Author! Author! Mariellen Ward

Mariellen Ward, author, freelance writer, tour guide, yoga teacher

Mariellen Ward is a Toronto-based freelance writer with a BA in Journalism, a certificate in yoga teacher training and a passion for sharing the beauty of India’s culture and wisdom. Aside from traveling extensively in India, she writes for magazines, newspapers and many online travel sites, publishes an India travel blog, http://breathedreamgo.com/ and leads custom group tours to India. She recently published her first book – Song of India: Tales of Travel and Transformation. The book is a collection of 10 tales about her attempt to recover from grief, understand the essence of yoga and rediscover the joy of living by traveling, studying yoga and volunteering in India.

India seeps from your pores. You breathe it, live it, dream it and write about it. What’s the magnet?

I always wanted to go to India. I painted turret-topped Maharaja palaces on my bedroom walls when I was a child. I practiced yoga for many years. But I never thought I could actually get on a plane and fly there. It just felt too far away, too unreal. Actually, that’s how I felt about all my dreams for most of my adult life. But I was hit by a series of losses—including the deaths of both my parents—when I was in my late 30s and early 40s, and fell into depression. Yoga helped get me out of the depression and led me to manifesting a dream to become a yoga teacher. During yoga teacher training I suddenly felt compelled to follow another dream and go to India. So I planned and saved and at the age of 45, bought my first back pack and went to India for six months. I was afraid to go, but felt that my life depended on it.

Song of India, Tales of Travel and Transformation

What prompted your decision to publish a book and how did you proceed?

After several trips to India, I started Breathedreamgo.com and joined the global, online travel blogging community. I also started publishing travel features in print as well.  But I wanted to be a travel writer first and a blogger second. Deciding to publish the book (to highlight my travels to India) was a strategic decision. In the process, I started to research self-publishing and decided to go with Lightning Source (LSI) because they are so professional. Also, when you publish a print on demand (POD) book through LSI, it is automatically distributed through Amazon.

The whole process took a couple of months, and the learning curve was steep; but not expensive. I was lucky, though. My graphic design friend gave me a good deal and another friend proof read it for me for a very good price. The total LSI cost was about $200, and I ordered a carton of books for about $380. So I spent less than $1,000.00. The one thing that held me up was getting the book catalogued through the Library Archives of Canada as I learned about this step late in the process. But I’m glad I took that step; I wanted to do the whole thing as professionally as possible.

Then what?

I sent copies to everyone listed in the acknowledgments and also other writers and reviewers I know who I think would like it. I started collecting comments and I have four very positive reviews.  I wrote a blog post about the book and I am uploading it to several places, and offering it to bloggers (I call this a “blog tour”). I have been to a couple of independent book stores and now that the books have arrived, I can start taking them around to more places, like yoga studios.

People doing pujas (acts of worship) at the edge of the sacred lake in Pushkar before sunrise.

As Breathedreamgo, I am also pretty active in the social media world, so I am also promoting it through FB and through Twitter.

I didn’t write and publish it to make money, but to showcase my writing. So I am looking at the big picture, the long term, not the short-term sales as my goal.

Last words?

It’s hard to make a straightforward living from writing—but the barriers to publishing have never been so low. Change your mindset, become an entrepreneur: publish a blog, a POD  book or e-book (or both), get on the social media circuit, use the technology to your advantage. Dive in, the water’s fine.

Note: Mariellen is working on a plan to help other writer publish electronically.  In the near future, for a flat fee (depending on book length and complexity) her company will:

• help authors get ISBN and Catalogue in Publication information
• design cover in InDesign
• set up files to LSI’s exacting specs
• help set up author’s account on LSI
• receive the proof and approve or reject it
• ensure authors know how to order books from LSI

If you are interested, contact Mariellen directly: breathedreamgo (at) gmail . com

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PS. If you have any comments or questions for Mariellen, click on Comments and fire away!