It’s official! My first book, Essentials of Corporate Fraud is done. It is on its way to the printer, to be ready for shipment by March 14, if not sooner.

The hard work was in writing it, the stuff that came after that was a relative breeze. Although when people ask me if it was hard to write, the honest answer is no. It really wasn’t hard to write because the book is full of the core fraud prevention and detection material that I teach about and write about all the time. So it was more a matter of finding the time to sit down and do the writing.

The writing was fun, mainly because Wiley gave me total creative freedom over the project. Even though my book is part of the Essentials Series, I decided what would be in the book, how it would be organized, and what topics would be emphasized most. Of course, my editor was responsible for approving my outline, but after that I was on my own.

Once the manuscript was in the publisher’s hands, it went through two rounds of copy editing and I had to review those edits to make sure that none of them changed the meaning of the text. I was also responsible for creating the index of the book. No, we don’t use software to do it. (News to me!) It’s done by hand and requires a very careful review of the typeset pages.

At the same time that the manuscript was being tidied up, I was busy working on promotional stuff. This included gathering endorsements for the book and looking for promotional opportunities. I also started a website strictly for the book, although it’s still light on material. In the coming weeks I’ll be adding pages to that site so that readers can get a better feel for what’s in the book.

Work begins soon on my next book. Who would have thought? It’s been just under a year since I secured the contract for the first book, and now we’re already talking about the second one.