective, creativity and evolving voice. Whether you are sharing personal essays, poems, reflections or commentaries, your work deserves a more lasting home than a scrolling screen.

Each week becomes a chapter in a life when documented.

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Publishing regularly creates rhythm, rhythm becomes structure, structure becomes legacy.

Writers who understand this already treat their platforms like a studio or a journal. Every piece is part of a longer conversation and a growing archive. What may feel like small thoughts or throwaway phrases in a weekly email build slowly into a body of work that matters.

Your book is already being written. You just need to gather it.

Closing a period in a writer’s life with a finished book is powerful punctuation. It creates a tangible record of where your mind and voice have been. Readers can hold the work in their hands. You can put it on a shelf. You can give it as a gift. You can look back and say, “this is what I believed in this season of my life.”

A year of writing is a story arc. It is a journal of growth, change and curiosity. Some years are about building; some about recovering and still others are about learning something new and sharing generously. When you make a habit of capturing those seasons in book form, you create a living library that mirrors your life as it unfolds.

One book per year1 becomes more than just a personal habit. It marks time. It preserves meaning. It shows how far you have come.

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Here are the eleven biggest roadblocks that keep great writing from becoming legacy books—and how I help you move through each one.

A PDF slide deck if you prefer

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1. “I don’t have enough content”

I haven’t written enough to make a book.

Most writers underestimate their output. Fifty short essays or newsletters is often more than enough. We help you curate and shape it into a cohesive collection.

2. “My writing isn’t good enough”

My work doesn’t belong in a book.

Your voice matters. A Little Legacy Book isn’t about awards. It’s about capturing stories that mean something to you and the people who read you.

3. “I’m not ready yet”

I’ll do this when the time is right.

Every year you wait, your digital archive risks being forgotten or lost. One book a year builds a personal library worth keeping.

4. “Books are expensive to produce”

I can’t afford this.

We offer tiered pricing, subscriptions, and budget-friendly options. A book is long-term value, not a short-term cost.

5. “I don’t know who to trust”

I’m worried about scams.

This is a BIG ONE! I’m a writer, too. I’ve built books for myself and others. You can review samples, references and the full process before committing.

6. “I don’t understand the process”

It feels complicated.

The process is straight-forward and clear. You write. I gather, edit, design, and format. You receive a finished, print-ready book.

7. “I already publish online — why bother?”

My work lives on Substack or Medium.

Platforms change. Print endures. A book in your hand is secure, giftable and timeless.

8. “I don’t have a big audience”

Only big names should publish.

Legacy isn’t about audience size. It’s about meaning. Your story matters — to your family, readers, and future self.

9. “I’m overwhelmed already”

I can’t take on more.

You’ve already done the hard part — the writing. Let me handle everything else.

10. “I don’t know what to include”

I don’t know how to choose.

I offer editorial support and help organize your work into a strong, coherent structure. You don’t do this alone.

11. “What if I change my mind later?”

I might regret publishing.

This is one volume, one moment in time. You can always make another. Your legacy can grow with you.

Your stories are not just posts. They are moments of clarity, emotion, humor and truth captured in your voice. You wrote them for your readers but also for yourself. You published them to be read, not to be forgotten.

So why let them fade into an endless scroll graveyard?

If you’ve been writing on Substack for a year or more, you likely have enough to publish a meaningful book; a book that holds your voice in print, a book that will outlast the algorithm.

It doesn’t need to be perfect or long or epic. It just needs to exist. That’s what a Little Legacy Book is. A simple, elegant collection of your essays and reflections curated into a phone-sized book that people can hold, take with them and read anywhere. A book that outlives your inbox and doesn’t disappear if when a platform dies.

You will die with stories still inside you and stories left unpublished. Just try not to leave behind an entire library.

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Writers on digital platforms like you spend years crafting a unique voice, publishing thoughtful essays and cultivating a dedicated readership. But often, that work remains scattered, bound to the endless scroll, buried under timestamps, siloed by platform.

