The Whys of Self-Publishing

Liz Hinds

Back at the turn of the century – doesn’t that sound a long time ago? -  I was ghost-writing the autobiography of a New York policeman, who’d found God, and had gone on to become an evangelist and to start the Cops for Christ organisation. (How a middle-aged Welsh woman with no real writing experience came to write his book is a whole other story.)

Now I’d done writing courses, I’d read all the books and magazines, and I knew how hard it was to get published, so when I’d written about one third of the book I thought I’d better begin submitting. As this was in the days of postal submissions, when you were not supposed to do multiple submissions, I decided I might as well start at the top of Christian publishers and wrote to Hodder & Stoughton.

I posted the letter on Thursday; at tea-time on Friday – I was frying chips I remember – the phone rang. It was someone from H&S saying they were very interested in my manuscript, they’d had a meeting that morning, there was a gap in their list for a book like this, and could I send the rest in?

And it was that simple. Apart from the fact I had two thirds of the book to write.

First published in 2001, A Cop for Christ is still available on Amazon.

Shortly after that I began writing my first novel. Up until then I’d concentrated on short stories and non-fiction. I was approaching fifty, and went for a grown-up Bridget Jones approach, in my story of a newly-divorced mother of two, reaching her fifties.

With my experience with H&S to go on I was confident. Why, my writing was so good, they’d barely needed to do any editing. I would have publishers queuing up to sign, nay, fighting over me. They’d make a film of the book with the late lamented Alan Rickman as the sexy-voiced male lead. I hadn’t chosen a star to play me – I mean, my heroine. No matter what anyone says, the novel is not autobiographical. Except in one or two places.

So I sent off my first query letter and sat back and waited. And waited, and waited.

Eighteen years and too many rejection letters to count later I decided, having written the stupid thing, I might as well as self-publish it. I know there are authors who prefer to self-publish because it gives the writer more control over every aspect but I turned to self-publishing not out of choice but because it was the only way of making my novels available to the world, or at least five of my friends.

I’d love to say that my self-published book became a mega-hit, and that I finally got the Major Publishers fighting over me, but I probably sold fewer than one hundred books and most of those were bought by my uncle who had a lot of lady friends.

Undeterred by that experience I continue to write and self-publish novels. None are best sellers. I am convinced they are good: I get great reviews and not just from people I know! Is it my marketing skills? Or maybe lack of?

Now my plan for this article was to talk about self-publishing, the ecstasy and anguish, but I’ve already written nearly five hundred words on just the why of self-publishing, so tomorrow I’ll write about the how.

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You can find a link to Liz's books here.

www.lizhinds.online

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