Expat guides
Didgeridoos and Didgeridon
Vicky Gray is the author of Didgeridoos and Didgeridon’ts: A Brit’s Guide to Moving Your Life Down Under, an expat guide aimed at anyone who wants to move to Australia and would like to have a slightly less bumpy ride on their adventure. The book is available from Amazon.co.uk. For more information on Vicky and to read her endlessly useful and entertaining blog visit www.australiauncovered.com
When I first migrated to Australia from the UK, I had hardly ever even sent an email. I sometimes was desperate to talk to a member of my family, but with the time difference being so massive, it just wouldn’t have gone down well to call up my mum to ask her how to make an omelette at 3am.
So I began to write email after email to my friends and family, and the more I wrote the more I enjoyed writing.
It was only looking back over my ’sent items’ that I realised how much I had learnt since I had moved to Australia and being so passionate about living here, I started answering emails on an emigration site. I soon realised that I was not only answering their questions but pre-empting their problems - which gave me an idea for a book.
I began to write down all the subtle differences that I had encountered during my first year in Oz. This led me onto researching how to make the relocation experience as fool-proof as possible – in the end I found I was emailing and liaising with Government departments, Education departments and a host of other people who were more than willing to give me, someone who didn’t even know where the ‘outlook express’ button was a few months before, official information for my book!
This was great, but I still had to find a publisher for my book. So I spent countless hours reading the Writers and Artists yearbook in search of someone who might want to publish an emigration guide. I sent off batches of seven manuscripts at a time to publishers who I thought would be interested, with a covering letter, a winning proposal and a big brown SAE for any returns.
Over a period of about eight months, 23 big brown stamped addressed envelopes housing their rejection letters came back. Every one felt like the twist of a knife in my stomach - but I was utterly convinced that this book was going to be a winner.
So I decided to try a different approach. I offered to write articles on websites and magazines for free just to get my name out there and create some kudos.
Within the week I had managed to secure myself a contract with Australia & New Zealand magazine, and my first article was published.
This huge boost of confidence spurred me on once again and my positive attitude obviously shone through - a month later I was signing a contract with a publishing house for my new book.
What I learned about writing and publishing expat guides over my journey was:
Choose a subject you know inside out and have personal experiences of
Consider who your readers will be and what they need to know
Share this information in as entertaining a way as possible
Get in touch with the relevant Government departments and official bodies to ensure your information is accurate and up to date
Build up a name for yourself as an expert, or at least a knowledgeable person, in the relevant field before approaching publishers or agents
Be passionate about what you are writing about and really believe that you can do it – a positive attitude really does make a difference