What if your best work could become something readers hold in their hands, something curated and timeless? Something that didn’t require batteries or internet to read?

That’s what I did for myself; I gathered my favorite pieces that whispered back to me when I reread them. I organized them into a single volume; a book with a spine, cover and meaning. The kind of book someone might pull from a shelf years from now and say, “I had no idea they thought about things this way.”

Illuminating. Honest. Human.

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That same process—curation, refinement, layout, production—is now something I offer to other writers. If you’ve built a body of work online, you already have the material. You just need a hand transforming that material into something enduring. A printed book is a gift to your future self, your children, your colleagues, your readers. It can serve as a calling card, a portfolio, a time capsule.

It’s about legacy, witness.

I’ve been through the process; archiving, sorting, designing, editing, proofing. Starting can be daunting, but I assure you I can guide you through it, step by step. You don’t need to learn InDesign or figure out margins and trim. You need someone who knows how to move your words from platform to print without wasting time or money going down the wrong path or doing things out of order.

If you’ve written stuff worth sharing, you’ve already done the hard part. Let’s turn that into a book that feels more alive in your hands than your writing does online. I know how to do it, because I did it for myself.

I want to help you do the same.

Start your legacy book today

Few things are as heretical in book publishing than someone saying, “you don’t need a professionally designed book cover.” G’on, say this out loud and proud at the next book conference you attend and let me know how it goes for you.

But it might be true, though not universally true. If you are going to compete in the book stores of the world — including Amazon — you damn well better have a professionally designed book cover! But if you aren’t in it to sell books, you may not need to hire a cover designer.

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A cover does need the design elements of craft and utility, though. It needs a title, an author name, the back copy, a spine and an ISBN, just in case it gets lucky enough to find its way onto a retail shelf or the Library of Congress. It should be able to show itself in public, which means a tight spine, exceptional kerning and tasteful font choices. At minimum, it should be something you are proud to show on your bookshelves and the bookshelves of family and friends. Like wearing appropriate clothing to an event shows respect, a crafted cover shows respect for the trade.

Technically, an undesigned cover is designed. You can’t not design a book cover.

Your legacy book is a journal, so the bare minimum will probably do just fine, even as it is ironically, a design choice. But maybe you want your legacy book to start telling your story before it gets opened and that too, is also a design choice. You may want to hire a professional book cover designer for this choice.

There is no wrong answer. After all, it is the story of your life, your legacy. Do what you want, but you shouldn’t feel like you must have a professionally designed book cover. And for your legacy book, don’t let not having a professionally designed book cover hold you back from publishing.

I get asked all the time for a checklist of steps to create a book. There are sub-steps for each step, but these are the big ones.

Every project is going to be slightly different, so every author get a slightly personalized checklist, but these are the steps held in common. For example, if you are creating a Little Legacy Book, you won’t so much “write your book” as “download your Substack archive” and then “clean up the HTML files” you want included. Each essay becomes a chapter, while a group of chapters becomes a section.

And maybe you are creating a legacy book for family and friends, or as practice for your Great Novel Series so you won’t need a sales and marketing plan. Or maybe “luck” is your sales and marketing plan. It’s one of the most popular choices, though we don’t recommend it often! 😉

The List

• Write your book

• Have your book edited

• Rewrite for final manuscript using style sheets formatted to the publisher’s specs. Don’t argue this. Again, don’t argue this, please.

• Create an imprint (LLC, Corp) or find a hybrid publisher. RETAIN ALL RIGHTS! ALL OF THEM! You will pay a higher upfront but you’ll get 100% royalties (and returns…)

• Write all your front and back matter

• Lay out interior

• Design your cover

  Whew! You probably need a little break. Sit here, rest a while, click a button before continuing the list.

• Create accounts at Ingram, KDP, LOC including author pages

• Secure your ISBNs, LCCN (1 each for print HC, print PB, digital, audio, translated, a spare … 10-pack from myindentifiers.com)

• Create print-ready files

• Upload your files into your Ingram account. Do NOT upload into KDP yet!

