make it new - how Fringes displays its difference

World Book Day hadn't escaped my notice but I failed to realise that now I've written a book, I should probably celebrate it somehow.

This is where I'm learning - selling myself and my projects in a way that's proactive yet doesn't leave me feeling greasy.

I've never particularly enjoyed selling myself as a process. Being an older millennial means that there's a slight wrench when it comes to the social platforms - I find them both alluring and repellent - and something I wanted to learn from doing the book was some promotional skills.

Marketing and sales have been probably the most daunting part of publishing a book. The writing process was mostly a genuine pleasure, even if there were some periods of wading through the draft or staring at my screen, but the selling is tougher for me personally.

selling yourself as an athlete

Back in the day as an aspiring rugby player, it was mostly beholden on you to get hold of video footage of your games, clip them into a semi watchable montage, often incorporating grainy rugby footage from pitches that time forgot, and posting a burned DVD to a probably inundated and only semi-interested director of rugby at the other end.

Of course, this is now totally different. Games are videoed at all levels, clips go viral filmed by people in the crowd on their phones and the highlight reel is now almost unnecessary. For the most part competitions and teams share footage, occasionally taken directly from a broadcaster or provider and your actions are clipped up for you by a proper video analyst, someone there to do that job specifically. There's no more trawling through hours of terrible footage looking for your that good left-hand pass you threw a while back, the only kick you did that year that rolled out in their 22 or the time where you caught an unbalanced back-row forward at the right moment and floored him almost by accident.

These were all part of the game as a young thruster trying to make his way in rugby. YouTube had recently become a thing but wasn't anywhere near as integral to life as it is now. My highlights were uploaded there and although I'd taken them down some time ago, here's a little treat for you, the video that opened the door to my first professional contract.

This video was knocked up for my by my Blaydon teammate at the time, former Premiership winger Brendon Daniel. He did videos for a few of the lads, we had a lot of talent in that team with several future professionals in 15s and 7s, and considering the technological implications at the time, I think he did a good job! The music is a little on the nose for my tastes but the original pick - Superfly by Curtis Mayfield - fell afoul of YouTube's copyright policy somewhere along the line.

One of the difficulties of making a video later on was actually getting the match film off of a director of rugby. Nowadays this wouldn't be a problem but at Plymouth, our coach Graham Dawe used to be very suspicious of anyone asking for game DVDs, often insisting you watch them at the club. This led to a bit of black market trade in ripped match footage among the boys and sometimes, you were unable to get ahold of certain games as no-one had them. This was particularly tough if you had played well in an otherwise drab match that no one else wanted to rewatch and could hamper your video if those games were where you'd done your best work.

the need to separate yourself

So what's the problem with marketing yourself as a rugby player when you're a young hopeful trying to ascend the divisions?

There's loads of you.

Those directors of rugby got a lot of videos, from all sorts of agents, from all sorts of places. Usually they'd ask for highlights and a full game or two. The likelihood of them watching them at all was probably quite low and at the time, depended on the postal service.

Now, the barrier to making a really good looking video is so low, they are probably snowed under, although I'd have thought that for the most part, someone else is filtering them somehow.

You are one of a big pile, a 20ish year old rugby player looking for a gig and willing to travel. You're not in a strong position!

At the time, I was comforted by the thought of an agent taking away the residual awkwardness of discussing your value with a stranger. I was a young guy, confident in social situations but out of my comfort zone when it came to selling myself. I am still am in many respects.

Now though, I'd try to think about how I could make myself stand out. Defining myself as different to all the others.

I took some of these lessons and applied them to Fringes. I've done several things to separate my book from the crowd and I believe that in many respects, it's unlike most other sports books out there.

defining by opposition - how I tried to unique-ify Fringes

depict the lower level

It doesn't cover the elite level of professional sport beyond a passing acquaintance with it. It's more comparison of the haves and the have nots, of what happens to you professionally if you don't crack the top level. It discusses the similarities as well, how your impulses remain the same, what it feels like to be injured and some of the shared insecurities that bedevil sports professionals.

it's not ghostwritten

Most sports books by athletes are ghostwritten. Usually it's athletes of a high level that get books commissioned and they by and large don't have the time, the inclination or the ability to write it themselves. This isn't specific to athletes but it's the norm amongst them. I felt that by writing it myself, it made the narrative of and around the book more interesting. It is what it says it is rather than a conversation with an athlete, filtered through the words of another writer.

it's self published

Fringes is a book that I've retained total creative control over for better or worse. This again makes it stand out, allowed me to move quicker and to have it look and read how I wanted it to at the time.

There were other reasons for self publishing which you can read here

the cover is not like the rest

Here you can see for yourself that the book is unusual.

I thought the cover was a fantastic opportunity to make a statement that the book was different. I didn't want to have a picture of my unrecognisable face on it, another portrait in a sea of them. I wanted something bold and graphic that would stand out amongst identikit sports books and I'm really pleased with the result.

Read more about the cover design process here

don't be boring

'Today, the one sure way to fail is to be boring. Your one chance for success is to be remarkable.' - Seth Godin

Godin's book Purple Cow advocates creating exactly that - something that if you saw in it in a crowded field, would look and be different. The book argues that the only way to get noticed is to be unique and remarkable. I won't speak to the quality of my book but I have gone out of my way to make it look different, for it to be outstanding and comment worthy in how it looks, in what it says and in what is actually is.

So there's how I tried to make the book stand out. A lot of it came back to one of the reasons that I wanted to write a book in the first place - to own my way forward, to make sense of and celebrate the past and to tell a story that I thought deserved telling.

'We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.' - Anais Nin

Playing sport for a living and playing rugby in particular is a privilege, something that does taste sweet for the most part. Saying goodbye to it isn't easy and writing the book has helped me to do that in some way. Whatever you choose to read today for World Book Day, I hope that it lets you in to someone else's life, to taste a little of their experience, even if that person is made up! The act of reading, of being allowed in to someone else's head, is another great privilege that we should exercise whenever we can.