Podcast: An Indie Knitting Book Collaboration, with Theresa Gaffey and Scott Rohr

All images in this post by Gale Zucker, used with permission.

Have you ever been browsing kniting pattern books at your local yarn store and thought, “The exact book I need isn’t here. I should just write my own!” Well, a group of friends and yarn-store colleagues in St. Paul, MN did just that. This podcast tells the story of how Mary Lou Egan, Theresa Gaffey, Scott Rohr, Shelly Sheehan, and Sarah K. Walker decided to collaborate on a high-quality printed knitting book together.

Now, book-production is a great big undertaking, which is why so many knitters prefer to publish patterns digitally in places like Ravelry. But this group knew it had the combined skill set to pull a project like this off. The resulting book, Wearwithall: Knits for Your Life, has all the production value of any book from a mainstream publisher. And these five friends gained a tremendous amount of learning along the way.

If you’re a knitter, this podcast gives you an interesting glimpse into all that goes into making a good knitting book. And if you dream of publishing your own craft books, you’ll get some great insight into the benefits (and occasional challenges) of collaboration.

 
All images in this post by Gale Zucker, used with permission.

Links!

• Check out the Wearwithall website, which encompasses the group’s blog, pattern variations, and more on the yarns used in the book.

• The Yarnery has tasty yarns and a lovely blog.

• I’ve always been a fan of this post: Seth Godin’s Advice for Authors.

• Here’s another I’ve kept bookmarked for a while: A Publishing Person Self Publishes. A pretty interesting story of Kent Anderson, who works in publishing, deciding to self-publish his first novel.

• You might find The Creative Penn to be a useful resource for all things self-publishing.