My self-publishing story

Write a book. Get a book deal.

Just like that. It’s easy, isn’t it? 

It took me eighteen months to write my first one hundred thousand words. It was called The Pink Coffee Shop because, as a teenager, I used to visit one near my home in Berkshire with my friends Tash and Jo. I would write a book called The Pink Coffee Shop one day, we decided over diet coke and carrot cake. Simple. It just took me twenty years before I did.

So next step - send book to agents. Get agent. Easy.

Only the agents I sent it to didn’t quite agree and I was rejected dozens of times.

One told me she did like it - only could I re-write it in the first person?  You bet I can, I typed back eagerly. This took another year, and I still remember the excitement as I pressed send. ‘This is it,’ I thought, ‘here we go.’ Only I received an email shortly after telling me she no longer represented adult books, she only worked with children’s authors now.

So, I put that one in the drawer and wrote another book. This really would be the one.  

It took another eighteen months and off it went, back to those agents who had rejected me the first time, but had at least been nice about it.

This was it, this was my moment.

Only it wasn’t, and more rejections filled my inbox.

Okay, so third time lucky.

I returned to the keyboard and filled my ears with podcasts about failure and writing. It was all part of the ‘journey,’ to get the book deal, I heard. “No-one likes an overnight success story, anyway,” my very patient hairdresser Joe Hemmings reminded me mid-do, as yet another style went out of date.

But then my family suffered one of those awful life-events which made our world stop turning for a bit.  The sort where everything stands still long enough for you to look at it and ask is this really what I want?

I wanted to write books, I really did. But it wasn’t so I could get a book deal, it was so I could share my stories with readers. I wanted to give them a world they could escape to for a bit, for when we all need a bit of time out. They may even be kind enough to tell me what they thought, so I could make the next one a bit better. 

I had to find Plan B.

I took a deep breath, opened The Pink Coffee Shop file and pressed delete. I would start all over again, using everything I had learned. And if I couldn’t get my book to readers, with the help of an agent, I would find another way.

Two years later, and with another stack of rejections in my inbox, I had a conversation with an old colleague and friend which changed everything. His name is James Blatch and he works with Mark Dawson at the Self-Publishing Formula. Their work is life-changing for authors like me and everything he told me made sense. But, best of all, it didn’t feel like Plan B now. More like what I should have been doing all along.

It’s ten years since I wrote my first words, and while it hasn’t been easy to get to this point, I feel I am in exactly the right place now. I have set up Flowerpot Publications and I am going to publish all three of my books and hopefully many more.

So, thank you. For taking the time to read this, and for coming even this far with me. If I am ever lucky enough to have you as one of my readers, I really would love to know your thoughts.