The over riding question asked by those setting out is "why did you self Publish?"

The simple answer is i wish i didn't have to. I always wanted like every other author, that elusive publishing deal, the six figure sum and the kudos of being a recognised author. I soon discovered you had to be very lucky to achieve that in this day and age. More importantly i learnt early on that while I was expected to do all the hard work, the research, the writing the mid night oil burning there was a horde of people waiting to feed off my work, the editors, the copy editors, the typists, the office girl, the agent, the tea boy, the printer, the publisher, the book shop owner, the van driver the .....list goes on  Somewhere along the way me the poor writer becomes lost in the mire.

Of course the scores of reject letters didn't help either.

So disheartened and despondent i saw an advert "Written a book allow us to publish it for you" yes i had become suckered into that undignified world of Vanity printers. I sent my book, edited to the best of my ability, checked numerous times by my adoring wife and daughter.  Our problem was we had become word blind we missed certain fundamental mistakes and the book that we got back was far from perfect and they had charged me a veritable fortune for something which to be fair was unsell-able. I will not mention the name of that company but their name can be found very easily for those authors desperate not to follow my own mistakes.

 After that i fell into a pit of despair. I had stories to tell but no way to have them published which was when I discovered a friend who became my sage and editor. Together we honed and polished Dead Men Lie to within an inch of its life. We then had the problem how to continue, we had the product but not the resources or the means to advertise. That was when I decided to become a publisher. I had the book formatted which cost me a new computer package, I had never heard of Words  but when i was dragged kicking a screaming into the 21st century i found we could make the book look good we could even furnish our own front cover design. So armed with a PDF version of my tome we went in search of a printer, thereby hangs another tale to get the price to an acceptable unit cost we had to reformat the pages we were wasting too much paper as a printer in Canada informed us. From that we cut the page count from 600 to 450.

Even so we needed a print run of 100 to make them financially viable. Step in  my printers we can get small quantities printed for a reasonable cost but i had always envisaged this book to be sold as an E-book so costings weren't at the top of my to do list. However all authors need at least 6 copies as a legal requirement so we had 50 printed. Some we gave away, most we sold and that was our beginning. Enter the self Publishers worst nightmare the family and friends who expect a copy of your work for nothing.  There are those who deserve freebies, but most do not, as an ex plumber I never did work for nothing and I refuse to do so now. Even my daughter has bought a copy for her Kindle why not I fear i have alienated some so called fiends but you have to learn that we are running a business not a free show,our work is hopefully worthy of recompense and anyone desiring to read my work or yours should be prepared to pay for it.

There you a salutary tale of one man's foray into the world of books. I have made mistakes God some have been howlers but we have also learnt a lot. Don't be afraid of your work, if its good it will sell. Don't be concerned with those who want free copies, most will never read the book and of those who do none will give a usable review so what have you gained? Nothing

That's all for today more tomorrow now i am back to writing, so much to do and Spring is upon us.
Good writing my friends more soon.

Dave P