Welcome to my blog.
At midnight on the 28th February 2017 I officially became a “published author”. Self-published, but nonetheless a piece of work, that I had written, in the form of a novel was available for purchase by real people using actual money.
This was both a very scary and highly exciting day, and it passed not without its teething problems. In fact, at the time of writing this article, many who purchased a print version of my book are still yet to get their hands on it. It’s all very frustrating to go to the effort of promoting something like a debut novel on social media, only for people to be unable to do precisely what you have essentially badgered them into doing.
Somehow or another, through such badgering, The Red Room appeared early the next morning in 9th position on Amazon in the category of Books > Humour > Criminals and Lawyers (presumably the closest category Amazon UK has to ‘dark humour’). At one particularly cool moment in time, it was sandwiched in 11th place between The Sunshine Cruise Company by John Niven and A Decent Ride by Irvine Welsh. I took a screen print of this for posterity, acutely aware of the fact that a release day buying surge by friends and family had put it in this position. It may well plummet off the face of the Earth (or at least the Criminals and Lawyers section) in the coming days but for just a moment it had its position amongst great writers.
But this is one of many lessons that I will take away from the whole process. From the naïve assumption that merely putting 80,000 odd words down into a Word document and saving it as “First Draft” automatically qualifies you for a three book deal with 250 grand advance, to the virtues of patience and deliberation at the business end of the whole process.
In a way, simply holding the glossy hardback, printed in order to approve the print-on-demand company’s proof before distribution was enough to justify the hundreds of pounds already spent on the various ‘book services’ to get it to this point. I just hoped that some people would stump up the extra for a hardback, to appreciate it as much as I did, but in the end I would just be happy that anyone bought it.
This blog is intended to detail the journey to this point and will hopefully give a useful insight into the realities of self-publishing.
See you next time.
Chris
