Why self-publishing?

Well that is the question. I guess it all comes back to control.

The dream has always been traditional publishing I'm not going to lie. I've always wanted to get a book out there, it be on Waterstones shelves, have bookmarks, big advertisement campaigns for it to be on a billboard at a train station that dream is still there but over the last few years I found myself becoming uninspired and in a real writing slump.

 I was publishing with an indie publisher which was great but one thing led to another there were little issues and it got to a point where I was genuinely considering recalling and cancelling my last two book launches.

I was done.

I didn't want them books going out in that way and I'm still quite sad of how little interaction they've had. How no one seems to have really seen Adolescent Summers and Just like a Fairy Tale so I stopped.

I stop posting social media, I stop pushing my website, I stopped posting on TikTok. I completely alienate myself from the world of books. I couldn't even read new books last year, I had to revisit old favourites. Pretty much every book I read was a reread, I was just so far removed from something I once loved I didn't really know how to get back. Funnily enough though I couldn't stop writing as much as I tried to just move on and just get away, I couldn't stop writing and honestly, I think I wrote probably three of the best books I've ever written.

Then came the decision of what to do with them I love writing, I love making characters and worlds and want to share them with people. I want people to read them and enjoy them I don't want them to just sit on my hard drive and just be forgotten about.

The three stories I wrote I think a three important stories that need to be told and I went through so many different ideas of how to get them out there, how to make sure they got their moments but it just kept coming back to self-publishing. It just kept coming back to the idea of having full control being in charge of everything, of the editing, of the cover, of the production schedule keeping track of my sales all alongside marketing which it gets harder every year.

I had so many discussions about it going back to it and for little while I genuinely couldn't see a way of doing it, I was so far removed and in such a slump that I thought it impossible. I didn't think I'd have to time. I didn't think I had the resources. I had been knocked down quite significantly from a few different things and I thought no I'm not putting myself back out there, so I sent Dumpster Kid to a few different publishers with open submissions, I thought OK let's give this a go, but it kept coming back that time wasn't right and for a lot of submission windows Dumpster Kid was too long, it's coming in at 105,000 words which is about 400 pages or so probably a bit more and no submission guidelines were accepting that, so I was getting frustrated.

Thinking why can't I tell McKenzie’s story then I realised I could the only thing stopping me from telling Mckenzie's story was me, that startling revelation that this kid who was 16 had more confidence to go out and self-publish than me, who is 29 now who has done it for 10 plus years.

When I saw the opportunity at 16, I had no qualms about it, I was motivated, excited even to do it. The books were terrible, I'm not going to lie to you, I know the books were bad, but everyone has to start somewhere and I learned so much from that self-publishing community that I have developed and I have become the author I am now.

 I think I write far better and honestly I know people won't like my book that's fine but there's a difference between bad writing and people not liking the book and that's something I learned by self-publishing, by being out in that scary world I'm having my soul revealed to everyone and critiqued to an inch of it’s life.

Earlier this year I thought let's give this a go, let's start putting things in place to go back to self-publishing to put myself back in this world. It wasn't going to be easy, I have no illusions that any of this is going to be easy and if it flops, it flops but I think McKenzie’s story needs to be told.

I think Keenan, Tyler, Harry and Patrick’s stories need to be told.

I think Caleb, Angel and Kelly’s stories need to be told, so I'm going to tell them.

Dumpster Kid is live now, with a release date of the 2nd of June.

Biro Tattoo’s and Call Me Queer are coming out next year.

I'm going to tell these stories, I hope you'll join me by reading them.