Writing a dog walking guide

Hollysdad

Hollysdad

Administrator
Staff member
Location
Monmouthshire, Wales
Over the last few years Holly and I have written a couple of dog walking books, one for the Wye Valley and one for the Forest of Dean. The motivation for these is to share our enjoyment of walking in this beautiful area with as many people as possible. Let’s face it, no-one writes this type of book to make money. It requires hundreds of hours of effort and returns moderate royalties.

At the moment the COVID lockdown has halted work in revising the Wye Valley book so we’ve been sketching out a few ideas for a third book: walks in Gwent. The idea is to include all the outlying walks that don’t fit comfortably into the other two books because they’re not in the Wye Valley or Forest of Dean.

I thought that people might find it interesting to see how we went about writing a book like this so I’ve prepared a few articles for this forum. The articles will explain how to go about writing a book, and go into some of the technical issues about choosing walks, mapping, writing, editing and publishing. Maybe it will inspire one or two members to write about your own areas.

I’ll illustrate these notes with an example I’ve been working on during the COVID lockdown. These are the local woods where we live, a wonderful area of woodland, fields and streams. I’ll use this to take you through the process from exploring the area to producing the final chapter and book.

KingswoodPic.jpg

Writing books doesn’t require any special equipment. Most of the planning was done using local Ordnance Survey maps and a smartphone. Photos were made using my smartphone and a digital camera. Maps and text were produced using free text editing and drawing software on a PC.

The most enjoyable bit of writing the books was the many long day walks with Holly while we created maps and decided on routes. Some days we’d take some snacks and a drink and be out for most of the day. On one particular map (Symonds Yat) we walked over 100 miles to make and check the map, take photos, and finalise the route. It took many days to get the route right, but these were spread over the course of a year. We had a great time exploring that area, particularly along the river with its swimming spots and many blackberry bushes. It’s where we started our ritual of coffee and flapjacks at the Log Cabin Cafe.

I’ll publish more articles over the next few days in the hope that people will find them interesting.
 
Shaz82

Shaz82

Location
Essex, U.K.
When I first got Maisy I realised how hard it was to find places that really were dog friendly in Colchester, actually real dog friendly for real dogs. For instance dogs are allowed in Lower Castle Park but there is a river, a filthy boating pond and a million squirrels and I found it a nightmare for a new pup. I started taking photos of Maisy in different spots and was going to add local knowledge for visitors like where dogs can go to the toilet, etc. It all fell by the wayside as I got caught up in other things though. Would love to write a book one day but it is way down on my long list at the moment. Sounds like you have great fun and I'm sure Holly is happy for you to help her.
 
Hollysdad

Hollysdad

Administrator
Staff member
Location
Monmouthshire, Wales
Thank you all for the encouragement. This next article looks at the decisions that need to be made before setting pen to paper (or fingers to keypad).

“Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” ― Alexander Graham Bell

Deciding to write a book is easy, deciding what type of book to write requires a bit of planning. How big will it be? Who is it aimed at? Should I make a table-top book with lots of colour pictures, a pocket book for use on the walk, or an e-book? Table top books are expensive to produce and update, and require good photographic skills (which I lack). Pocket books are cheaper to produce and can be sized to slip into a bag or map pocket. People won’t mind paying a few pounds to update it every few years. E-books are fairly easy to produce, maintain and distribute, and its not hard to generate one from a ‘print’ book.

I decided to pitch in the middle and go for a colour pocket book, with the option of making it an e-book. The target audience was local dog walkers and holidaymakers, the latter being quite plentiful in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. A bit of market research (i.e. looking at what everyone else had done) suggested that pocket books in the £9-£12 range seemed to be popular, and that a typical book contained about 10-15 walks and 50-70 pages. Just about everyone uses a page size of 8.5 inches x 5.5 inches.

I originally considered writing the Wye Valley and Forest of Dean books as a single book, but eventually decided to publish them separately. I estimated that there are about 20-30 walks in the area. The resulting book would be 120-150 pages, which would be more awkward to carry.

I completely underestimated the time to write the first book. I knew some of the walks and thought I could produce a chapter a week, and three months to write the book. In reality this three month schedule turned out to be 18 months, the difference being the actual effort to identify a route, map an area, and write up all the notes.

