Hello everyone! My book was recently published and in thematic posts I was asked questions about publishing the book and what I did for it. I will try to describe my path (exactly mine, without claiming the ultimate truth), summarize and give careful recommendations. b17.ru for psychologists and used it as my author’s office. By the time I “assembled” the book, I had 250+ articles and notes, of which approximately 25% appeared in the book in one way or another. Here it’s worth making a digression and saying the following: for the articles highlighted in the frame, one fine day I was banned from the community for a year, since at first I was for the separation of psychology and esotericism, and then I criticized the policies of the site administrators, for which I was caught by a banhammer in the light head. If you look closely, the next article after “swamp or source for development” dates back to 2017, before which I was in a digital punishment cell. But these are lyrics. In fact, I only started fulfilling my dream in 2020 after the lockdown - I started sketching out the skeleton of the book. I did it very simply - I leafed through all the articles on the above-mentioned site and copied any that more or less corresponded to my understanding of the benefits into a document. I repeated this procedure about once a quarter to add new articles, which I wrote periodically (as a standard I tried to publish something at least once a week). Having made the table of contents, I came up with a working title, “Duct Tape for the Soul,” which was retained until the final version, with only the addition of the note “or 40 thinking tools.” I re-read and edited each copied article. I have made it a goal that I will not have any articles without a specific tool, worksheet, or assignment. Therefore, each article was obliged to find it. If it didn’t work out, the article wasn’t included in the book. I marked each revised article in yellow. Since I did this in my free time from work and consulting, this stage took me about six months. Let me note that six months is not from the idea to the finished layout, but from raw material to half-processed material. If you look closely, you can see that in the title of one of the latest versions there is the number 96, which reflected the total number of articles, but 59 were processed. At one point I realized that new chapters were being added faster than I was processing the old ones. Plus, six months of routine activity greatly reduced the speed of creative processing, and I began to lose quality. Having decided that 150 A4 pages were enough (after all, in my head they should have turned into 300 A5 pages *I've never been so wrong*), it was time to look for ways to publish the book. And here was the real ambush. Despite the fact that many publishing houses write on their websites that they are ready to consider parts of manuscripts or even ideas, no one responded to my 80% completion of the book (this is how I assessed the readiness of the work). These attempts were made at the end of 2020, when I sent the manuscript to MIF, EKSMO, Alpina Publisher and a couple of other well-known publishing houses. There was no answer, no hello. Sad. In a wave of sadness, I gave up on the book, immersing myself in other things. But a dream is such a bastard that it won’t let go. And gradually, after six months, I returned to completing and finalizing. I didn’t increase the volume, I decided to focus on what I had. And here the dreary stage began - structuring the book. In total, I went through at least a dozen options for constructing chapters and paragraphs. But they all seemed too fragmented to me. Therefore, I derived a number of topics from this mess, each of which unites 5-10 articles and this structure was preserved until printing. Okay, okay, the book, give or take, is ready. We need to do something further. It's early spring 2022. I studied dozens of articles on the topic of how to publish a book, read the terms of dozens of literary competitions and was mentally prepared for everything, but not for the fact that... the content of the book and its value are completely inferior to the publisher’s chance of using the bookearn money. But more on that later. In some articles there was the following recommendation: “Go to the store and find the shelf where you would like to see your book. And then look at the books of which publishers are there.” The idea didn’t seem too bad to me, so I opened the Labyrinth, went to the “psychology” section and began looking at publishing houses, simultaneously going to their websites and filling out questionnaires “for authors.” Why Labyrinth? It’s just that information about books, series and publishing houses is conveniently presented there. And here will be the first important recommendation: when you fill out the first questionnaire, copy the answers from each field into notes/document/dialogue with yourself, in general, anywhere, since questionnaires very similar and very extensive. During the first three or four questionnaires, I did not adhere to this principle, which led to the senseless loss of three hours of my life. And on the MIF website, one day the questionnaire simply did not go through and was reset, which required spending another hour on swearing and filling out fields. Recommendation number one: almost all publishing houses ask you to describe your “social platform” - how many subscribers, friends, contacts you have, and so on. Where did you speak, are there any articles or interviews of yours. How long have you been performing in public? Do you have experience in public speaking? And for what audience? Do you have any friends in newspapers or TV channels to promote the book? Are you giving your head to be cut off? Have you had fluorography recently? And these numbers are better: a) to have at least four digits; b) also copy-paste, because it takes a lot of time. Recommendation three - come to terms with the fact that you are your own marketer. You must be able to determine the target audience, ways to convey information, give a reference (what books yours is similar to), determine its benefits, competitive advantages, effective promotion channels, and so on. And this also needs to be copied and pasted, don’t forget. Below is an example of one of the questionnaires that had to be sent to the publishing house by email. In general, filling out the questionnaires is the most dreary step. But there are a number of publishing houses that, in principle, do not have such a questionnaire and offer to write by mail. By this point, I had already accepted the idea that publishing a book was about business, not about a book, so I started sending letters like this: The publisher’s proposal to make money on the book was very successful. I sent three such letters, of which two received an answer: one publishing house offered to publish on the terms of an author's loan: And the other, the Prospekt publishing house, offered to print the book at its own expense and pay royalties on sales. They sent me a “fish” contract, in which I was confused by the clause that I would give up all rights to print and distribute the book for seven years. At the same time, there was no guarantee that they would print it. This did not suit me, so through gentle negotiations a clause was added that if the book is not published in print within a year from the date of signing the contract, then my copyrights belong to me again. And I am very grateful to the publisher that they are meeting halfway. Great respect. After this, the formalities began: handing over the manuscript (simply sending by email), signing contracts and acts (by physical mail). Layout and proofreading took place without me; they simply gave me the book for approval. And at this stage there was an interesting moment. My entire book contains only three pictures: a photograph of filling out the methodology (I took it), a picture from open sources with a license for free distribution, and a photograph of me (not only for the sake of narcissism, but also for the content of the chapter). Their lawyer asked me whether there would be any claims for the photo. I honestly answered that I didn’t know and would look into it. Through memories and various queries on my message history, I realized that the photo was taken at the Animau festival, which used to take place in Ufa on an annual basis. Then I found an animau group where photos were posted. There are a lot of albums, since each photographer was given his own. So I looked through everything until I came across myself. Since the photographer had a name, I found him through posts on the wall of the same group, went to the page and was glad that