• Proof final and approve

• Create the KDP ePUB and upload onto KDP (optional, last resort if Ingram doesn’t distribute)

• Link your print and kindle listings if necessary

• Complete your author pages with final listings

• Write your author/book marketing 160, 500, 1600 word formats. S, M, L

• Create your metadata for your ONIX file

• Create marketing and sales plan

• Execute marketing and sales

• Cash royalty checks

  You made it to the end! Now, take one step more. Trust me.

Small project. For those of you who know, I own a teeny, tiny, itty, bitty publishing imprint Sharktooth Press (because my corporation is Rivershark… get it? 😀) ANYWAY, I’m experimenting with making a book from my Substack posts. And my Medium stories because sometimes I just publish stuff over there. And LinkedIn has some of my stuff.

Basically, every ten years, I like to gather 60-100 of my “best” work — not necessarily my most successful work in likes and comments — stuff that others can leaf through when I’m no longer in this tired, old meat sack I’ve been dragging myself around in these six-plus decades on this mortal coil, sigh deeply and think, “I had no idea. I sure wish I would have asked and he told me. Things are more confusing now that I know, but ironically, make more sense.”

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I have one book already I put together in 2014 called Monkey with a Loaded Typewriter. I wanted to call it Green Jello and Yellow Boots because… well, that is a story of my greatest accomplishment; raising my two kids into adulthood, but my lawyer said I might not want to use a trademark name in a title, even if only three people on the entire plant will actually read it. That’s ok, though… it was written just for them.

This issue 2014-2024 is called A Million Pieces in a Thousand Places because the olds in the room know what I’m talking when I say life expands as your people make more people, more books are on shelves, pieces of you are in a thousand places and you can never keep anything tidy anymore because there is just so much.

But it is a physically tiny book because I wanted it to be. Tiny books are cute, non-threatening, safe and comforting1 So is tiny food which is why tiny Oreo cookies exist… but I digress. The trim size is 4.25×7”, 150 pages. It is easy to slip into a coat pocket, mail to a friend, hug close to your heart.

This thing has been out in print since December. I think everyone should have a legacy document — a book of prose, poetry, photos, postcards, letters — whatever it is that others who come after you can learn about who really really wanted to be if you had the courage to live your truth.

And maybe you did, like second-hand lions.

Like a lot of folks staying at home during the pandemic, I’d taken to baking things, mostly cookies. I’ve baked perhaps hundreds of dozens of cookies since March 2020, carefully honing the recipes to get a perfect balance of crumb to chew to crunch ratio. Baking is a science and everything affects every other thing in the process.

Including the order in which I add ingredients.

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If I simply dumped all the ingredients into the mixing bowl together, I would have a dough that might produce some sort of portioned baked goods resembling cookies, but the texture would be off, the flavors undeveloped and the ratio of crumb to chew to crunch would not be satisfying. If I had not spent time and effort honing the craft and science of cookies, I might not have ever known how satisfying a cookie could be.

But I have made better cookies. I’ve tasted these better cookies and I know what a larger experience cookies can and should be.

Publishing books is a lot like making cookies.

If the “cookie mix” blog posts that the internet seemingly mass-produces without end can be believed, you might come away with the idea that the most important part of the hybrid-book publishing process is “JUST HIT PUBLISH!” While you may be able to crank all the ingredients of your manuscript through the KDP publish software and spit out a book on the other end, what your readers will be consuming is much like the cookies created by a clump of dough.

The order in which you do things to publish your book matters a great deal. A written manuscript is just one ingredient of your book. The ISBN, LCN, BISAC and ONIX are also key ingredients that need to be added in a precise order for the book to be shelf-ready and marketed and available as widely as possible.

But you can choose to have a bunch of words slapped on paper and that paper bound into a book, just as you can easily dump all the cookie ingredients into a bowl and mix. It just depends on how much you — and your readers — value craft, in baking and book publishing.

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