Deciding how to publish was another big decision. Traditional publishing models involve finding an agent, selling them the idea, writing the book against the publisher’s timetable. This is a lot of effort and, after enquiries with agents, I decided that it was not the model for me.
Self-publishing was another option. This required that I write the whole book then take it to a printer and pay for a print run. The risks were obvious – what if I print 1000 copies at my own expense and it doesn’t sell? I’d be out of pocket and left with a pile of books. I’d have to do my own marketing, finding shops and other outlets who would buy copies and sell the book. This struck me as a very risky sales model.

In the end I found a new version of self-publishing called ‘print on demand’. The idea of POD is that the author provides the book as a completed item to the publisher who stores it on his server. When a copy is sold it goes straight to the printer and a single copy is printed and dispatched. It costs me nothing to publish. There is no financial risk as I don’t need to print copies in the hope that they sell. It’s also easy for me to update the book as I can just upload a new edition to the server and, after a few days, it appears in the catalogue. The downside of POD is that the royalties aren’t as good as traditional publishing, but I was never in this for the money.

With these important decisions made I was ready to start working on finding and writing-up the walks. In the next article I’ll tell you how we went about finding our walking routes.
 
Hollysdad

Hollysdad

Administrator
Staff member
Location
Monmouthshire, Wales
It's no secret. I sell about 120-150 books a year.

There seems to be a peak at Christmas, presumably people buying presents. Numbers are usually higher in spring and early summer, which I attribute to tourists. Later in the year they die off.

Sales have died since lockdown with only 3 books in the last 2 months. Holly won't be getting many Bonios this year!
 
Hollysdad

Hollysdad

Administrator
Staff member
Location
Monmouthshire, Wales
We all know when we’ve had a good walk with our canine buddies, but what was it about the walk that made it enjoyable? I found myself thinking about this question a lot when I started on the Wye Valley book. People buy walking books to find good walks so I didn’t want any ‘duds’ in the book.

I reached a few conclusions about the type of walk that is likely to be enjoyed by most people and dogs. The type of walk I wanted in the book should satisfy as many of the following criteria as possible:

  • Easy parking and access
  • A route that can be walked in all weather and all seasons
  • A circular walk
  • No roads to be crossed, so the walk could be done off lead
  • Preferably no fields of livestock
  • No stiles or awkward gates
  • Something of interest for the people as well as the dogs, such as a view or bit of history
  • Dog friendly facilities, for example poop bins and cafes
Looking for possible walks in the area was easy; the Ordnance Survey map showed miles of tracks and paths. After many long walks, I discovered that lots of the paths on the OS maps simply don’t exist on the ground, were impassable in winter, were blocked by farmers fences and locked gates, had unending lines of stiles or had nothing of interest for people. Holly, of course, loved all these long exploratory walks. She was very pleased when we found some mud and streams, but not so happy when I had to pick her up to get her over a stile, fence or locked gate.

As time went by, I started to get a bit more organised, rating each possible walk against the criteria. Some walks were quickly eliminated, and I found myself with about 15 walks that were worth developing.

Some choices were obvious as they were easy walking and offered lots of interest. The Beacon is a good example of this. Some were marginal. There is, for example, a nice walk from Tidenham across the fields to the Devil’s Pulpit. It nearly made the book, but had two problems: livestock and winter mud. In the end I dropped it from the book.

I’ve found that walks change over time. Sometimes its small things like changes to the car park layout, removal of a signpost or resurfacing of a path. In revising the Wye Valley book one walk, Loysey Woods, had changed a lot. Originally it was a nice walk to a viewpoint with the fitness trail adding a bit of character. Extensive forestry work and removal of the fitness trail have robbed it of character so it will be dropped from the second edition. On the other hand, a new car park at Little Doward has opened up a new area of the Wye Valley that will be included in the next revision.

I think the big lesson I learned is that writing the book is a never-ending process. Man and nature will keep on changing the routes so the process of revision is likely to last forever.

Once it became clear which walks were going to be used the serious work started. It was time to start filling the outline book with maps, photographs and text.

In the next two articles I’ll explain the how I made the maps for all the walks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top